Leyland Accordion Club, Leyland, Lancashire, England.

If you came to this page via a search engine then you have just found one page of our archive of 160+ monthly newsletters which may contain the information you are looking for. You can also click HERE to go to the main site which contains a wealth of text files, audio streams, video, musical information, items for sale, notice board and contact information for the UK accordion scene

For Accordion CD's DVD's Music Books and other items for sale visit our shop at
www.accordionshop.com

 

Leyland Accordion Club - 14th June 2000

 

Editors Comment

This month we are quire busy with our concert night on the 12th and our Picnic/open air concert on the 30th. If you are seeing people from other clubs who do not get our newsletter but may be interested in these events then please let then know these dates and the location of the picnic. I am working on trying to get the BBC to film us this month, we are in a hat with the other things they have to fill so I am keeping my fingers crossed. Enjoy the newsletter and I will see you on Wednesday.

David Batty

 

 

Dorothy Holt, one of our practice night players who is promising us that she will play on a concert night soon.

Our June Concert

The first thing you noticed when you walked through the door at our June meeting was the sea of accordion music, which stretched from the door to where we serve tea and coffee. This did not include the other boxes of stuff, which stayed under the table because of lack of room to display any more music. The music sale attracted a lot of interest from our players who found many bargains and music they had been unable to locate in the past. At 8pm, I called time and opened up our concert with Tom Bennett playing Irish Rover, this was followed by Whistling Rufus, Matchstalk Men, The Old Rugged Cross and finally finishing with a tune which Tom told us was a Hymn he heard played as a James Bond theme, the tune was Just A Closer Walk With Thee. Tom recently dropped his accordion off at Accordion Centre Birmingham to have MIDI installed. This will allow him to be more commercial in future with his playing. When he is famous I will be able to say that I knew him when he knew nothing about playing the accordion, only joking Tom, He He. When you see Tom playing at the club on Wednesday, don't get the impression that MIDI turns your accordion black, it's just the accordion he is borrowing while his own is being welded! After Tom's excellent performance, we continued with John Higham. John started with Twin Footsteps In The Snow before continuing with an Italian tune by the name of Marina. John's final two tunes were Kaiser Bill's Batman and Elmer's Tune. If you were feeling all subdued and relaxed then that was about to change with a rousing rendition from Bill Agnew. For those who don't know him, Bill is the one with the foot. I told Bill that I like the way he goes through tunes like he is on piece work. Bill started with Cock Of The North and then continued with (--you can insert lots of well known tunes here and he probably played them--). I was talking to Bill last night when I went to The Bellows Buttons And Keys Club, and he said he is bringing his MIDI setup this Wednesday to give it an airing. Next came Jay and Jeff Ward who settled down with their keyboard and accordion respectively. Their first piece was Song Of The Rose followed by Crazy, Yellow Bird and finally a French tune they had learned from a tape. They did not know the name of this tune and asked for suggestions but nobody could provide them with an answer. It was now time for just one player before the break, this player was Colin Ensor who was pictured in the last newsletter puckering his lips at the camera (that's what I tell people he was doing but really he was on the 'W' of Will you go away with that camera!&@). Colin first played at the club last month and he enjoyed it so much he was back in the limelight this month. Colin started with Beautiful Days which he had learned from hearing George Hicks playing on one of the club audio tapes. This was followed by Sunshine Of Your Smile, If I Had My Way, Ain't No Pleasing You and finally a Mike Ellis favourite Dark Island. Mike is on a mission to get me to sing at the club, I told him that it will have to wait until after he has played at one of our concert nights. I feel quite confident that I have plenty of time to go before this happens, it's just a pity that by not playing for us on a concert night he is not only depriving you all of his talent but he is also holding my singing career back! If you want to ask him when he is playing for us look for a chap who reminds you of the dad on Skippy. Mike can play quite well for a beginner and he is certainly of the skill level needed to play at the club. He has only just bought a brand new 96 bass Serenellini a few weeks ago so he must be a professional! Come to think of it, if I have to sing and play after he has played I might not push him too hard, you carry on practising for a few months Mike, don't rush. During the break many people were browsing through the massive stall of music which stretched from the door to the coffee area. This was a popular attraction that should lead to some new tunes being heard at the club from the players who went home armed with sheets and books of music. After the break, we started with Alan Gelling playing Music From The Merry Widow, Humoresque and Wheels. Our next player was Chris O' Malley. Chris, who is a demonstrator for Accordion Centre Birmingham, had travelled up from Birmingham along with Rob who runs the shop. They came up just to visit our club! Chris played a selection of Scottish and Irish music, including the second version of Dark Island of the night. Following Chris, we had Albert Draper making his debut at the club. Albert is a regular to the club but he has never played for us before, when he did play it was obvious he had been withholding a lot of talent from us. Albert started with Grand And Glorious, this was followed by The Soft Lowland Tongue and The March Of The Cameron Men. His last two pieces were Shufflin' Samuel and He'll Have To Go. Albert is the chap who sold me my blue/grey curved keyboard Scandalli. I hope we see a lot more of Albert playing at the club in future. Our second debut of the night was Brian Carland, Brian can normally be heard playing at our practice nights where his fingers take on a life of their own, I often stop what I am doing to listen to him. Brian first played a Scottish Waltz Medley followed by Barren Rocks Of Aden, Bonnie Scotland and No Awa To Back Away. It was now my turn but because we were running out of time I just played the one tune Whispering Hope so that I can say I have never missed playing at a club night. Dugald Mcallum stood down and did not play at all to help out with the timing. Thanks Dugald, you can have choice of position this Wednesday. We often run out of time at the end so I have to ask players who play for 15 minutes or more to play one less tune so all players get a chance, I feel guilty at the end when a player misses out on playing while someone else has had 18 minutes or more. If you have a large programme you want to play then consider splitting it in two and if there is time after everyone has played you can play a second time. This gives everyone chance to play. After my one tune it was two minutes to 11. Because we would not be seeing him again for a long time I asked Chris O'Malley to finish the night off for us which he did with some fast fingerwork while playing Scottish and Irish tunes. It had been another excellent night of entertainment as we finally emptied the place at 11.30pm.

David Batty

How To Teach Your Arms

Inside your muscles you have fibres, these fibres have properties which help or hinder you in your practice sessions depending how you treat them. I can tell you from personal experience that when I have been carrying chairs and tables around the room prior to 8pm on our clubnights I find that my fingers have forgotten all the tunes they knew earlier. This is simply over exertion which should be avoided before a performance. One solution to this is to get a rucksack type accordion case which eases the strain on your arms when you are on the way to a performance, the weight of the accordion is distributed evenly over your shoulders rather than all the weight being placed on four curved fingers. My accordion rucksack came from Music World at Fleetwood (tel. 01253 822046), they come in a variety of sizes for 120, 96, 48 bass models). You can, however, use knowledge of muscle fibres to make up great excuses for making mistakes. All skeletal muscles contain types of fibre, in different proportions. There are actually three types, in order of increasing speed and increasing susceptibility to fatigue these are slow red fibres, fast red fibres and fast white fibres. Slow muscle fibres are for continuous-pull uses like maintaining posture, arm movement in piano playing, and fiddle bowing probably uses them for most of the action, as does bellows movement on an accordion. Fast fibres come into play when extra strength rather than extra speed is needed. It is good to practice tunes very slowly at first to implement good finger placement techniques which will allow the tune to be played with greater ease later, it is also recommended that you finally practice with the same amount of effort and speed as you will do when playing the piece in front of an audience to ensure you teach the correct muscle fibres what they should be able to do without much prompting from your brain. When you practice slowly your notes are longer and therefore use more air, this means that your bellows move further and as a consequence you have to change bellows direction more often than if you were playing the tune at the correct speed. The result for your learning is that if you always practice slowly then you start learning to change bellows direction at different places to where you will change when you are later playing the tune at the correct speed. This can impact on your playing when you remember to change bellows direction during a performance but forget that you only did that change when playing at slow speed. The result of making these kinds of mistakes is either the bellows slam shut and all noise stops for a moment, or your arm starts to make creaking noises as it approaches full stretch and you either have to snap something or change bellows direction in the middle of a note or passage. When starting to learn a tune make sure you start very slowly and find the easiest most comfortable fingering before getting the tune up to full speed. Good foundations in fingering will pay dividends later when all your fingers fall in to place with almost no effort on your brains part. If all this fails then start collecting excuses, they will come in handy later. If you think of any good ones let us know.

 

Our Internet Website

Our internet website has had 27014 visitors as at 10th July 2000, that's 1205 visitors since last month. I have started added newsletters to the site but, because of pressure of work, the latest newsletter I have converted to on the site is our January one. If I get time, the February newsletter may be on there by the time you read this. We are slowly being followed on to the Internet by other accordion organisations. Others with websites include Rolston Accordions, Music World, WEM or Watkins Electric Music, Geoff Holter and Allodi. More recently I received a phone call from Trevani asking about the registration of web names, their web address is now registered so hopefully the site won't be far away so we can soon look forward to browsing sheet music lists on the Internet from a local supplier. We have a noticeboard on our website where anyone can leave messages to be read by any visitor to the site. One of our members put a spoof message on there which purported to be from another member, for ease of writing lets call these two people Tom and Mike. Tom posted the message which seemed to be written by Mike, the only problem was that, although it looked like Mike had written this message Tom did not know that I can see numbers attached to the messages which are not visible to site visitors, these numbers act like a fingerprint and uniquely identify who posted the message, they pointed the finger at Tom. Following this, Mike told Tom he had signed him up to a gay internet group by posting a message that Tom liked to dress up as an indian and was looking for a cowboy! The two decided to call it a truce before they both got into trouble but comments I heard from one of them indicated that the other one is due a surprise! It is interesting to see our players grasping new technology and putting it to good use like this, I am proud of them. We have had a good number of emails recently from people who have only just discovered our website and said they find it so interesting reading about us. It's a pity that more clubs don't follow our lead by having their own website, but maybe with a growing number of shops and suppliers on the Internet that will soon change.

 

Visit To Accordion Centre Birmingham

Last month Colin Ensor received a phone call to say that his new accordion had arrived at Accordion Centre Birmingham, so early next morning five of us jumped in a car to go and escort it back to Lancashire. After a 120 mile journey we arrived at the shop and Colin eagerly opened his new package. Rob who owns the shop treated us to cups of coffee while we experimented with various accordions from his shelves and used the MIDI accordion which he had set up in the shop. When we left at 4pm Colin had his new accordion, I had bought a tuner for my own accordion and for those I am currently restoring, Tom Bennett had decided to have his own accordion fitted with MIDI and arranged for it to be left there for installation and Phil had put his name on the MIDI accordion, expander and amplifier we had been playing. This week Phil and the rest of them returned to pick up his new accordion and all the rest of the MIDI stuff he had purchased, Tom has to return to pick up his accordion, wires, amplifier and Expander in two weeks time. I can see a fight developing sometime in the future when there is a fight for plug sockets at the club. We will shortly have six or more of our players who own MIDI setups, but most of them say that they will only bring it to the club occasionally to show what they have learned to do with it. One such player is Bill Agnew who is bringing his to the club on Wednesday. Because the subject of electronics and accordions has been very confusing for many people who don't understand what is going on or how it all works I will give you an overview in next months newsletter.

Visit To Cleveleys

The Bellows Buttons and Keys Club will be meeting on Tuesday 1st August at The Royal British Legion, next to the bus terminal at Cleveleys. It is an 8pm start until 11pm. I know a few of us are planning to visit on that date, if you are going we will see you there. Further details of the club can be obtained by ringing 01253 822046. Don't forget to take your accordion.

Charlie Chesters Accordionist

Following an appeal in last month's newsletter for the name of the woman accordionist who was regularly featured on the Charlie Chester Show, I received a message via email from one of our members in Cumbria who had just received his newsletter. The woman in question was accordionist Pearl Fawcett. Thanks go to Mr. G. Griffith from Dent in Cumbria for the answer. If anyone else is looking for information on accordion matters, looking for a piece of music that is impossible to find, let me know and I will see if the newsletter can provide the answer.

Requests

If you would like to hear a tune played at the club which you have not heard played there before, then why not write your name and the title of the piece on a small piece of paper, then pin it to our noticeboard, if one of our players can fulfil your request they can take the paper off the board and play your tune when it is their turn to play. If the request is still there at the end of the night then it might encourage a player to take it home with them to prompt them to learn something they would not normally think of playing.

Civil Service Retirement Fellowship

I was asked to give a talk to the Civil Service Retirement Fellowship that meets in the ROF club at Euxton. I took my own accordion along with a small 48 bass model to show the size variations available. After showing the audience around the instrument, I demonstrated the use of couplers before showing them the insides of the instrument. This was accompanied by as much information as I could share with them in the time available. Before I finished, I played a small selection of tunes which were accompanied by singing from the audience. Afterwards, quite a few newsletters and information leaflets were requested so lets hope we get some new faces at the club as a result.

August Accordion Course

In the last newsletter I wrote about The University of Stirling holding an accordion course in July, well they are at it again in August. The tutor is Ian Lowthian and the course runs from August the 7th to August the 12th in Stirling Scotland. The course will cover ornamentation, analysis of tunes, composition, different types of harmony, left hand technique, special effects such as bellows shake as well as technical aspects such as articulation, fingering and phrasing. Many tune types will be covered such as jig, reel, waltz and march, along with time signatures such as 5/4 and 11/16, some light jazz and blues. The course will end with a ceilidh on the Friday evening. Further information can be obtained by sending an email to m.f.stirling@stir.ac.uk.

Would You Like Your Own CD?

I have been asked by quite a few players recently about the costs of being recorded and producing a CD either for commercial sale, to take a snapshot of their skills for future reference or for their own listening pleasure. Word has got around that I have previously done this for some players and others are in the pipeline. For anyone interested in making a CD the cost is £25 per hour for time spent recording, editing and processing the sound, the end result is a CD which can be used in a standard CD player. This CD can be used as a master for bulk CD production or as a master copy for making excellent quality audio tapes for sale. The time taken to record and produce the CD depends on how many tunes you want to play, whether you play the tunes right first time or want to re-record them and how much fine tuning of the tracks you want at the end. After trial and error with my recordings I have built my own pre-processor for the sound which gets it to the correct level and containing the correct frequencies for excellent recording quality. The minimum time a number of tunes can be made into a good quality CD is two hours. Give me a ring on 01772 454328 for more information or to arrange a time for your recording, the CD is ready at the end of the session for you to take it away with you. There is only myself present when the recordings are done so there is no need for any nerves spoiling your performance. When you make an audio tape from the CD the results are excellent, I hope this encourages many of our worthy players to produce their own tapes which can be sold when they are performing. There is always a demand for tapes after a performance but sadly most players do not have any to sell. Now they have no excuse.

Only Joking

A man gives his son an electric bass guitar for his 15th birthday, along with a coupon for four bass guitar lessons. When the son returns from his first lesson, the father asks, "So, what did you learn?" "Well, I learned the first five notes on the E string." Next week, after the second lesson, the father again asks about the progress, and the son replies, "This time I learned the first five notes on the A string." One week later, the son comes home far later than expected, smelling of cigarettes and beer. So the father asks: "What happened in today's lesson?" "Dad, I'm sorry I couldn't make it to my lesson; I had a gig!" Another man goes to an exotic tropical island for a holiday. As the boat nears the island, he notices the constant sound of drumming coming from the island. As he gets off the boat, he asks the first native he sees how long the drumming will go on. The native looks around nervously and says "very bad when the drumming stops." At the end of the day, the drumming is still going and is starting to get on his nerves. So, he asks another native when the drumming will stop. The native looks as if he's just been reminded of something very unpleasant. "Very bad when the drumming stops," he says, and hurries off. After a couple of days with little sleep, our traveller is finally fed up, grabs the nearest native, slams him up against a tree, and shouts "What happens when the drumming stops?!!" The native replies "Bass solo".

Words Of Wisdom

They say that if you are ever going to criticise somebody you should first walk a mile in their shoes. This makes great sense because when you do criticise them, you will be a mile away and have their shoes!

Charity Event

One of our players, Linda Grant, is looking to recruit some players to play at a charity event in aid of Vine House in early September. Vine House is a cancer care centre at Cromwell Road, Preston. Tom Bennett is one player who has signed up to play at this event, if you want to join him and support Linda, then give her a ring on 01772 614002. Linda will be playing at the club on Wednesday night if anyone wants to ask her about the concert. This event is ideal for anyone wanting to expand their horisons and become semi-amateur in future. Linda is not looking for professional players (well she will take them if any are available), players of average ability who want a chance to do something worthwhile with their talents are all that is needed.

Amplifier For Sale

Mr Green is selling a Torque T30, this is a 30 watt amplifier for guitar, keyboard, microphone etc. It is in Mint condition, Unused. I think he is looking for around £80 for it if my memory serves me correct. This amplifier has three inputs, a 50 watt speaker, three volume controls, treble and bass eq, headphone and line out jacks. Telephone 01942 245620

 

Picnic/Concert

I am currently in discussions with Harold Bleasdale to decide a suitable date for a repeat of last year's accordion picnic/concert which was such a success. We set up a small covered stage to protect the players from any rain and broadcast the concert on FM radio to all the cars parked in the field. This system was a great success, Dugald Mcallum said it was the best sound system he had ever heard an accordion put through. I will be using the same system again this year. Last years concert started at 2pm and only ended at 8pm, we had six hours of excellent entertainment, lots of fresh air and sandwiches. Further details will be in next months newsletter once we have decided when the good weather will be here. We are looking at Sundays at the end of July or the beginning of August.

This Wednesday

I am looking forward to this Wednesdays concert which is a special local players event which as usual will be packed with variety and entertainment from our local players. Local players don't forget your accordions. We should see Jean Southern playing after a long absence from the accordion scene, Bill Agnew is bringing his midi setup, Rebecca is back from University and I hope we get some players who don't normally play at the club joining in. I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.

 

 

Return to Leyland Accordion Club main page

 

Learn the skill of Touch Typing with Leyland Accordion Clubs own product Touch Typist.