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 - 12th July 2000

Editors Comment

Must rush, I've got a newsletter to write which needs to be in the post in 8 hours!

David Batty

Our July Concert

We started our July clubnight with Tom Bennett playing Theme From Love Story and Under The Double Eagle. Then, as he was about to leave the floor, I reminded him that I was to play a duet with him, we played Plaisir D'Amour and even finished together! Basil Berry was the next to play, Basil started with Chattanooga Choo Choo before playing April In Paris. He then finished with a medley of Red Sails In The Sunset and What A Difference A Day Makes. Dugald Mcallum then took to the floor playing GlenCaladh Castle, Sprig Of Ivy, La Valse Des As and March To The Stars.

Jeff Ward entertaining at our picnic concert.

David Batty

Our Internet Website

Our internet website has had 27840 visitors as at 7th August 2000, that's 826 visitors since last month. Because of the huge demand placed on my computer services this month I have been unable to include more newsletters on the website. I was recently pleased to find out that we are quite a popular site: We are in position 161857 in the top 841596 of the most popular linked websites on the Internet. This information was obtained from www.websmostlinked.com which checks out how many other sites provide links to your website, our website is ranked in position 161857 out of the Internet's 841596 most popular linked sites. This is not an indication of the number of people who visit our site but is a measure of the number of people recommending us on their site, If someone puts a link on their site to our site they are must feel our site is good enough for them to recommend their visitors also take a look at us. If you are on the Internet and would like to learn to play by ear then take a look at www.good-ear.com. For free sheet music and lyrics take a look at the following website which lists folk and traditional music as lyrics or sheet music which can be printed out: www.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/

Concert 2000

Sunday 30th of July was the date of our outdoor concert and picnic. The venue of Hollins Lane Farm was the same as last year. The day was the hottest day of the year so far and gave us glorious sunshine with not a cloud in the sky. Our concert started at 2pm and went on until after 9pm when we called it a day and wearily celebrated with a brew. We had experienced 7 hours of continuous accordion music with players standing or sitting on the stage which we had placed near to the hedge. The assembled cars were lined up facing the stage while the car owners sat on deck chairs in, around and in front of the vehicles. The concert was broadcast on FM and was playing on various car radio's in the field. In the evening we were entertained by George Syrette. Thanks must go to Harold Bleasdale for his hospitality on the day, he not only had all those cars and people but had a tent and caravan in his field over two nights. I noticed a few accordions for sale, I hope some sales were made, there was a lot of socialising going on and I am sure that a lot of new friends were made. We had a visit from one of our members who lives in Dent, Cumbria. Because he lives so far away he keeps in touch with us through this newsletter so I pointed out a few people so he would be able to put names to faces but he had already been round and met half of them. It's good to make friends from far and wide, see you next year George

MIDI Demistified

As promised last month, I am including a description of MIDI because it is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the accordion. Rather than reinventing the wheel I took an article I wrote in the March 1998 newsletter as the basis for this one so I apologise to those longstanding members of the club who can remember the original article. I am writing this because some of you may have wondered what is going on with people talking about MIDI or plugging their accordions in to the wall and then appearing to play a trumpet or strings! There are two ways this may happen, the first which I will gloss over is that the instrument is an electronic accordion, this means that the accordion has circuitry inside it that plays electronic notes while you play the accordion as normal, this is fed to an amplifier along with the sound of the reeds from internal microphones. You hear the reeds and electronic sounds combined. The second and more exciting reason is that the accordion has been Midi'd, this simply means that it has had a MIDI interface fitted inside it. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and is a way of turning your key-presses into electrical signals. When you press a note you make contact with an electrical switch connected to the key or button you pressed, this makes the MIDI interface send out a 'key down' signal and, when you let go of the note a 'key up' signal is sent down a cable connected to your accordion which can be

plugged into any equipment that has a midi input, say on an electronic keyboard or an expander (which is a box of electronic tricks that turns midi signals into sounds). When this signal reaches the expander, it is turned in to an organ, guitar, trumpet or any other sound you select. You then simply play your accordion as normal and you hear your own reeds playing but the expander is also playing alongside you, it is playing the exact same notes but sounding like another instrument or instruments. You can press one bass chord button on your left hand and have it turned into the sound of a trumpet, clarinet and strings each instrument playing one note of the chord. Expanders also have Rhythms built in to them, intro.'s and fill in sequences to give your performance extra sparkle, some have record and playback facilities. The more expensive expanders have auto accompaniment. They may be called arrangers by some manufacturers. If you hear someone talk about an arranger/expander or module then they are talking about one of these boxes of tricks which is essentially a high quality keyboard without any keys. Instead of keys it has a MIDI port which watches what keys you pressed on your accordion and plays the same notes using whatever instrument you have selected. When playing a MIDI accordion you can, if you wish, keep the bellows closed. The reeds will not make a noise, but you will still hear the electronic sounds because you are still making the electrical connection even though no air is going through the reeds, this means that you can plug headphones in to the expander and play without moving the bellows and you will not disturb people in the same room as you. Now the good news is that you do not need to buy another accordion to have all these features, midi can be simply fitted to your existing accordion, it is just a box that is hidden inside your instrument and wired up to all the keys on the right and the buttons on the left, you then simply plug a lead into your accordion and connect it to an expander or keyboard and you are off. If you unplug the MIDI connection then your accordion feels and sounds exactly like it did before you had the MIDI fitted. MIDI will not alter your accordion's sound or feel in any way until it is plugged in and used. With MIDI fitted you can plug into a computer, play a tune, listen to the computer play the tune back, correct any wrong notes on the computer's screen and then get the computer to print out the sheet music for you. MIDI tunes can be saved on computer disks and stored or sent to other people, you can also swap them over the Internet by E-mail. The cost of adding MIDI to your accordion is about £350 for the kit which you install yourself if you are handy with a soldering iron or £800 for MIDI fitted professionally. If you already have a MIDI keyboard you can plug in to that at first but you will be better with an expander, these range from about £200 second hand to £1700 for the latest top of the range model. Go into your local music shop and ask for a demonstration of an expander - you will be amazed. While you are there, you can tell them it's for an accordion. The Roland RA90 and the Roland RA800 both work well with the accordion but you can use many others such as the Gem WK2 which is supplied in two models, one of which is a special accordionist's version which has various accordion sounds installed. Rimmers in Leyland have expanders in the shop connected to electric pianos, ask to hear one of these. Many people are confused about what MIDI can and cannot do. When Tony Marchelle played at the club recently many said to me that midi meant that you did not need to play many keys because the accordion did all the work. I had to correct them, Tony was not using a MIDI accordion, he was using a Minidisk which is like a high quality tape player on which he had lots of tunes pre recorded, he simply played his electronic accordion along to these tunes. If you play a midi accordion you will find that it makes all the same mistakes you always make and it does not make you a better player. The electronics don't stop mistakes they simply make them bigger and louder! You must not forget that when you make all those electronic sounds through an amplifier, your reeds will need amplifying as well, a midi accordion should be fitted with some good quality microphones so that the reeds are not overpowered by the electronic sounds. The midi player not only has to play the accordion but has to balance the left and right hand microphones, the reeds to the electronic sounds and select electronic sounds for the right hand, the left hand notes and for the chords on the left hand. The correct rhythm has to be selected on the expander if you are using the built in rhythms and then you have to keep in time with it all. MIDI requires the player to master balancing all the above and put a lot of thought into playing each tune over and above the effort of learning and playing the tune in the first place. When you see a midi player pressing foot pedals they may be adjusting the volume through the amplifier, starting or stopping the rhythm or changing from one set of sounds and rhythms to another set. Midi is just a way of taking a friend to play alongside you on a keyboard but you don't have to tell it what you are playing. It also makes all the same mistakes you do and so it is wise to learn to play first and go electronic second. I hope this demistified MIDI accordions for you, they are a power which are either used, or often abused by players because they require study in their own right.

Wyre Accordion Club

On the 23rd August we have one of those three times a year happenings when we don't clash with the Wyre Accordion Club. If anyone wants to visit the club on this date I look forward to seeing you there. Because they changed their meeting date to the same date as our practice night, it's ages since I have been to the Wyre Club which is now held at the Wings RAF Club on Victoria Road West in Cleveleys. If you are travelling from Leyland then you would end travelling from Kirkham or from the M55 junction 3, down the Amounderness Way turn left at the Safeway roundabout, through the traffic lights and it's about 100 yards along the road on your right hand side. The night starts at 8pm and continues to about 10.30 or 11pm. Players don't forget your accordions, it's good practice to play as much as possible, if you play at every club night or event you will soon get rid of your nerves and you will improve your playing as a result.

Visit To Cleveleys

A small group of us visited the Bellows Buttons and Keys club at Cleveleys last week. We had an entertaining evening of accordions, keyboard, mouth organ and pre-teen dancers from 8pm to 11pm. Contact details for the club were published in last months newsletter for those of you wishing to pay it a visit in future.

Fylde Folk Festival

1st, 2nd, 3rd, September 2000 are the dates for the 28th Fylde Folk Festival which takes over the streets of Fleetwood as well as many of it's pubs and function rooms including the Marine Hall. Further details can be obtained from Alan Bell on 01253 872317. You could visit their website on the Internet at: www.fyldefolk.freeserve.co.uk. One point I should make here is that when you see an internet web address or email address at the end of a sentence make sure you don't try and include the full stop when you go on the Internet. After the dot co dot uk bit above, I put in a full stop because it was the end of a sentence, but people often complain that the address doesn't work because they try and type in the full stop.

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.

New Player Booked

George Syrett has recently been booked to play for us in January 2001. I have included all our dates up to the end of April 2001 in the list of forthcoming nights on this page. Many people seem to think that our practice nights are two weeks after a club night, this is incorrect as one or two people who have used this rule have found out when they found themselves alone on The Highfield car park with just tumbleweeds and the Managers own car for company. Our practice nights are calculated to be two weeks BEFORE a club night. This gives the players two weeks to perfect anything learned on the practice nights before having to play in front of a crowd. This means that the practice night is normally the fourth or fifth Wednesday in the month depending on whether it is a four or five week month. Practice night is a codeword known by only a handful of us who attend these nights. They are really an excuse for players to let their hair down and converse with other players all night, the coffee is hot all night and we don't have any formality (apart from clothes are compulsory, but I hope to change this daft rule!) We simply spend the evening playing, talking, drinking coffee and making new friends. The only problem with the practice nights, as I am sure any attendee will tell you, is that 11pm arrives shortly after 8pm for some reason. We only seem to have been there an hour but three hours have passed and it's time to go home. One suggestion which was made at the practice nights was to start a mass busk which could be done at the end of our concert nights. At many practice nights a group of eager players of mixed abilities sit near to Jay Wards keyboard while she leads them through well known tunes which make a great ending to the night. We will have to choose a good selection of singalong songs you all know and we can all play. Jay, can you think of some suitable tunes and we will see if we can have this ready for the next local players night in October. I hope those players who normally play with Jay on the practice nights are reading this and will join in on the concert nights. We have quite a few players at the club who don't play for us as soloists and would feel less threatened if they could play in a group this way.

CD Recordings

In the last newsletter I mentioned that I can produce CD's to a high quality at low cost. Last week I had William, Sarah Jane and Julie Langton here being recorded. They produced a 32 track CD full of great tunes for the accordion. They did suggest making audio tape copies of this CD for sale which I think is a great idea because ear players can have 32 tunes to learn from a simple waltz to pieces like Bel Viso. Another two of our players are due to record their own CD's soon. Lets hope we end up with a good selection of home made tapes for sale, selling a handful of tapes covers the cost of making the recording and you end up with a great snapshot of your playing ability on CD.

For Sale And Wanted

Excelsior 120 bass, 41 keys, 13+5 couplers, Scottish tuned, black, with case £360. Telephone Ron on 01772 624570 If you are selling a concertina then ring Rebecca on 01772 616035

This Wednesday

This is the last of three local players nights in a row, I hope we can meet as many of you as possible this week at the club. I do miss you when you are not there. If you are at the club it also means we have to talk about someone else! Players don't forget your accordions, if you are not brave enough to play at the front then play during the breaks, you only have a few players nearby listening to you and as a result your confidence builds up until you can play in front of the whole club. I will see you all on Wednesday at the usual place, remember we are open from 7.30pm on concert nights so that gives you 30 minutes to meet lots of people and make new friends.