Alan Day's Concertina Tutor

Some years ago, Alan Day, a master of the Anglo Concertina, created a brief tutorial for a friend in the U.S. It covers basic techniques applicable to a 20 button anglo concertina in C/G, with a few lessons on the use of the accidentals available on 30 button 'tinas.

What's really great about this tutor is that it's geared to a style of play that's not found in most tutorials. Mr. Day integrates the lead and accompaniment, teaching us to play them at the same time. This is more typical of an English morris dance style of play than an Irish concertina style. (I've heard that Irish concertinists usually play fast, ornamented leads and leave the accompaniment to the other musicians present at the session.)

Mr. Day decided to provide the public with an online pdf for the transcription of the songs he plays in the tutorial. However, he never put the sound files online. If you wanted a copy, he'd burn a CD and mail it to you.

I really appreciate Mr. Day's generosity and his accomplishment as a concertina player, so I've decided to make the sound files available here. Though the sound quality on these recordings is poor, I think they are a treasure, especially given the lack of available instructors for novice concertina players. You can download a pdf of his transcribed tunes at his website.

Please do not abuse my bandwidth allocation by repeatedly playing the files from these links. It's much better to download them once to your computer. Thanks.

-- Etan Ben-Ami