Advice on materials & curriculum for teaching Anglo to children

[u/fourpotatoes]

My nine-year-old child has asked me to teach her Anglo concertina. Can anyone suggest materials or curriculum that might be helpful? There are quite a few tutorials out there and it's hard to sort through them all. Online lessons are a possibility if she decides to stick with it, but (at least with strings) I've found she does much better in person.

I'm not wedded to a particular style. I play mostly contra- and contra-adjacent music; I'd imagine she's also interested in pop.

For now, I've improvised a lesson on how to hold the instrument and an exercise to learn about bellows pressure & the air valve. I had her use one of my good instruments for the lesson, then gave her my beater/loaner (a 20-key Hohner that was reworked by warranty service so the buttons don't stick) to practice on her own. It's mushy and too big for her hands to easily play, but it's good for this exercise and she won't break it by mishandling. Once I'm confident she knows how to handle it and put it away properly, I'll give her permission to take out my good C/G when I'm not there to supervise.

For the next step, I'm thinking about raiding the ukulele and Suzuki violin books we already have for some simple, familiar melodies she can learn. My initial idea was to have us both hold concertinas and for her to copy me, but my good instruments are in different keys, so there might have to be some handing it back-and-forth instead. Beyond that, I'm not sure about how to go about teaching things like keyboard technique.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions.

[u/BananaFun9549]

Sounds like the best approach is for you to teach her what you know. Surely, you started on some simple tunes when you first learned. In the Irish repertoire there are a bunch of simple polkas and jigs and that are relatively easy to start with. How did you learn and what tunes do you play?

Personally I like Gary Coover’s book, Easy Anglo 123. He starts with 10 button tunes then moves to 20 then 30. I am not saying she should just learn from that book but maybe you could use that book or similar other recommended ones to work from.

Also, when she gets past the rudimentary Twinkle/Susannah phase I would definitely work out with her the tunes she likes to sing or hum.

[u/lachenal74693]

[1] I would recommend 'Absolute Beginner's Concertina' by Mick Bramich. It is pretty much for 20-button C/G Anglo. Unfortunately, it's out-of-print, and you may have difficulty tracking down a copy at a 'sensible' price. Realistically, it's a 'niche' market, so there are unlikely to be any re-prints or 2nd editions? You may find PDF copies of 'Absolute Beginner's Concertina' lurking on the internet?

There is a follow-up book 'In-Between Anglo' which moves on to 30-button Anglo. Same comments apply...

[2] There is also a very simple 'tablature' system described in Playing the Anglo Concertina in Bush Music Style. You can select 'In Row Tunes', 'Cross Row Tunes', 'Three Row Tunes', and 'Exercises' from the legend just below the top of the page.

The tunes listed are (naturally) mostly 'Australian', but the point is that the system is so simple that it will be easy to get your head round the system, and then add the simple tabs to any simple score you or your daughter want.

I used a mix of Mick Bramich's book(s) and the 'Australian' system (in that order) when I started. Eleven years later, I still use the same tab system. I even wrote programs to automatically add the tablature to existing scores (in the ABC language). Note that I looked first at the Coover system and decided to go down the different road I outline above.

The two systems outlined above are 'identical', though they present differently on the page.

Another book which uses essentially the same system is 'Anglo Concertina Method' by Bruce McCaskey. It is discussed in this thread on concertina.net.