Leyland Accordion Club, Leyland, Lancashire, England.

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Leyland Accordion Club - 17th March 2004

Alan Venn's Jazz Weekend

An excellent time was had at Alan Venns Jazz and Swing weekend at Blackpool which featured Harry Hussey and Ken Astin on accordions. Because they play so well together, there is talk of these two producing a CD. I will let you know when this happens because it will be a CD worth adding to your collection. You can see Ken playing on the 21st of July when he is our guest artist. Alan holds these events on a regular basis, details of the forthcoming events will appear in this newsletter nearer the time.

Musicians Television Channel

A new musicians television channel will be born later in the year, this will be available on Satellite TV and on Freeview which means that people with a freeview set top box can receive it. The channel will feature lots of items for musicians but it will also feature daily music lessons. The accordion is going to be one of the featured instruments with 96 short lessons being broadcast on how to play the accordion. If you don't get chance to see all the lessons, or if you want them in a convenient form then you will be able to order them on DVD. More details soon...

This Wednesday

This Wednesday we have a local players concert. Hopefully I will have the brochures from Roland to hand out. There will be the usual mixture of good music, entertainment, coffee/tea, raffle, and the chance to make new friends. If you normally speak to the same person/s at each club night then please try to meet someone new. If you see a visitor at the club who you don't know then say hello to them. You never know who you will meet, it will help all new visitors to feel involved and it will make the night more interesting for you. Doors open at 7.30pm so come along early for a good 30 minutes chat before the music starts. I will see you there on Wednesday..........
David Batty

Roland FR5/7

We have some exciting news from Roland who are one of the most respected electronic instrument makers. They have brought out a completely self contained electronic accordion which includes amplifier, speakers, rechargable battery etc all built in. At the heart of the FR-7/-5 is Roland’s new, proprietary PBM (Physical Behaviour Modelling) sound engine and sound modelling technologies. Physical Behaviour Modelling uses complex algorithms (as opposed to sampled sounds) to accurately model an acoustic accordion’s sound characteristics. The result is a faithful recreation of the actual physical behaviour and expressive nuances of an acoustic instrument. Lightweight and portable, the FR-7 uses an onboard digital amplifier with rechargeable 24 volt Ni-Mh battery pack (optional on the FR-5) to power two 25 watt neodymium woofers and tweeters for a consistent, full range low-end to high-end output. The right and left hand velocity sensitive keyboards integrate with the high-resolution bellows pressure sensor to deliver an amazing level of expressiveness and playability. The FR-7/-5 can simulate up to 30 different accordion sound sets, each including 14 Treble Registers, 7 Bass & Chord Registers and 7 Free Bass Registers. To create these high quality sounds, Roland engineers sampled scores of popular traditional acoustic accordions, resulting in a single instrument that can faithfully reproduce various models of traditional accordions, including their different tuning characteristics. As a result, the V-Accordion can switch instantly from an Italian Jazz to a German Folk, French Musette, or historic Bandoneon. Along with stellar onboard accordion sounds, the FR-7/-5 incorporates Roland’s acclaimed orchestral sounds. Traditional and orchestral sound combinations can be easily created and played back, complete with full bellows articulation and unique keyboard modes such as Solo, Dual and High/Low. Seven high quality bass sounds can be played separately by the left hand, including: Acoustic Bass, Bowed Bass, Fingered Bass, Picked Bass, Fretless Bass, Bariton Tuba, Bariton Tuba + E.Bass. The FR-7/-5 faithfully combines the familiar sounds and nuances of a traditional accordion with the versatility of a modern digital musical instrument. You can instantly select and switch between a wide range of sounds and/or types of accordions, or customize your own unique timbres. Because it doesn’t depend on moving parts for sound generation, the V-Accordion is always in tune and both keyboards can be transposed to play within a wide range of octaves. For sound output, you can plug directly into a sound system, recording device or plug in a pair of headphones for silent practice. The V-Accordion combines velocity sensitive keyboards, and a high resolution bellows pressure sensor to create a whole new world of expressive possibilities. Using the High/Low Mode feature, you can control up to 4 parts simultaneously in real time from just one V-Accordion. Onboard MIDI functionality allows you to expand the range of performance options to sound modules, arranger keyboards or an external sequencer. The more you experiment with the V-Accordion’s capabilities, the more possibilities you’ll find! The FR-7/-5 V-Accordion appeals to a wide range of musicians, including professional entertainers who play in environments where mobility is essential, traditional accordionists, and those players who simply desire to stretch the limits of the traditional instrument. Additionally, the V-Accordion’s headphone practicing feature and portability appeal to students, amateurs and any musician who desires greater flexibility and increased performance options in practice and performance environments. With the backing of such a large company as Roland, this instrument has to guarantee the accordion a place in many pop groups, even if it is only in digital form. The image of the accordion will be seen on many more TV programmes and with the marketing might of Roland, we should see an increase in the popularity of our instrument. I am trying to get some brochures about this instrument delivered to me before this Wednesdays club night.

Accordion Radio

We have had a great writeup on one Internet website, and mentions on many more, as people are just suddenly discovering Accordion Radio. The radio station has now been running on the Internet for 3 years (it started in March 2001) but it's only now that word is spreading fast about it. I have had many emails from people who have only just discovered it and who are so pleased to be able to listen in. Following this sudden increase in the awareness of the radio station, I have received a number of CD's from artists requesting that I play some of their material on there. It seems surprising that it's now 3 years since I started the station which currently gets about 700 listener hours per month, it only seems like last year when I set it up! If you haven't listened in yet, you can find it on the Internet at www.accordionradio.co.uk. This address is on the back of all our newsletters in case you are trying to remember it in future.

Our Website

Our internet website has had 66936 visitors as at the 19th of April 2004, that’s 1103 visitors since last month. Our web counter reached a magic number of 66666 this month, I wanted to know who the person was who visited at that time. It the site at the time was Jeff Berg (pictured). Jeff, who plays fretless guitar runs his own website dedicated to fretless instruments. Jeffs wife Marina plays the accordion, they have both visited our club a few times and were at our last picnic. Lets see who visitor 77777 is, this person should visit the site somewhere near to the end of the year.

Accordion For Sale

Red Delicia, 72 bass accordion for sale, 7 couplers on the right, 2 bass couplers. It is in very good condition as it is practically new. Price £400 no offers. Telephone John Lund on 0151 426 8622.

North Staffordshire Accordion Club

I received a phone call from North Staffordshire Accordion Club asking if we would like to have a swap where they visit us one night and we visit them a couple of months later. I think that this is a great idea and we are looking at the possibility of June when they come to visit us and August where we take a similar group to play at their club. If you are interested in visiting North Staffs club please leave your name on the door at the club on one of our concert nights

New Webring Member

I run a Webring on the Internet, this can be found at the bottom of our main webpage. It is a way for sites of interest to UK accordionist to link together and pass/get visitors from each other. I was pleased to see that this month we received a request from Loretta Rolston to add her Rolston Accordions/Bridlington Festival site to the webring. This means that visitors to our site who click on the webring can move around between the sites listed in the webring. This gives smaller sites than our own, or those who don't get many visitors a chance to share in our success and our popularity in the search engines. I hope more accordion traders and organisations join us in future, they might do if they read this online....