Dance Styles - Concertina Playing Style

One thing I've found in playing the concertina, is how difficult it is to play a string of notes legato.  The buttons are just so far apart and my fingers can't cross over each other (since we can't use our thumbs like on the piano).  And when playing multiple notes with your fingers, you quickly run out of fingers!

This made me think about how one is "supposed to play the concertina".  I had read somewhere of another beginning concertina player who was a piano player as well.  His concertina mentor heard him playing (or attempting to play) in a legato fashion, and his response was "What the **** are you doing?!  You're playing all wrong!!  Play with more punch, like this!"

There is a reason for this staccato-like style, that we all know generally as "polka music".

Concertina music is DANCE MUSIC!

The Chemnitzer Concertina is best suited to play in a staccato style due to its button arrangement that makes it difficult to play legato.  On the other hand, it is easy to play a bouncy, punchy style, which we recognize as that old-country Polish or Germanic beer-hall music.

And in fact, 99% of the concertina music you will find will be some kind of dance music.  Now, there are of course some spots [in the music] where you can get a legato run in, or the music is slow enough (a nice waltz), but even then, its very difficult to play legato all the time.  The other 1% are songs that everybody knows, like Happy Birthday, or America, or Take Me Out to the Ball Game, which aren't dance music per se, but let's not get distracted.

The main kinds of concertina music of which I'm aware are Polkas, Waltzes, the occasional Foxtrot, and the even more rare Schottische, a slower kind of polka.

In short, if you want to play the concertina, that means playing dance music.  Now it's too bad that most younger people don't really know much about this older style, but I'm one of the rare birds who knows how to polka (poorly), Waltz (I'm not so shabby - including Viennese Waltz, the fast one) and foxtrot (ok, although I get it mixed up with Quickstep).

For the most part, you can simplify dance music to 3 general kinds:  FAST, SLOW, and MEDIUM. Mixing these up so your dancing crowd has an enjoyable night is part of being a bandleader.

Polkas are typically always fast.  This is because the steps are easier when you go faster.  Waltzes can be slow, medium, or fast (Viennese Waltz).  The Schottische I guess is slow.  And the Foxtrot is Medium.  I would consider Quickstep to be medium as well, because there's not a lot of spinning, unlike polka and waltz and schottische.

Let's see some examples:

Polka:

• Here's the Czech Area Concertina Club playing a polka night (Angel Polka).
• Hmm, they're going pretty slowly.  Polkas can actually make you spin very fast:
• How to Dance Polka: One  In Czech  Three  German/English/Prague

So you can imagine, with all that "hop-step-skip" in polka, punchy, hopping music would be very suitable and also helpful to the dancers in keeping them on beat (or "on step").

Schottische (which I've never seen or heard):

• How to Schottische: Scandinavian and American folk and one more.

Well, I guess it's a slower polka, more like four strong beats instead of the strong-weak-strong-weak "2" feel of a polka.

Waltz: (most people know how to waltz - one-two-three and the box step, right?)

• Box step Backwards Basic steps Beginner
• Professional
• Non-professional

The key to playing waltzes is to put the stress on the first beat, even to making the sound "LONG-short-short".  OOOMM-pah-pah OOOMM-pah-pah I guess you could say.  The reason for this is that in waltz, the first step of the three counts is a very long/big step for the dancers, with two smaller steps.

The key to waltz music is that it is played with 3 beats per measure - so you will always have the "three-four" time signature at the beginning of the piece.

Viennese Waltz: This is a faster waltz, with more spinning.  It's actually like a polka, but you get 3 steps to make 180 degrees, instead of just two steps (so you get pretty dizzy if you try to make 180s in a polka)

• How to - in Russian I think, another, another, and final
• Fancy, Professional

Foxtrot: This is big band music, the biggest dance post-Charleston I believe.

• How to - one, pretty easy
• But with music: competition, big steps at UK nationals 2007

Quick Step: This isn't really concertina music, but to contrast with Foxtrot, might as well, since

• How to - one, two, three
• What it looks like - professional professional

At any rate, once you start getting into Foxtrot and Quick Step, you are entering the world of jazz and swing, and rather leaving the world of concertina music, which is focused more on the polka and the waltz.  That's not to say that you can't play other music besides those two (in fact I intend to), but rather that the concertina keyboard layout makes it relatively easy to play polkas and waltzes in that punchy foot tapping style.

One final word, and that's Tango, which I believe was born of the meeting between old-style German polka meeting Italian opera in 1800s Argentina.  The bandoneón is very similar to a concertina (typically more keys though), but they stopped playing polkas long ago.  See this video with 4 violins, string bass, piano, and 4 bandoneóns.  Also, "el Tango de los Tangos" La Cumparsita.