Practice, practice, practice....
There are about 5 ways to play a triplet-roll ornament on a concertina. None of them are particularly obvious, and some of them only apply to certain notes. I've so far gone through phases of new favorites, so whatever tunes I learned that year has a tendancy to fall into whatever kid of ornaments I was favoring at the time.
(note for non-Irish-music-fiends: I cannot explain what this ornament is or why you'd want to play one. Or what a concertina is or why you'd want to play one. Just take it as given that it's difficult to tap a button 3 times fast in a rhythmic manner.)
(note for the curious non-concertina players: 1=triplet on 2 buttons that make the same note, 2 fingers. 2=triplet on one button, 3 fingers. 3=triplet on one button, two fingers. 4=slap rolls, one button, one finger. (5=unknown, but I'm sure there's more.) )
This summer's trend: slap-rolls! I only have them working on left-hand out-notes, but that includes at least 4 buttons that I previously didn't have a method for.. i.e. my pinky finger doesn't coordinate well enough with the rest of my hand to do a multi-finger ornament on those notes, but this is actually working.
step 1: left hand: push button + pull bellows = hold note
step 2: right hand: tap fingers into frame of concertina = jiggles bellows = interrupts airflow temporarily --> second note
step 3: left hand: tap finger on button = third note
I find that if the note in question is a push-note instead of a pull-note, the slapping the frame step doesn't actually interrupt the airflow sufficiently.
I also am wary of getting over-reliant on this technique when I haven't tried it out with microphones... part of my brain is imagining a loud thumpy boom instead of a near-silent tap in the middle of the roll.
Still, I'm very pleased with myself - today is the day that I absent-mindedly tried it in the middle of a tune and it sounded just right, which gives me hope that I'll be able to do it while concentrating also, and maybe even expand to the right hand notes and/or push-notes someday.
Today's music geekery installment is over.
(note for non-Irish-music-fiends: I cannot explain what this ornament is or why you'd want to play one. Or what a concertina is or why you'd want to play one. Just take it as given that it's difficult to tap a button 3 times fast in a rhythmic manner.)
(note for the curious non-concertina players: 1=triplet on 2 buttons that make the same note, 2 fingers. 2=triplet on one button, 3 fingers. 3=triplet on one button, two fingers. 4=slap rolls, one button, one finger. (5=unknown, but I'm sure there's more.) )
This summer's trend: slap-rolls! I only have them working on left-hand out-notes, but that includes at least 4 buttons that I previously didn't have a method for.. i.e. my pinky finger doesn't coordinate well enough with the rest of my hand to do a multi-finger ornament on those notes, but this is actually working.
step 1: left hand: push button + pull bellows = hold note
step 2: right hand: tap fingers into frame of concertina = jiggles bellows = interrupts airflow temporarily --> second note
step 3: left hand: tap finger on button = third note
I find that if the note in question is a push-note instead of a pull-note, the slapping the frame step doesn't actually interrupt the airflow sufficiently.
I also am wary of getting over-reliant on this technique when I haven't tried it out with microphones... part of my brain is imagining a loud thumpy boom instead of a near-silent tap in the middle of the roll.
Still, I'm very pleased with myself - today is the day that I absent-mindedly tried it in the middle of a tune and it sounded just right, which gives me hope that I'll be able to do it while concentrating also, and maybe even expand to the right hand notes and/or push-notes someday.
Today's music geekery installment is over.