Posted 01 March 2004

Which Duet Concertina—Hayden or Maccann?

Robert Gaskins

Introduction

This article compares two concertinas: a Stagi Hayden Duet concertina (c. 2003), and a Lachenal Maccann Duet concertina (c. 1900). Each instrument has 46 keys, and each cost £500 ($800) ready to play, so they are true alternatives.

On almost every measure, the antique Lachenal Maccann Duet turned out to be preferable to the modern Stagi Hayden Duet—by a considerable margin. To my surprise, the advantages frequently mentioned as belonging to the Hayden system (uniformity of fingering in all key signatures, automatic transposition) turned out to be significantly compromised by the restricted size of the Stagi, even though the Stagi was unpleasantly big and heavy. This leads to a common-sense conclusion: If you want to play a duet concertina, at present you will probably do best to buy a Maccann Duet.

Some three years ago, I decided to buy a concertina. I studied everything on the internet, and decided that—for my goal of playing a melody along with accompanying chords—a Duet concertina was clearly superior to either an English or an Anglo, and would also be much easier to play. I contacted Chris Algar at Barleycorn Concertinas and bought a 67-button Maccann Duet, received some notes and arrangements from David Cornell by fax, and began my studies. Much of what I've discovered since is available on the web at this website (http://www.concertina.com/maccann-duet), including those same helpful notes from David Cornell.

Then about three weeks ago [this was written in late September 2003], I began to wonder about the Hayden Duet system. I was adding a copy of Brian Hayden's patent to the website, to join other historical material about Hayden Duets, and as I studied the buttons in the patent illustrations they intrigued me. After all, the advantages of a Duet concertina are generic—all Duets share advantages over Englishes or Anglos. But was a Hayden Duet better or worse than a Maccann Duet? So I contacted Richard Morse's Button Box and ordered the only Hayden-system Duet available off-the-shelf. It arrived two days later, and I began my studies again.

Not very many people play any kind of Duet concertina, and fewer still have ever tried playing two different systems. So I decided to write down a comparison, for the benefit of prospective concertinists who have already decided that a Duet system is the right choice, and who are trying to decide which flavour of Duet system to learn. I thought that it was important to compare two actual, physical, Duet concertinas—not just two Duet concertina “systems”. The abstract systems are certainly of interest, but it is also important how they can be instantiated in actual physical concertinas. So I focused my comparison on two specific instruments that I have:

Stagi Hayden Duet 46-buttons, serial #CDN0054 (c.2003)
 
Lachenal Maccann Duet 46-buttons, serial #1746 (c.1900)

The Stagi 46-button size is the only Hayden Duet readily available, but I play a 46-button Maccann Duet by choice, so the comparison could be between instruments of comparable range.

Obviously three years spent studying the Maccann Duet and three weeks spent studying the Hayden Duet leaves me very ignorant about the Hayden! But I'll never be a Hayden novice again, so there's some value in recording how a Hayden appears to a Maccann player on a first look.

My conclusion so far is: the shortcomings of the 46-button Stagi Hayden Duet versus the 46-button Lachenal Maccann Duet are many. Anyone's comparison would be generally unfavorable to the 46-button Stagi Hayden. The old Lachenal—any restored old concertina—is vastly superior, and someone who knew only the modern Stagi could hardly believe how much better the old Lachenal is.

Beyond the specific shortcomings of the Stagi product, the features of the Hayden system, as a design, are pretty much as claimed, and are attractive. But I was surprised to discover that the compromises and limitations required to make any actual concertina-sized instrument (to fit the size of a human hand) can impose a significant dilution of those advantages, more than I had imagined.

I had absorbed the general impression that a Hayden Duet is "perfectly regular", with all chords formed in standard finger patterns, all progressions formed by standard movements, and the same patterns and movements for all keys. By contrast, the impression you get from looking at a Maccann Duet diagram is that each chord and each progression is different, and different again in each key. So (I had thought) there must be a lot more you have to learn in order to play a Maccann Duet.

These received opinions may be mostly impressions formed by a very short acquaintance with each instrument, and then given more weight when repeated by other people who lack experience of their own. When you pick up a Hayden Duet for the first time, you can "reason out" how to make a few chords in the center of the button field, and as you reach the edges and are required to introduce variations you can "reason out" what the alterations should be by thinking about the principle of its arrangement. By contrast, when you pick up a Maccann Duet for the first time, you need to consult a chord chart to see where the notes are for each chord. You can easily predict some alterations, but some are surprising.

But when you go on to actually learn to play, on either concertina system, you don't have time to "reason out" the notes for each chord—you need to have learned the muscle movements to move among a handful of chords readily. This isn't much, since fifteen chords or so will see you easily through thousands of songs in several keys. On both systems, the chords can be standard and invariant if you choose (or not), so fifteen chords is not very difficult. One set of fifteen may be slightly easier to memorize than another, but also may be slightly less easy to finger, or less harmonious.

Detailed examination (below) suggests that there just isn't much difference between a Hayden Duet and a Maccann Duet with respect to how much there is to learn in order to play chords and to pick out melodies.

This does not mean that a Hayden Duet is not good; after all, it is a Duet concertina and shares all the advantages of a Duet with the Maccann Duet. In fact, many of the things that people have liked about Hayden Duets they might actually like even more about Maccann Duets.

But as I looked closely, a Hayden Duet does not seem to me to gain significant further advantages from the Hayden "system", because of the compromises mentioned to make a practical concertina. Of course, there may be advantages to the Hayden Duet which I have overlooked or underestimated, because of my relative inexperience with it. But the Maccann Duet seems to offer a different set of compromises, also intended to fit music onto a small set of buttons, which has competing advantages.

Certainly, it does not appear that either the Hayden system or the Maccann system of button arrangement is the only important feature in choosing a Duet concertina—either can be learned fairly easily. As Jack Woehr recently posted in a public newsgroup, speaking about Haydens, “the hard part about squeezebox of any kind is the bellows, not the buttons.  Like the bow with the violin.” Many other features of the physical instruments (weight, size, workmanship, reed quality, bellows quality, action speed, price, availability, ...) are also important. And, if my experience is typical, learning a second Duet system after learning a first one is very possible; much of the learned skill of playing a Duet concertina has nothing to do with the arrangement of notes on the buttons. Better to start on one Duet system as preparation for another, than to try the completely-different English or Anglo systems.

In what follows, I'll assume that the reader has never tried to play either a Hayden Duet or a Maccann Duet (thus assuring some degree of tedium for almost anyone likely to read this comparison). I'll try to illustrate the comparison points with diagrams to make clear what is being discussed.

1. The Instruments to be Compared

Here are the full specifications of the two instruments I used for the comparison.

Stagi Hayden Duet

Stagi Hayden Duet, 46 buttons, bought 02 Sept 2003 from The Button Box. Button Box says that it does extensive incoming inspection and improvement on its Stagis, correcting manufacturing imperfections, doing touch-up tuning, etc. The instrument was shipped promptly and received in good order.

Serial #CDN0054 (c. 2003)
Wooden ends, plastic buttons
Cost: USD 795 new
Includes new cubical hard case
Accordion steel reeds, waxed into place on reed blocks
10-fold bellows (one-note middle-C drop time 20 seconds)
Volume of middle C measured in a standard way (avg): 89 dBA
Weight: 1830g (4 lbs 2 oz)
Size (flat to flat across face:) 7.5 inches, hexagonal
Length (compressed, including palm rests): 10.50 inches
Thickness of each end-box (excl. palm rests): 3.5 inches
Buttons on left: 21
Buttons on right: 25 (plus air)
Button spacing (ctrs): 17mm horizontal, 12mm vertical
Button diameter: 8mm
Distance palm-rail to nearest button: 36mm
Distance palm-rail to farthest button: 99mm
Width between outlying buttons: 99mm
Range on left: C3 to B4 (middle C is "C4")
Range on right: C4 to D6
Overlap: about an octave

The 46-button is the smallest Hayden Duet in regular production, and all larger versions are supersets of this size.

Stagi Hayden Duet Button Arrangement:

      
             Bb     C     D
                 F     G     A     B      C#
Hayden       Bb     C     D     E     F#     G#
Right End        F     G     A     B      C#     D#
(25 buttons)       [C]    D     E     F#     G#
            (AIR)
     
                 F     G     A     B
Hayden       Bb    [C]    D     E     F#     G#
Left End         F     G     A     B      C#     D#
(21 buttons)        C     D     E     F#     G#

Full text of Hayden Patent GB2131592, "Arrangements of Notes on Musical Instruments" (1986).

Lachenal Maccann Duet

Lachenal Maccann Duet, 46 buttons, bought 22 June 2000 from Barleycorn Concertinas. Restoration was performed by Barleycorn prior to delivery. The instrument was shipped promptly and received in good order, and has required no adjustment in 3 years.

Lachenal 46-button Maccann Duet #1746 (c. 1900)
Nickel-plated metal ends, bone buttons
Cost: GBP 475 (= USD 750) including full restoration
Includes vintage wooden hexagonal case
Concertina steel reeds in reed-shoes, with
    routed dovetailed slots in radial chambered reed-pans
6-fold bellows (one-note middle-C drop time 12 seconds)
Volume of middle C measured in a standard way (avg): 98 dBA
Weight: 1190g (2 lbs 10 oz) (measured on #2488, wooden ends)
Size (flat to flat across face:) 6.25 inch, hexagonal
Length (compressed, including palm rests): 6.25 inches
Thickness of each end-box (excl. palm rests): 1.75 inches
Buttons on left: 21
Buttons on right: 25
Button spacing (ctrs): 14mm horizontal, 11mm vertical
Button diameter: 6mm
Distance palm-rail to nearest button: 30mm
Distance palm-rail to farthest button: 75mm
Width between outlying buttons: 75mm
Range on left: C3 to C5 (middle C is "C4")
Range on right: G4 to G6
Overlap: about half an octave

The 46-button Maccann was the smallest Maccann in volume production 1884 to 1939 (some student models in 39-key), and all larger versions are supersets of this size.

Lachenal Maccann Duet Button Arrangement:

 
                               G
             Eb    D     E     Bb    F    F#
Maccann      G#    G     B     A     C    C#
Right End    C#    C     E     D     F    F#
(25 buttons) G#    G     A     Eb    B    Bb
   
             G#    G     B     A     C
Maccann      C#   [C]    E     D     F    F#
Left End     G#    G     A     Eb    B    Bb
(21 buttons)       C     E           F    F#

Full text of Maccann Patent No. 4752 of 1884, "Improvements in Concertinas" (1884).

These two instruments are comparable in several ways. The Lachenal was made about 1900, certainly within the first 20 years after its patent, as was the Stagi—long enough after the patent for both systems to shake down. This Lachenal was a popular-priced instrument when it was made, much like the Stagi today. (For instance, neither instrument has bushed buttons!) The Lachenal was suitable for learners, but could also be used by performers, and the Stagi occupies much the same ambiguous position today.

2. Background

The Maccann system is a largely empirical set of developments. Historically we see first (in the mid-1850s) a small 24-button diatonic (C and G) "Duett" concertina being sold by Wheatstone, modelled on German imports and sold at the lowest possible prices; its keyboard was in turn based on the earlier Wheatstone English concertina going back to 1829. A large chromatic generalization of this had been documented in the C. Wheatstone patent of 1844 and the Wm. Wheatstone patent of 1861, but not built in practical form. The first practical chromatic extension of the "Duett" system was patented by John Hill Maccann in 1884, covering 39-, 46-, and 55-button instruments. In the following fifty years the system was extended to 57-, 62-, 67-, 72-, and 81-button versions, always retaining the 46-button instrument at the core. The 46-button instrument was the smallest one made in volume, but the most common size we find now is probably the 67-button followed by the 55- or 57-button size.

The Hayden system, re-discovered within the last 40 years by Brian Hayden, was from its re-discovery a more theoretical construction. Hayden's patent (granted 1986, 102 years after Maccann's patent) envisions making both small concertina-like intruments and very large two-dimensional arrays of buttons, with exactly the same perfectly-uniform principle of arrangement. To make the small sizes feasible for concertinas, however, a reduced subset of the pattern must be selected, and the patent recognizes that irregular exceptions may even need to be inserted at the edges of the subset. The 46-button size has dominated production so far, although a few instruments in larger sizes have been made (67-button), and intermediate sizes (around 55 or 56 buttons) are proposed by several makers for future production—with some differences in the subset of buttons selected. (For a survey of the different proposed layouts for new Hayden-system concertinas, see Jack Woehr's Hayden Duet Concertina Page, which includes design ideas from several current and possible future makers as well as Jack's own design aimed at pop and jazz players.)

Although often thought of as a “modern” duet concertina system, unknown to Brian Hayden (and to anyone else at the time) the Hayden system is actually a re-discovery of a much older system. The earliest known example of the Hayden system is the "Wicki system", a design for the keyboard of a bandoneon (unisonoric, which is much like a large duet concertina) patented in 1896 by the Swiss Kaspar Wicki—identical to the Hayden system. So the original “Wicki-Hayden” system actually dates from 1896, only twelve years after the Maccann patent. For whatever reason, the Wicki system and its patent were lost from living memory until Brian Hayden independently re-discovered the same system in the late 1960s. (For more details, see The Wicki System on this site.)

3. Production Quality

The first thing to get out of the way is the incredible difference in production quality between the two instruments. The restored Lachenal is, by comparison to the Stagi, a triumph of mechanical design and workmanship (though it is by no means an exceptionally-good example, and was made to sell at a modest price). Its buttons work smoothly and quietly, its bellows is capable of great subtlety and nuance, its reeds sound sweet, start at a whisper, and have a great dynamic range. The reeds are individually mounted in reed shoes, inserted into dovetailed slots in radial chambers of removeable reed-pans, so that every reed can be easily reached for maintenance (for example, if a bit of fluff is sucked into the interior and lodges in a reed). The Lachenal uses the conventional "English" manufacturing design, by which the instrument is easily disassembled with a screwdriver, and all the critical alignments are isolated into stable sub-assemblies, so that a non-expert player may easily make minor adjustments.

The Stagi, by contrast, is disappointing in all these respects. Its buttons work poorly, and clatter noisily. Its bellows is extremely unresponsive (continuous folded cardboard!), requiring hold-down straps to keep it closed. Its reeds sound OK, but require some power to start, and have a very limited dynamic range. The reeds are accordion reeds, waxed into reed blocks, so that reaching some reeds is more work than an owner is likely to be able to do. While the outer finish is acceptable, the finish of the inside is very rough and sloppy, made of thin plywood—not that it does any harm to the music.

This difference in quality is simply a fact, which can be understood and put aside. The vintage Lachenal is a very satisfying product of Victorian manufacturing, an aesthetic pleasure to look at and to work with. The Stagi is typical of modern short-run production, lacking any aesthetic pleasures. The Stagi does not take advantage of any twentieth-century advances in technology, such as electronics—it could have been made the same way a hundred years ago—so cost must be reduced by compromises in quality.

In terms of mechanical design and production quality, the Lachenal is first choice by a long way.

4. Size and Weight

There is a huge difference between the two instruments in size and in weight, and this does make a large practical difference. The Stagi weighs 1.83 kg (4 lbs 2 oz). The equivalent Lachenal weighs 1.19 kg (2 lbs 10 oz). This number is measured from 46-key Lachenal #2488 which is wooden ended like the Stagi, but otherwise almost identical to the metal-ended Lachenal #1746. With metal ends, #1746 weighs 1.39 kg (3 lbs 1 oz). Slightly-better Maccann Duets are lighter still; a rosewood-ended Wheatstone (#26116) 46-button Maccann Duet weighs 1.12 kg (2lbs 8 oz).

The Stagi weighs half again as much as the comparable Lachenal (a full pound and a half more!), and a third again as much as a metal-ended Lachenal, for the same range. This makes quite a difference in playing, where you want the least mass attached to your hands, so that fine movements can be executed, and so that the least effort is required to hold the instrument stably against gravity.

The Stagi is also much larger in size in all dimensions, nearly 25% larger across and nearly twice as long, and each end-box is fully twice as thick as on the Lachenal. The larger size makes the instrument much more clumsy to hold and control.

The distance required to reach all the Stagi's buttons is considerably larger than on the Lachenal (for the same number of buttons on each side, exactly). The button furthest from the hand-rest is about 4 inches on the Stagi, vs. 3 inches on the Lachenal. Similarly, the width of the wider button field is about 4 inches on the Stagi, 3 inches on the Lachenal.

The Stagi's synthetic hard case is just about two times the volume of the hexagonal mahogany case for the Lachenal.

So, the size and weight of the Lachenal Maccann are superior by a very long way. Beginning concertinists often underestimate the importance of weight and size, but—by a large majority—more Duet players trade down to an instrument smaller and lighter than their first purchase, than ever trade up to a larger instrument. Weight and size seriously interfere with good playing. (I myself first bought a 67-button Maccann, but then traded down to a 57-button model, and then traded down further to my current 46-button Maccann Duet.) Jack Woehr (a very knowledgeable Hayden Duet player) says "... increase in the size and weight of the instrument must be weighed and balanced against the value of the added buttons", adding "as I [Jack] progress as a player I am less impressed with wraparound keys [duplicates added at the left and right edges to increase standard patterns] and more concerned with completeness and avoidance of duplication to keep the instrument light!"

5. Sound

The difference in the sound of a reed, just sounding, is not decisive. As Bob Tedrow has demonstrated, there isn't a huge difference between samples of concertina reeds and samples of accordion reeds.

I would say that the Stagi accordion reeds sound somewhat different from both the sound of an unbaffled Lachenal and the sound of the same Lachenal with leather baffles fitted—not as raucous as an unbaffled concertina reed, but not as smooth as a baffled one. The measured difference in volume between these two instruments is substantial—the Lachenal is 9 dBA louder, about twice as loud (but it is somewhat louder than the typical Lachenal Maccann). With recommended baffles added, the Lachenal is just about the same loudness as the Stagi unaltered from the factory.

Where the difference in sound comes is in the dynamics of the notes while the instruments are being played, not in what you hear in a three-second bellows-drop sample. The combination of bellows and reeds on the Lachenal is vastly better for shaping and accentuating notes and chords, with a vastly greater dynamic range and response. The combination of bellows and reeds on the Hayden is very much worse, with little dynamic range and response—it's more like playing bagpipes, in comparison.

So the sound of the Stagi reeds is not bad, but in the Stagi instrument they are much harder to use to get good music.

6. Availability

Availability of these two instruments is roughly the same—you can get a Stagi Hayden from The Button Box or a Lachenal Maccann from Barleycorn Concertinas, in both cases typically within a few weeks, often within a few days, though occasionally it takes a few months.

(The Stagi Haydens are made in small batches to order, so there may be unpredictable lapses in supply from Button Box. Lachenal (or Wheatstone) Maccanns are all antiques, but one or more are frequently in stock at Barleycorn—about as often as Stagis at Button Box. There is no need to be picky about exactly what size or end-material one gets in one's first Lachenal—after all, there is no choice at all with a Stagi.)

Around a hundred Hayden instruments have been made, so essentially all availability is for new instruments, with Stagi the only current manufacturer. Stagis show their age fast, so the occasional recycled one on eBay is cheap (see below for a recent price quotation).

Several thousand Maccann instruments were made mostly between 1884 and 1939, and essentially all availability is for second-hand instruments, with Lachenal and Wheatstone the two major manufacturers available—very occasionally a Crabb or a Jeffries Maccann Duet turns up. Any old Maccann will need to be restored and refurbished if that hasn't been done recently, and it will be done before an instrument is delivered by a reputable dealer. Old Maccanns improve with age; instruments from before World War II are preferred, and some of the best examples are over a hundred years old.

(There is no use in buying an unrestored Maccann on eBay or otherwise—you will just need to have it restored, and there are only a limited number of competent restorers. The largest and most widely recommended restorers are The Button Box in the US, Barleycorn in the UK, and Concertina Connection in the Netherlands.)

So the availability of these two instruments is about comparable—but, importantly, still-better Maccann Duets are readily available, whereas even merely-good Hayden Duets are so far hardly available at all.

7. Cost

The biggest surprise in my researches was to discover that a vintage Lachenal, including full restoration, with superior quality in every respect, was actually no more expensive than the heavier, larger, clumsier Stagi.

My new 46-button Stagi Hayden from The Button Box in September 2003 cost me USD 795 (plus shipping).

My refurbished 46-button Lachenal Maccann from Barleycorn Concertinas in June 2000 cost me GBP 475; and at the usual 1.60/1.00 exchange rate over the last few years, that is USD 760 (plus shipping). With extra shipping from the UK to the US, the prices are just about identical.

(Prices seem not to have risen since then. In July 2003, I bought Lachenal Maccann Duet #2488, which is a wooden-ended instrument also with bone buttons and otherwise very similar to the metal-ended #1746. This concertina had been bought fully-restored from Barleycorn about a year before, but its US-based buyer was reselling it on eBay (auction No. 2547827761), so this gives us a documented open-market price: the selling price on eBay was exactly USD 800 plus shipping. But prices on Maccann Duets will probably rise in the future, with increasing demand.)

It's important to note, though, that the cost for a Lachenal Maccann is for a very good instrument—the sort of instrument that one could buy and be happy with for a lifetime. If you decide later you don't want to keep the Maccann Duet, you can re-sell it for at least the price you paid. The same cost, for a Stagi Hayden, gets you a "temporary" instrument to use for learning until something better comes along, and resellable only at a substantial loss. (In late September 2003, a Stagi Hayden Duet was sold on eBay (auction No. 2559969705); it was claimed to be about six months old, looked essentially unused, and was sold by a known seller who notified prospective purchasers through the discussion forums at Concertina.net; further, it was sold at a time when The Button Box was unable to supply new Stagi Haydens, but it realized only USD 610. So this instrument lost 25% of its value in a few months.)

There are better Hayden Duet instruments promised, but at much higher prices. Richard Morse estimates that he can deliver a 55-button Hayden Duet in two years or so, for about USD 2,500-3,000. Marcus Music has estimated delivery about the same time for a 65-button Hayden Duet, also predicted to be about USD 3,000. (Both of these estimates are for instruments not yet in production—it's not often that a new product comes in at a lower cost than estimated, or sooner!) New Hayden Duets from Wheatstone or Dipper are in the USD 8,000 range and up, but with a waiting list of at least ten years and perhaps much longer they are not a realistic possibility.

Larger top-quality professional Wheatstone or Lachenal Maccann instruments (usually an eight-sided Æola or twelve-sided Edeophone, ebony, silver buttons), in 57- or 67-button sizes to match the Morse and Marcus sizes, are available for about GBP 1100 to GBP 1500, or USD 1,750 to USD 2,400, fully restored. So one can buy a truly professional Maccann Duet, now, for about two-thirds of the price of a possible future Hayden Duet. Even as Maccann prices rise, they are unlikely to exceed future Hayden prices; and even as Hayden quality rises, it is unlikely to surpass the quality of professional-model Wheatstone or Lachenal Maccanns from before World War II.

For cost, a Lachenal Maccann Duet is decisively superior to a Stagi Hayden Duet, and the advantage seems likely to be even greater for better-quality instruments.

8. Rants and Complaints

As David Barnert has mentioned, the fact that the Stagi cannot be put down on a table without scratching the surface badly (because of protruding pins on all sides of both ends) is an unbelievable practical stupidity which soon becomes a large continuing irritation. How could anyone design such a system of construction? Do they think their customers will be putting the Stagi down only on the zinc bars of the sleazy dives where we perform before passing our hats? Or possibly on the stones under the bridges where we sleep?

Also, the brown leather (-ish?) bellows of the Stagi will deposit smears of brown stain on your clothing, unless you protect yourself with some sort of shield or always wear a United Parcel Service uniform while playing your Stagi.

The Lachenal Maccann has no such repulsive features.

9. Playing

So now we come to the the heart of the matter, how the two instruments compare in playing them, focusing on the differences in how the notes and buttons are arranged.

In order to discuss both melodies and chords concretely, we'll imagine playing in one of the simpler ways to play any Duet concertina, in which the right hand plays a one-part melody line on the right side, while the left hand plays an accompaniment of chords on the left side. (Brian Hayden discusses this as a simple way to play the Hayden system in his interview with Wes Williams, so it's clearly an intended functionality.) Not only is this a simple approach, but it is a very good way to play all kinds of songs and tunes, and is probably the way many or most people will play any Duet concertina.

And, this style of playing will give us an opportunity to look at scales and melody playing on the right hand, and chords on the left hand. The same general points apply to playing the opposite way around, or playing chords on both sides, or playing melodic lines on both sides, but because of "finger reversal" (the two human hands are mirror-reflections of each other, but the two sides of a concertina are not—they are the same—on both Hayden Duets and Maccann Duets) there are different particulars for the two hands. It will simplify (but not falsify) our discussion to confine the chords discussion to the left hand and the melody discussion to the right hand for purposes of exposition.

10. Intended Key Signatures

The "home key" of a 46-button Stagi Hayden Duet is G, in the sense that the right side goes down to C and up to the D two octaves above, so in the key of G you can play a tune with an "authentic" range (in the octave consistently above the final), "plagal" range (roughly an octave, both below and above the final), or "mixed" range (wider range, both below and above the final).

A Hayden Duet can be played just about as well in the key of C or D, but with the need to decide on the range of the tune. An authentic tune (consistently above the final) can be played from the lowest C or D, but a plagal or mixed tune (ranging below and above) must be played on the upper notes of the right side.

The "home key" of a 46-button Lachenal Maccann Duet is C or D, in the sense that the right side goes down to G and up to the G two octaves above, so in the key of C or D you can play a tune with an "authentic" range (in the octave consistently above the final), "plagal" range (roughly an octave, both below and above the final), or "mixed" range (wider range, both below and above the final).

A Maccann Duet can be played just about as well in G, but with the need to decide on the range of the tune. An authentic tune (consistently above the final) can be played from the lowest G, but a plagal or mixed tune (ranging below and above) must be played on the upper notes of the right side.

In both cases, the "home key" is decided by the maker's decision about exactly what range to put on the right hand side. A Stagi 46-button Hayden Duet has C-to-C-to-C (D); a Lachenal 46-button Maccann Duet has G-to-G-to-G instead. See the right-hand button layouts above to verify this.

11. Scales

Let us compare the scale layouts for playing melodies on the right side. In both cases, some minor features of the angles of the button rows have been omitted to focus on the essentials "as felt by the fingertips".

The "paradigmatic" button arrangement (to adopt Jack Woehr's accurate term) for the Hayden Duet is:

                                        G
HAYDEN     Bb     C     D     E     F#      G#
               F     G     A     B      C#      Eb

This shows just a portion of three rows, which can be extended systematically in all directions to make larger arrays. The rows have buttons offset by half in alternating rows.

The notes of a scale (in any key, but here focusing on G) are arranged in adjacent rows of 3 and 4 notes. The fingering pattern for a scale is:

HAYDEN        2;            (fingering,
              1-2-3-4;      right hand,
              2-3-4;         read up)

The "paradigmatic" button arrangement for a Maccann Duet is:

                               Bb
              G#   G     B     A     C     C#
MACCANN       C#   C     E     D     F     F#
                               Eb

(This shows the full width of six columns, but only two full rows plus two buttons from adjacent rows.) The fingering pattern for this C scale is:

MACCANN        1-3-2-4;    (right hand
               1-3-2-4;      read up)

The Maccann pattern makes more sense than might appear at first glance. Its pattern drives directly from Wheatstone's original English concertina layout of 1829. On an English concertina, the scale alternates from side to side, with about six rows per side, each of four buttons:

              G#   G   B   Bb
WHEATSTONE    C#   C   E   Eb
ENGLISH                             Ab   A   C   C#
(1829)                              D#   D   F   F#

                 LEFT HAND            RIGHT HAND

—so on an English concertina you play C on the left, D on the right, E on the left, F on the right, and so on.

The Maccann Duet arrangement simply puts BOTH sides of an English concertina on EACH side of a Maccann, collapsing enharmonic equivalents (G#/Ab and D#/Eb) and tucking one accidental per octave into the natural notes (Eb and Bb in the chart above).

Brian Hayden described this perfectly: "The Maccann system is like the English system folded so the upper notes of the two sides are on one side, and the lower notes of the two sides are on the other. To play a scale on the English, you go from side to side, but with the Maccann system this becomes alternate fingers on the hand. The Maccann system puts the two central rows of both sides of the English into the centre of the keyboard, and the sharps and flats into outer columns, so it requires six columns of buttons." (Wes Williams interview.)

The motivation for alternating sides on an English concertina (so the early tutors tell us) was to spread the work between the hands. This same principle applies to the Maccann fingering, where the scale alternates between the first two fingers and the last two fingers. On a Hayden, the scale goes across the fingers in order, as on a piano.

On a Hayden instrument, the pattern is the same for any scale, and the notes of the scale are always contiguous and compact. The sequence of alternating 3 and 4 notes per row is the same for all scales—just start on the tonic, on a G, on a C, or on a D, to play that scale.

On a Maccann instrument, the notes of the scale (apart from the central part of C) are not always contiguous, and not always compact.

Focusing on a few scales, excluding other buttons, we have:

                                              Fingering
                                              (read up):
          .     .     .     .     .     .
Maccann   .     G     B     A     C     .     1-3-2-4
C scale   .     C     E     D     F     .     1-3-2-4
          .     .     .     .     .     .

          .     .     .     .     .     .
Maccann   .     G     .     .     .     .     1
G scale   .     C     E     D     .     F#    1-3-2-4
          .     G     A     .     B     .     1-2-4


          .     D     .     .     .     .     1
Maccann   .     G     B     A     .     C#    1-3-2-4
D scale   .     .     E     D     .     F#    3-2-4
          .     .     .     .     .     .

The G scale skips over the F, and adds the adjacent F# in the sixth column of buttons. The D scale skips over the F and C, adding the adjacent F# and C#. All the notes, of course, stay in the same places. The basic pattern of alternating fingers is much the same, and the minor variations are easily learned.

Compare the regularity of the Hayden:

                                              Fingering
                                              (read up):
            .     .     .     .
Hayden   .     C     .     .     .     .      2
C scale     F     G     A     B     .     .   1-2-3-4
               C     D     E     .     .      2-3-4

            .     G     .     .
Hayden   .     C     D     E     F#    .      2
G scale     .     G     A     B     .     .   1-2-3-4
                .     .     .    .     .      2-3-4

            .     .     .     .
Hayden   .     .     D     .     .     .      2
D scale     .     G     A     B     C#    .   1-2-3-4
               .     D     E     F#    .      2-3-4

When you see a large Hayden array illustrated on paper, and you pick out starting points for the various scales, you then "re-center" your attention on that starting point and visualize the the standard pattern around it. On a physical concertina, with your hand through a hand-strap, it's not exactly like that. The scales start at different distances from the palm-rail involving more or less reaching, and they start at different positions left to right, so the angles for the fingers are different. This is no problem, but it's not all that different from the Maccann. The D scale pattern starts farther to the right on a Hayden, much as on a Maccann, and continues from there. The hand-strap does not magically move so that every scale feels exactly the same.

But there IS a difference in how the two systems are played. On a Maccann, it's conventional to assign "home" columns of buttons to each finger, with the four fingers hovering over the middle four columns, and the two outer fingers also handling accidentals in the outermost columns. (Of course this can always be adapted for particular passages or sequences, and it is NOT the way fingers are assigned for chords.) So—see the Maccann scales above—the first D in the D scale is played with the third finger, and also the D in the C scale is played with the third finger, and also the D in the G scale is played with the third finger. The same finger plays the same note: to get a D, always use your third finger, curved by the same amount.

On a Hayden, by contrast, the idea is to "move the reference point". So in playing the D scale, the D is played with the second finger. In the C scale, the D is played with the third finger. In the G scale, the D is played with the second finger again. Here, the same finger doesn't always get you the same absolute pitch, rather the same finger gets you the same relative position in the scale. Either approach could be useful (both approaches are useful!), but the mental specifics required are different between them, and it's not clear that either is generally better than the other.

An interesting point of resemblance between the two is that the jump of a fifth (e.g., C to G on Maccann, G to D on a Hayden) would normally be done with the same finger (or sometimes require alternate fingering).

To sum up, when playing melodies it seems that both the Maccann and the Hayden are convenient. One can assign a finger to every "column" of notes (re-based for different keys and offset on alternate rows for the Hayden), and very seldom will a tune require successive notes to be played with the same finger (or alternate fingering adopted)—at least this is certainly true for the Maccann system, and my limited trials with the Hayden system seem much the same. The two systems seem very comparable in this respect, both good.

The Hayden sequence for playing melodies looks more immediately obvious—at least to anyone not familiar with an English concertina layout (which is almost everyone). But the Maccann sequence is just about as easy to learn. The precise order of the buttons for a scale is not really what's difficult to learn; what is important is how fluid ordinary passages are, how easy it is to play legato (lifting the finger from one button as a different finger depresses the following note, releasing the first button just as the next begins to sound), how easily and rapidly common sequences can be played, how rapidly grace notes can be flicked, and so forth.

A basic pattern of alternating fingers (Maccann: 1-3-2-4) is not intrinsically more complicated than sequential fingers (Hayden: 1-2-3-4).

12. Playing Chords

On the Maccann Duet, each chord has a particular individual finger-pattern (like on a guitar or a piano). Nothing unexpected there. But on the Hayden Duet, in principle, all major chords can have the same finger-pattern, all minor chords the same finger-pattern, etc.

This Hayden regularity of all chords has two different consequences. First, it means that within a single key all the chords can be made with the same finger pattern, just moved to a different starting point. (For instance, playing in the key of G, the G-chord, the C-chord, and the D-chord can all be made with the same finger pattern in different locations.) This is like playing a guitar using only barre chords, moving the identical finger-pattern up and down the neck: G at the fifth fret, C at the tenth fret, D at the nut. That's simple, but it may not even be the best way to play chords in a single key, and I judge it is the less-attractive consequence.

More attractive, I think, is the other consequence of the same fact, that of auto-transposing from key to key. Players know they can easily master a few chords in each common key, but when suddenly asked to play in an unfamiliar key they are lost. The Hayden system seems to promise to solve this by making all the keys identical. Suddenly, you can instantly shift to playing in Eb or G# (so you imagine), just like playing in G or C. It's probably this promise that has generated so much interest in the Hayden system: transpose automagically from key to key, just by moving your hands slightly—a "concertina with a capo!"

But on the 46-button Stagi Hayden Duet, that promise isn't really true. In every key signature (including the "home" G!), you find missing notes, forcing you to adopt alternate inversions, or to "reach across" to get the note on the far side, or to adjust the fingering in some other non-standard way, and these adjustments are different in each key. This rather dilutes the promise of offering a uniform finger pattern.

There are two kinds of limitations on a Hayden. First, there are a limited number of rows of keys, just about enough for two octaves. But when you try to use the same inversions (same fingering pattern) for every chord, you quickly run out of buttons vertically, both up and down. This is exactly the same problem as with barre chords on a guitar, you run out of neck.

For transposing from key to key, the important limitation is that the tonic of the key you want to play in must be near the center of the buttons, left to right. The "easy" keys are in the center of the button array, but the keys at both the left and right ends are quite a lot harder—you really can't play in Eb or G# any more readily on a Hayden than on a Maccann. Of course, you still also have the problem of running off the top and bottom once you figure out the key.

Could this problem be solved by adding more buttons? The short answer is that there are limits to the height and width of buttons that a hand can reach when it is strapped to pretty much of a fixed position over a button array. (We discuss these limits below at great length, in "Note 2: How Large a Hayden Duet is Practical?") The limits seem to be about a 55/57-button size for the general population, a 46-button size for students and small hands, a 65/67-button size for people with large hands.

The irregularities and edge-effects are reduced in slightly-larger concertinas, but are still present—and even in the most-common key signatures. It seems unlikely that a Hayden Duet larger than 67 buttons could ever be practical, so there is no hope of actually making a concertina which fully satisfies the regularity possible in the Hayden System.

(In his patent application, Brian Hayden illustrates the application of his idea not only to concertinas, but also to large stable two-dimensional "button fields" such as a two-dimensional electronic "organ keyboard" or even a hammered dulcimer. It is possible that the strengths of the Hayden pattern are most evident on instruments of this type, much larger and heavier than a concertina, and where there is no such limit to how the untethered hands can move freely above a stationary button-field, as over an electronic organ or hammered dulcimer.)

It's certainly not obvious, either, that adding additional buttons has more advantages than disadvantages. Jack Woehr was quoted above, describing Hayden Duets, saying that he was "more concerned with completeness and avoidance of duplication to keep the instrument light!" I have noticed the same thing with Maccann Duets: as I progress, I find myself playing the lighter 46-button Maccann Duets, rather than the heavier and larger 57- and 67-button Maccann Duets.

So it does make sense to consider carefully how chords work on a 46-button Hayden Duet. A 46-button Hayden is not uniquely limited; with any practical-sized button field, the fingering for playing chords in different key signatures will be, in reality, somewhat different for each one.

13. Considerations for Standard Chords

When I got my first Maccann Duet, I spent a lot of time figuring out the best pattern for every chord on a 46-button instrument, considering all the common progressions, adding sevenths, going from major to relative minor, and so forth, and eventually published a document with recommended standard chord pattern and fingering for every chord—major, minor, and seventh. My chords are identical for both the left and right hands—although you can, if you wish, choose alternate inversions for one hand or the other. (A chart showing all the chords is on the web at How to Play Chords on Any Maccann Duet Concertina, and it uses an ingenious notation for chords which was introduced by Brian Hayden!) When I refer to "standard chords" for the Maccann Duet in what follows, I mean only these patterns that I have standardized on for my own use—there certainly is no "standard" promulgated by or for anyone else.

Since then, I've used this idea of my standard chord patterns regularly to play the Maccann Duet, and 99% of the chords I play are just the standard patterns, right off my chart. So I really believe in standard chords which can be practised for fast and smooth transitions (much like changing standard chords on a guitar neck) as the backbone of left-hand style to which variations can be added.

For this reason, the Hayden idea of using a single finger-pattern for all major chords, a single finger pattern for all minor chords, and a single finger pattern for all seventh chords, is undeniably attractive—that would reduce 36 standard patterns and fingerings to 3 standard patterns and fingerings. Again, when I refer to "standard chords" for the Hayden Duet in what follows, all I mean is the basic patterns that I would standardize on using myself; other players might want to adopt different chords, or a more-complicated "standard".

And even the news that the Hayden idea may be restricted to only a few practical keys diminishes its attractiveness only somewhat. For instance, on the Hayden, the chords for G and C and D would be like this:

                                                 Left-hand
                                                 Fingering:
               .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .     .     D     .     .     .         2
HAYDEN         .     G     .     B     .     .    3     1
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     G     .     .                  2
C MAJOR     .     C     .     E     .     .       3     1
HAYDEN         .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
D MAJOR    .      .     .     .     .     .
HAYDEN         .     .     A     .     .     .      2
                  .     D     .     F#    .       3     1

Here the relative positions of the fingers within each major chord are exactly the same, and the relative positions of the chords on the button-array are in standard places.

On the Maccann, by contrast, I use a different fingering pattern for each of the C and F and G chords:

                                                Fingering:
            .    .     .     .     .
C MAJOR     .    C     E     .     .     .       3  2
MACCANN     .    G     .     .     .     .       4
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
F MAJOR     .    C     .     .     F     .       3      1
MACCANN     .    .     A     .     .     .          2
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .    .     .     D     .     .            2
MACCANN     .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .

What may not be obvious with the Hayden patterns, but becomes apparent as soon as one starts to play, is that to move from any major chord to another, the same three fingers will be reused, and every finger must (if using the uniform principle, MUST) move to a different button. The same thing is true to move from any minor chord to another. This means that all three fingers must be picked up and put down again in new spots on the Hayden arrangement. If you are playing "block chords"—all notes sounding simultaneously—there must always be a total cessation of sound, and when all the fingers leave all the buttons the pressure holding the concertina strap against the back of the hand is removed, which may allow the concertina to slip or wobble slightly, reducing control because there are no fingers left lightly touching a button-top to "keep position." This wouldn't be so much of a problem if you were playing chords in an “oom-pah” pattern or in arpeggios (one note of the chord after another).

By contrast, on the Maccann successive chords usually involve different fingers, and some fingers stay on or over the same button for successive chords. This means that the finger on the note C can remain in contact (not necessarily with the button depressed) while moving to an F chord, maintaining better control and allowing sound to continue (if desired) across the transition. Similarly, the finger on the note G can be retained going from C chord to G chord, and can be used to establish the transition from F chord to G chord even though not sounded in an F chord. Such "retained fingers" in common progressions are typical on the Maccann, but more often missing on the Hayden, in order to make the finger patterns "the same". The Maccann chords that I use were selected to take advantage of this possibility.

Using the "uniform fingerings" for Hayden illustrated above, with every chord having its root as the lowest note, you do end up with the C chord sounding rather a lot higher than the G, and the D chord sounding rather a lot lower. You can, of course, abandon the "uniform" fingerings, and play exactly the same notes as on the Maccann; here's what "Maccann chords on a Hayden" looks like:

                                                Fingering:
MACCANN        .     .     .     .
C MAJOR     .     C     .     E     .     .       2     1
ON HAYDEN      .     G     .     .     .     .     3
                  .     .     .     .     .

MACCANN        F     .     .     .              2
F MAJOR     .     C     .     .     .     .       3     
ON HAYDEN      .     .     A     .     .     .          1
                  .     .     .     .     .

MACCANN        .     .     .     .
G MAJOR    .      .     D     .     .     .         2
ON HAYDEN      .     G     .     B     .     .    3     1
                  .     .     .     .     .      

This may sound better, but has no more regularity than the fingering on a Maccann system, and is actually somewhat harder, because of the problem of playing 7ths on a Hayden Duet restricts use of the fourth finger, to which we now turn.

There is a problem with sevenths on a Hayden Duet. On the Maccann Duet (see my chord diagrams with fingerings), it is often (but not quite always) possible to have a standard chord fingering (for each major or minor chord) which also leaves free precisely the finger needed to add a 7th, usually as the highest note.

On the Hayden, this is much more difficult. The note needed for a 7th is, in standard position, always to the left of the other notes of the chord in the button array. Because the 7th should usually be higher than the other notes in a 7th chord, one should leave a "long" finger free on the left part of the hand—say, by fingering a major chord using 4-2-1, leaving finger 3 available to reach up and add the 7th above the 5th. But this has severe problems. For my hand, the reach to the 7th is a VERY awkward reach, even with the third finger. Using 4-2-1 for the standard major chord is none too easy anyway, and adding that long reach for the 7th on the third finger is quite difficult.

One would prefer to use the three strongest fingers—index, middle, and ring—for the three notes in standard major chords (as illustrated above) and in standard minor chords. That leaves the little finger unoccupied, which is on the correct side of the hand (left of the left hand). But the little finger cannot possibly reach the proper 7th. That means that every 7th chord would require substituting the little finger on the root of the chord to free up the ring finger for the 7th. And since one often wants to add the 7th to a sounding chord, this involves interrupting the root note to add the 7th, which is highly undesirable. And the result is still difficult, since it is precisely the same as before.

Hence I would be pretty much forced to just always use a "low" 7th, lower than all the other notes, because the little finger can reach that, leaving the stronger fingers 3-2-1 for the basic chords. This usually doesn't sound as good as you would like. but it's not always terrible to my ear.

I asked a very experienced Hayden Duet player and a much better musician about how to play seventh chords, thinking that perhaps I had missed something, and he rejected my idea of playing a "low" 7th note as very often inappropriate. Instead, he had three alternate ways to play a seventh chord: (1) play the 7th note on the right-hand side; or (2) move a finger back and forth between the root note and the 7th note; or (3) leave out either the 3rd or 5th, playing just two notes plus the 7th note. None of these would suit the way that I play chords on a Maccann Duet, so I conclude that seventh chords are really a problem for the Hayden Duet player.

(We won't discuss it here, but the same problem is even worse on the right hand. If one uses the strong fingers for the three basic notes, one has no finger free at all on the left side of the hand, where all the notes needed for 7ths are located—and the thumb can't possibly reach. Would one be forced to use fingers 2-3-4—middle, ring, and little—for all standard chords on the right side, all the time? Presumably so. It seems a real drawback to try to play all the time with middle, ring, and little fingers on the right hand, so as to save the strong and quick index finger in case a seventh is needed.)

14. Hayden: the Standard Left-Hand Chords

We'll focus on left hand chords, only (and now only the "regular" fingerings). The basic pattern for a major chord is

                                             Fingering:
                      5th    .                     2
MAJOR          .    R     .     3rd             3      1
                       .     .

I'll choose to use my three strong fingers for these notes, using the ring finger for Root, middle finger for 5th, and index finger for 3rd. This leaves the little finger free to supply a 7th when needed, which means that the 7th must be below the root (whereas it would be preferable—some say often essential—to have it an octave higher). So my standard pattern for a 7th chord will be

                                             Fingering:
                      5th    .                     2
SEVENTH       7th   R     .     3rd          4  3      1
                       .     .

using little finger for the 7th, ring finger for the root R, middle finger for the 5th, and index finger for the 3rd.

A good standard pattern for the minor chords is, again, to put the root lowest, and again to use the three strong fingers—ring finger for minor third, middle finger for the root, and index finger for the fifth.

                                              Fingering:
                       .     .
MINOR          .    m3     .     5th            3       1
                       .     mR                      2

Using the three strong fingers, as for the major chord, also provides a very nice movement for the common transition from any major chord to its relative minor. Leave the ring finger on the leftmost note, leave the index finger on the rightmost note, and just pick up the middle finger and move it down two rows and right—so, in the diagrams above, the middle finger moves from major "5" to minor "mR". Because of the way the buttons are angled on the left side of a Hayden, this motion of the middle finger is very easy and obvious, even more than appears on this page. (One often can do a similar movement on a Maccann Duet, moving one finger to go from major to relative minor—this is more a fact about music, than a fact about button layouts; if a C chord has the notes C E G, its relative minor Am chord must have the notes A C E, with two notes unchanged.)

Notice that adding a 7th, and moving to a relative minor, are two changes that DO preserve "retained fingers"—unlike moving from any major chord to another, or from any minor chord to another. Both the 7th and the relative-minor moves are very easy.

(Notation: in what follows, we will use roman numerals for relative chords. Thus, in the key of G we will call a G-chord the "I-chord", a C-chord the "IV-chord" (sub-dominant), and a D-chord the "V-chord" (dominant). The numbers reflect the fact that in the G scale the fourth is C and the fifth is D.)

Now, how should the related chords in a key be postioned for our standard fingering? One good way is to start with the I-chord, and position the IV-chord "up one row and left one-half button", so that it sounds "higher" than the I-chord. Position the V-chord in the other direction, "down one row and right one-half button", so as to make it sound "lower" than its I-chord, and to keep the whole set of tones used for related chords in a compact bunch. This particular choice is reinforced by the particular button arrangement on the Stagi Hayden Duet; the IV-chord "up and left", the I-chord, and the V-chord "down and right", use successive and corresponding buttons along the diagonals in what looks like the intended way. Depending on the music, of course, one might use either a higher or lower root note for any of the chords; this is just our standard default pattern.

14A. Hayden: Standard Chords in G

We can try out the standard chord patterns, and the standard positioning of the patterns, in what we consider the "home key" of G (based on the right-side range). It seems to work just fine:

                                                Fingering:
               .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .     .     D     .     .     .         2
I-CHORD        .     G     .     B     .     .    3    1
                  .     .     .     .     .


               .     .     .     .
G SEVENTH   .     .     D     .     .     .         2
               F     G     .     B     .     . 4  3    1
                  .     .     .     .     .


               .     .     .     .
E MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     G     .     B     .     .    3    1
                  .     .     E     .     .          2

To go from G to G7, one just puts the little finger down on the F. From G to its relative minor Em, just pick up the middle finger and move it from D to E below.

So now we need the sub-dominant (IV) and dominant (V) chords for this key. Our decision, the usual one, was to make the IV-chord sound higher than the root chord, and to make the V-chord lower. So we have the IV-chord, C:

               .     G     .     .
C MAJOR     .     C     .     E     .     .
IV-CHORD       .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .


               .     G     .     .
C SEVENTH   Bb    C     .     E     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .


               .     .     .     .
A MINOR     .     C     .     E     .     .
               .     .     A     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

To go from G to C, just move the same three-finger pattern up-and-left. Once there, the seventh is in the same place (add the little finger), and the relative minor is in the same place, just pick up the middle finger and move it from G to A below. Very slick. This is clearly the way the Hayden system is supposed to work!

Now the Dominant (V) chord for this key, which will be D, and its relative minor Bm. Where the IV-chord is up-and-left from the I position, the V-chord is down-and-left from the I position, which properly puts it lower than the I-chord.

               .     .     .     .
D MAJOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
V-CHORD        .     .     A     .     .     .
                  .     D     .     F#    .

               .     .     .     .
D SEVENTH   .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     A     .     .     .
                  C     D     .     F#    .

               .     .     .     .
B MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     D     .     F#    .
                                 ?

But here, even in the central key of G, we run into the first problem: there isn't a low B to form the root of the relative minor of D major, which is Bm.

Not a major problem, of course, we can play a different inversion of the chord, by using the B an octave higher, to make the root note highest instead of lowest—

               .     .     .     .
B MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     .     B     .     .
                  .     D     .     F#    .
                                [?]

—but this is no longer the absolutely regular pattern we had been planning for. The finger movements to make the relative minor of the V-chord are not the same as for the relative minor of the I-or IV-chords. This is not confusing, but it is also not the same.

14B. Hayden: Standard Chords in D

All right, now let's transpose whatever tune we are playing into D, rather than G, and see how that goes. First the I-chord and its relative minor:

               .     .     .     .
D MAJOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
I-CHORD        .     .     A     .     .     .
                  .     D     .     F#    .

               .     .     .     .
D SEVENTH   .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     A     .     .     .
                  C     D     .     F#    .

               .     .     .     .
B MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     .     B     .     .
                  .     D     .     F#    .
                                [?]

We are again forced to use the irregular B an octave too high for B minor, as before, so that's different, but consistently different. We have a different chord-pattern for Bm than for Em.

In D the IV-chord is G, and we already have that down cold:

               .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .     .     D     .     .     .
IV-CHORS       .     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
G SEVENTH   .     .     D     .     .     .
               F     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
E MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     E     .     .

This works perfectly. The IV-chord is up-and-left, and its seventh and relative minor fall into place according to pattern (the minor is different, of course, from the irregularity we had to adopt for the I-chord's minor, but "standard").

For D, the V-chord is A, so now we need A, A7, and the relative minor F#m. In the key of G, we took the V chord "lower" than the I chord, as is usual. But here we fall off the bottom of the buttons:

               .     .     .     .
A MAJOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     E     .     .
                           ?           ?

—we are missing both the root A and the C#. So this means that we will have to make a different alteration when playing in the key of D. In D, we will have to move the V-chord up an octave, so its root is higher than the root of the I-chord. This is a pity, because the smooth pattern of "up one along the diagonal for IV" and "down one along the same diagonal for V" which was so slick in the key of G, has already broken down in the key of D. We'll adjust:

               .     .     .     .
A MAJOR     .     .     .     E     .     .
V-CHORD        .     .     A     .     C#     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
A SEVENTH   .     .     .     E     .     .
               .     G     A     .     C#    .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
F# MINOR    .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     A     .     C#    .
                  .     .     .     F#    .

So again, this works acceptably. The V-chord and its relative minor are in a different direction in the key of D from the key of G, but in that new position the related chords fingerings are "standard". This is pretty good; standard fingerings, but non-standard hand movement.

We might wonder whether we made a mistake in trying to use the "lower" position for the key of D, which resulted in running off the bottom of the buttons. Perhaps we should have used the "upper" D, to get into a better part of the button array?

This idea begins swimmingly, with all the notes we need for the I-chord, and its relative minor, without the need for the irregularity of the "lower" D position:

               .     .     A     .
D MAJOR     .     .     D     .     F#     .
I-CHORD        .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     A     .
D SEVENTH   .     C     D     .     F#    .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
B MINOR     .     .     D     .     F#     .
               .     .     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     .     .      .

In fact, this is actually better, because now we can put the root of the relative minor down on the lower B which we were missing before.

And now the IV-chord, G major, and its relative minor Em, in the "upper" location. But here we run out of buttons in the opposite direction, we run off the top of the array, so here we have to substitute a different note D:

                       [?]
               .     G     .     B
G MAJOR     .     .     D     .     .     .
IV-CHORD       .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

                       [?]
               F     G     .     B
G SEVENTH   .     .     D     .     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     G     .     B
E MINOR     .     .     .     E     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

So in the "upper D" location, we have to reshuffle the fingers to make the basic IV (G) chord. Again this is not a major or crippling irregularity, but it is yet another specific irregularity, different from the others we have seen so far.

The V chord for "upper D" is again A, and now it works correctly, where it didn't before:

               .     .     .     .
A MAJOR     .     .     .     E     .     .
V-CHORD        .     .     A     .     C#     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
A SEVENTH   .     .     .     E     .     .
               .     G     A     .     C#    .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
F# MINOR    .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     A     .     C#    .
                  .     .     .     F#    .

Playing in "upper D", the IV-chord has to be fingered differently, but the V-chord is in its usual position and the I-chord is standard.

Playing in "lower D", the IV-chord is correct, but the I-chord's relative minor is non-standard, and the V-chord is in a different position and an octave higher.

This is interesting, because looking at a large array of Hayden buttons, you imagine so clearly how you could just move your fingers up and play exactly the same thing one octave higher, almost without noticing. But within the constraints of a 46-button instrument, we find that the two octaves of D chords are in fact different in the I-chord's relative minor Bm, different in the IV-chord G's fingering, and different in the direction to get to the V-chord A. That is, there is a fair amount of variation in each chord-set from one octave to the next.

14C. Hayden: Standard Chords in C

We can next try transposing into the key of C, common and often used. As with D, this gives us a choice again: "lower C" or "upper C"? We would ordinarily want to go lower for the chords accompaniment, to provide better separation from the melody on the opposite side, so let's try that first.

               .     .     .     .
C MAJOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
I-CHORD        .     G     .     .     .     .
                  C     .     E     .     .

               .     .     .     .
C SEVENTH   Bb?!  .     .     .     .     .
               .     G     .     .     .     .
           [?]    C     .     E     .     .

               .     .     .     .
A MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     .     A     .     .     .
                  C     .     E     .     .
                          [?]

This immediately presents us with two problems. First, the 7th is missing for C7. The one and only Bb on the left side is way up high on the left of the buttons, too high for the little finger to reach! So our decision to accept the "too-low" 7th which is ordinarily reachable by the little finger has broken down over a missing button. Here we will have to adopt a much more difficult fingering for the C7 chord, perhaps using the ring finger to reach up to the Bb. But that isn't an easy variation, and will probably make C7 always very weak and slow to reach.

The second problem is the relative minor, Am. Since we see that we lack a lower A, we are forced to adopt a non-standard fingering for the relative minor of C.

On to the IV-chord, which is F.

               .     .     .     .
F MAJOR    .      C     .     .     .     .
IV-CHORD       F     .     A     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
F SEVENTH  .      C     .     .     .     .
       [?]     F     .     A     .     .     Eb?!
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
D MINOR    .      .     .     .     .     .
               F     .     A     .     .     .
                  .     D     .     .     .

Here the F major works fine, and the D minor works fine, but the F7 is a disaster. The only Eb note on the whole left side of the concertina is located way over as the furthest button to the right of the whole array! So some dramatically different fingering must be adopted for F7, in order to get the index finger freed up so it can reach over to that single Eb. This makes the transition from F to F7 anything but smooth.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I can point out that F7 also interrupts a smooth progression on the Maccann system, and requires displacing another finger, not unlike this case.)

For the V-chord in the key of C, which is G, we already know the story. We would normally find the V chord down and right, below the root, but since we started playing "lower C" on the bottom row of buttons, there will not be any G chord in the standard position. So, just as in the key of D when we were looking for A, in the key of C we will find G in the non-standard direction two rows higher. Apart from that, the internal structure is standard, of course:

               .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .     .     D     .     .     .
V-CHORD        .     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
G SEVENTH   .     .     D     .     .     .
               F     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
E MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     E     .     .

So in "lower C", we have non-standard fingering for the Am, and difficult non-standard fingering for the C7. We have major problems reaching F7 in a non-standard way, and we have to find the V-chord G in a non-standard position an octave higher.

Perhaps we should have chosen to play in "upper C", based on the higher C on the left side? This is only somewhat better.

               .     G     .     .
C MAJOR     .     C     .     E     .     .
I-CHORD        .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     G     .     .
C SEVENTH   Bb    C     .     E     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
A MINOR     .     C     .     E     .     .
               .     .     A     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

As can be seen, moving to the "upper C" DOES fix the problem with C7 which is now in the standard place, and it does restore Am to its standard pattern and location. So far, so good.

Again, the IV-chord, F:

                 [?]
               F     .     A     .
F MAJOR    .      C     .     .     .     .
IV-CHORD       .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

                 [?]
               F     .     A     .
F SEVENTH  .      C     .     .     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     Eb?!
                  .     .     .     .     .

               F     .     A     .
D MINOR    .      .     D     .     .     .
               .     .     .     .     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

Now the Dm still works in the standard way, but the F major chord has run off the buttons, requiring a non-standard fingering, and the F7 chord requires that same non-standard adjustment PLUS the non-standard position of the 7th still off to the extreme right—now perhaps even a longer stretch.

An alternative to these problems would be to move the IV- chord to a non-standard direction below the I-chord. Introducing that non-standard placement would repair the non-standard fingering for the note C in F and F7, but of course would not fix the aberrant 7th.

It's a matter of trading one sort of non-standard fingering for another, basically a wash.

In "upper C", the V-chord G is perfect throughout:

               .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .     .     D     .     .     .
V-CHORD        .     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
G SEVENTH   .     .     D     .     .     .
               F     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     .     .     .

               .     .     .     .
E MINOR     .     .     .     .     .     .
               .     G     .     B     .     .
                  .     .     E     .     .

Again, though, this is interesting variation from octave to octave. In "upper C" you can only find the V chord in the standard position, below the root; whereas in "lower C" you can only find the V chord in the non-standard position above the root. There isn't a way to make the two octaves conform in position, except by introducing alternate non-standard fingerings.

So: is "lower C" or "upper C" the better choice?

Lower C: non-standard C7, non-standard Am, non-standard F7,
         non-standard G/G7/Em  (6 out of 9 non-standard)

Upper C: non-standard F, F7  (2 out of 9 non-standard)

It would appear on paper that "upper C" is the better choice, more conformant to the standard of the other keys.

Much the same question could have been asked about "lower D" versus "upper D":

Lower D: non-standard Bm, non-standard A/A7/Em
              (4 out of 9 non-standard)

Upper D: non-standard G, G7  (2 out of 9 non-standard)

Again, we might well decide that "upper D" is the better choice, with fewer departures from the standard sound (puts the V-chord in the right place) and the standard fingering.

15. Overlap Between Left and Right Sides

However, there is another consideration which will most likely reverse both of these decisions, and throw us back upon the "lower C" and "lower D" with their greater amount of non-standard fingering.

This consideration is the extensive overlap in range between the upper octave on the left side and the lower octave on the right side—virtually total. It really isn't a good idea to play chords on the left side in the upper octave, and then try to play a melody in the same octave on the right side. There is no separation between melody and chords, so that the melody gets lost in the unison-sounds coming from the other side. And it isn't even ideal to play in partly-overlapping octaves.

The best separation of chords from melody is to play the chords as low as possible on the left, and the melody somewhat higher on the right. (On a 46-button instrument, of either system, the low notes are not too low and muddy.) So normally, I believe, players will decide that the better choice is to accept "lower C" and "lower D", despite the much higher incidence of non-standard fingerings.

In this particular respect, things are somewhat better on the 46-button Maccann, as can be seen by comparing the ranges ("C4" is "middle-C" on a piano):

Stagi Hayden:
range on left: C3 to B4
range on right: C4 to D6

Lachenal Maccann:
range on left: C3 to C5
range on right: G4 to G6

The Stagi's philosophy is to put about two octaves on the left side, and about two octaves on the right side, with the upper half of the left identical to the lower half of the right. Both sides are essentially "C to C to C". Middle-C is in the center of the left side, and at the bottom of the right side. That practically forces a player to use the lower notes on the left side and to move toward the top on the right to get some separation for the melody.

The Lachenal, in contrast, has about two octaves on the left side, and two octaves on the right side, but with only five notes duplicated: G, Ab, A, B, (no Bb on left), and C. The left side is "C to C to C", but the right side is "G to G to G". Middle-C is in the center of the left side, but not on the right side at all. This makes it easier to get a good separation between chords and melody. (And the upper notes on the right side of a 46-button Maccann are usable—on a large 81-button Maccann the upper notes can only be heard by dogs, but all the notes in the range of a 46-button are very usable.)

Historically, the forerunner of the Maccann Duet, Wheatstone's "Duett" system, had half an octave of overlap between the two sides; it had a total of twenty-four buttons, twelve on each side, running from "G to G to C". The higher G, A, B, and C on the left side are duplicated as the lower G, A, B, and C on the right side.

In the Wheatstone "Double" Duets sold even before the Duett systems, the amount of overlap varied with the size of the instrument. In a 45-button example (serial No. 23) comparable to the instruments we're discussing here, there is again only half an octave of overlap. The left side goes from "C to C to G". The higher C is in unison with the lowest C on the right side, which runs "C to C to C", resulting in only half an octave of overlap. Larger Doubles, however, had a greater overlap; Danny Chapman's serial No. 14 is a total of 67 buttons, and has exactly one octave overlap. (It is "G to C to C" on the left, and "C to C to C to C" on the right.)

Larger Maccanns also have about one octave overlap. K. V. Chidley's design for a 71-button Chidley-system instrument had one and one half octaves. Some larger Haydens have one-octave overlap like the 46-button, other Haydens increase that to one and one half octaves—the proposed Russian Hayden Duets designed by Brian Hayden have an octave and a half overlap.

What different people think appropriate probably depends on the kind of music to be played; piano-type transcriptions that flow over the divide might be easier with a greater overlap (I don't really know), and David Cornell's arrangements make specific use of duplicated notes, echoing them from side to side or achieving sequences which would be impossible to finger on one side alone. But playing chords on the left and melody on the right is probably facilitated by less overlap—as in the 46-button Maccanns. It would seem that a smaller overlap might be advantgeous for the equally-small 46-button Haydens; possibly by copying the Maccann layout, and having the right side run "G to G to G", from G4 to G6.

16. Hayden Chords Summary

We will leave the topic of chord patterns and locations on the Stagi Hayden with these three example keys, which are actually very favorable examples since the instrument is fairly-well optimized for these key signatures—they occur near the center. (If we had looked at oddball keys, at the edges of the button array, we would have found a greater amount of non-standard patterns and locations, and an even larger variation in the specific changes.)

As it is, for the basic I-, IV-, and V-chords, with their sevenths and relative minors, for the common keys of G, D, and C, there is a surprising amount of variation.

We looked at 9 chords in each of three keys, total 27 chords, but because they overlap we examined only 15 distinct chords—actually, I'd call it 18, since we ended up choosing to use "upper C" in the key of G, and "lower C" in the key of C (whether wisely or not).

Of those 18 chords, if I count back over the details above, I count only 8 of them that are completely standard, and 10 of them that involve some kind of departure from the norm.

So about half of the chords we used in those most-common keys are completely standard. Of the non-standard examples, they vary in four different ways (inverting a minor for lack of low button, refingering for a higher 7th, refingering for a wrong-side 7th, and moving a chord intact into a wrong octave, a different direction from its I-chord, to avoid worse problems with missing buttons).

The designs posted for possible future larger Hayden Duets do not entirely avoid the problems identified above. Even the 65-button Marcus design, for instance, still fails to cover a perfectly-regular G, D, and C keys—and the old Bastari 67-button Hayden Duet failed as well.

The numeric tabulation of exceptions is of little importance, and other people might well choose a different "standard", and count the exceptions in different ways. The important considerations in the long discussion above are how rapidly a standard pattern runs up against the edges of the button field, what kinds of adjustments are needed, and how difficult they are to remember.

Certainly, the Hayden Duet is NOT difficult to play! It has approximately the same notes on each side as a Lachenal Maccann of the same size, so you can do approximately the same things—by introducing even more variation, you can play precisely the same notes as on a Maccann. But it is certainly not obvious that Maccann-style fingering is as easy on a Hayden as on a Maccann, let alone easier.

17. Maccann: the Standard Left-Hand Chords

There is less to say about the standard chords for a Maccann Duet, since there is no aim that a single standard pattern should be chosen for chords in all keys.

For a Maccann, though, the same problem of "edge-effects" occurs on the small 46-button instrument; larger instruments (such as the common 67-button size) offer many more choices for chords. So the chords are chosen in various inversions to fit onto the limited button array, with the difference that we do not expect to be able to find a single standard for everything, but expect to learn a unique chord pattern for each chord.

As on the Hayden Duet, there is an "upper C" position that is used for the IV-chord in G, and a "lower C" position that is used for the I-chord in the key of C.

We should properly start in the key of C, since that is the "home key" for the right side of the 46-button Maccann Duet, but for comparison with the Hayden chords above we will look at Maccann Duet chords in G, then D, and finally C.

17A. Maccann: Standard Chords in G

                                                Fingering:
            .    .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .    .     .     D     .     .            2
I-CHORD     .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
G SEVENTH   .    .     .     D     F     .            2  1
            .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
E MINOR     .    .     E     .     .     .            2
            .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .
            .    .     .     .     .
C MAJOR     .    C     E     .     .     .       3  2
IV-CHORD    .    G     .     .     .     .       4
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
C SEVENTH   .    C     E     .     .     .       3  2
            .    G     .     .     .     Bb      4        1
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
A MINOR     .    C     E     .     .     .       3  2
            .    .     A     .     .     .          2
                 .     .           .     .
            .    .     .     .     .
D MAJOR     .    .     .     D     .     .          2
V-CHORD     .    .     A     .     .     .       3
                 .     .           .     F#            1

            .    .     .     .     .
D SEVENTH   .    C     .     D     .     .   4      2
            .    .     A     .     .     .       3
                 .     .           .     F#            1

            .    .     .     .     .
B MINOR     .    .     .     D     .     .       3
            .    .     .     .     B     .          2
                 .     .           .     F#            1

17B. Maccann Standard Chords in D

                                                Fingering:
            .    .     .     .     .
D MAJOR     .    .     .     D     .     .          2
I-CHORD     .    .     A     .     .     .       3
                 .     .           .     F#            1

            .    .     .     .     .
D SEVENTH   .    C     .     D     .     .   4      2
            .    .     A     .     .     .       3
                 .     .           .     F#            1

            .    .     .     .     .
B MINOR     .    .     .     D     .     .       3
            .    .     .     .     B     .          2
                 .     .           .     F#            1
            .    .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .    .     .     D     .     .            2
IV-CHORD    .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
G SEVENTH   .    .     .     D     F     .            2  1
            .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
E MINOR     .    .     E     .     .     .            2
            .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .
            .    .     .     .     .
A MAJOR     C#   .     .     .     .     .       4
V-CHORD     .    .     A     .     .     .            2
                 .     E           .     .            2

            .    G     .     .     .                3
A SEVENTH   C#   .     .     .     .     .       4
            .    .     A     .     .     .            2
                 .     E           .     .            2

            .    .     .     .     .
F# MINOR    C#   .     .     .     .             4
            .    .     A     .     .     .            2
                 .     .           .     F#                1

17C. Maccann: Standard Chords in C

                                                Fingering:
            .    .     .     .     .
C MAJOR     .    C     .     .     .     .       3
I-CHORD     .    G     .     .     .     .       4
                 .     E           .     .          2

            .    .     .     .     .
C SEVENTH   .    C     .     .     .     .       3
            .    G     .     .     .     Bb      4        1
                 .     E           .     .          2

            .    .     .     .     .
A MINOR     .    C     .     .     .     .       3
            .    .     A     .     .     .          2
                 .     E           .     .          2
            .    .     .     .     .
F MAJOR     .    C     .     .     .     .     3
IV-CHORD    .    .     A     .     .     .        2
                 .     .           F     .              1

            .    .     .     .     .
F SEVENTH   .    C     .     .     .     .     4
            .    .     A     Eb    .     .        3  2
                 .     .           F     .              1

            .    .     .     .     .
D MINOR     .    .     .     D     .     .           2
            .    .     A     .     .     .        3
                 .     .           F     .              1
            .    .     .     .     .
G MAJOR     .    .     .     D     .     .            2
V-CHORD     .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
G SEVENTH   .    .     .     D     F     .            2  1
            .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     .           .     .

            .    .     .     .     .
E MINOR     .    .           .     .     .
            .    G     .     .     B     .       4       1
                 .     E           .     .            2

An interesting experiment (which we tried for just three chords above) is to pick up a Hayden Duet and try playing the same notes as on the Maccann Duet (that is, rather than trying to achieve uniformity, instead play the same miscellaneous inversions of each chord as chosen for the Maccann, precisely shown just above). My impression is that the difficulty and "degree of consistency" is vaguely about the same on both 46-button instruments. This suggests that part of the consistency on the Hayden Duet comes from choosing a single standard inversion and using it consistently, except where that is impossible; without such a principle on the Maccann Duet, the chord patterns are chosen for sound, for fluency, for availability of higher 7ths, and so forth. This may result in a gain which offsets any ease-of-learning on the Hayden Duet; or put the other way, choosing Hayden Duet chords without rigid regard to uniformity would result in just about as many patterns to learn as on a Maccann Duet.

18. Maccann Chords Summary

By the same calculation made for the Hayden chords, we have seen 18 different Maccann chords, each with an individual pattern (some closely related). So there is, I'd estimate roughly, about twice as much to learn for this set of chord patterns.

Again, the calculation of "twice as much to learn" isn't of primary importance. Neither for the Hayden Duet nor for the Maccann Duet is the number of patterns to learn very large, yet that amount is enough to play thousands of songs, in three common keys. The way to judge is to try out the chord patterns and see how natural they feel, how they flow in common progressions, how good the inversions that fit onto the buttons sound, how easy it is to remember what to do.

There is one difference: when I first got a Maccann Duet, with no hints about which chord patterns were convenient, it took me quite a bit of effort to try out a lot of possibilities and see what worked best. The Hayden Duet system speeds up that process of discovery—making it easier to see patterns that are likely to work, and quicker to test out alternate patterns. But that initial spade work is still considerable, and shouldn't be necessary for every concertinist; we should have standard instructional books with all the chords pictured, so that the patterns have merely to be learned, not invented (this does exist for the Maccann Duet, see next section).

19. Instructional Material

Oddly enough, there is almost no instructional material available for Hayden Duet which would save every beginner the need to work out the strategies. The only discussions of how to play, very meagre, are in descriptions of the invention prepared very early. Brian Hayden did prepare an "All-Systems" tutor, but it contains diagrams for Maccann as well as for Hayden systems. There is no discussion that I have found of specific fingering, chords, etc.—even at the extremely elementary level I've attempted here.

For a new system, where no one is really an old hand, I would have expected that almost everyone who took up a Hayden Duet over the last twenty years would have been eager to write about his experiences. But for some reason this hasn't happened.

(Rumor says that Brian Hayden has been preparing a tutor of his own for some time, so it may be that the prospect of getting the inventor's own tutor has scared off the competition.)

On the Maccann Duet side, of course, there is a lot of material to help a novice learn how to play. And everything that I know about is available free on the internet:

This is surely enough to provide some orientation and to get a new player started.

Historically the Maccann Duet was used by professional performers, and perhaps for that reason all the Maccann instructional material (except for the last item) use standard musical notation. This may possibly have contributed to the idea that the Maccann Duet was difficult, since information such as the chord diagrams were given not as buttons in a diagram, but as notes on a staff—one more hindrance to a concertinist wanting to learn by ear.

This lack is repaired by the last item on the Maccann list, which includes a single hexagonal diagram (6.25 inches across, to fit inside the lid of a 46-button Maccann Duet concertina case) showing 36 chord diagrams with fingerings—the recommended major, minor, and seventh chords in each of 12 keys—with all the alternate inversions. Credit for its compactness is due to Brian Hayden, for his notation which is used in the diagram! It would be nice to have a comparable diagram for the 46-button Hayden Duet.

20. Experience

Finally, there is one other consideration, and that is the experience with the two systems. Over about sixty years of active development, and another sixty years since then, the Maccann Duet has demonstrated that it can be played at very high levels of achievement. As we know from contemporary reviews, the Maccann Duet was used by professional performers immediately, within a year of its being patented, and was hailed as a breakthrough. A succession of performers were stars on the Maccann Duet until World War II, with many additional professionals at various levels of attainment, and many advanced amateurs. A system that was "confusing", or "unplayable", or "illogical" could hardly produce that result.

The Hayden Duet, by contrast, has still to demonstrate that it offers the potential for high achievement. Twenty years after its patenting, there are still only a handful of quality instruments ever made, and only a few of those are in the hands of serious players. This may be just bad luck and circumstance, of course, but it leaves the Hayden as an "unproven" system. It seems likely that better Hayden instruments and better Hayden players may come along, but they haven't yet.

So we know that many people can play the Maccann Duet well, and some people can play the Maccann Duet superlatively. We hope that both will be true for the Hayden Duet, but neither has yet been demonstrated.

21. Summary

After all this discussion, we can draw up a score-card:

       Quality of instruments:                 Maccann
       Size and Weight of instruments:         Maccann
       Availability of good instruments:       Maccann
       Price of instruments:                   Maccann
       Instructional Materials:                Maccann
       Ease of playing in several common keys:  both
       Ease of playing in many oddball keys:   neither
       Performing experience:                  Maccann

This leads to a common-sense conclusion: If you want to play a duet concertina, you will probably do best to buy a Maccann Duet. You can get a really nice one, you can get it fairly quickly, it won't be too expensive, it will be lighter and smaller, you'll have good materials to learn from, it's about as easy as any other duet system to play in several (say half a dozen) common key signatures, and you'll have the assurance that many others have mastered it.

If you are required to play in many different and unusual key signatures, then you may think you should try learning the Hayden system instead, looking to a future when better instruments may be available. That's probably a false hope; the largest practical concertinas will never deliver what you hope for. To play in many different and unusual keys, you either need an electronic "concertina with a capo" (which might better be a Maccann-system, see Note 1 below, or else you should take up a different instrument.

The Hayden system, abstractly, is extremely interesting and well worth study. It will particularly interest some people because of its structure, in much the way that some people are particularly attracted to Dvorak keyboards for typing. (See Note 3, below, "Do you Type on a Dvorak Keyboard?" for the comparison.) It would be desirable for others to try it out and discover its merits. Is the system really only of interest in bandoneon-sized instruments, with fifty percent of the notes duplicated to gain uniformity and transposition, perhaps with a different system for supporting the instruments and a different form of hand-strap? Or using the same pattern but cutting out the duplicated notes, does the keyboard arrangement still have any advantage over the Maccann arrangement? We will know more when even halfway-decent Hayden instruments become available.

But when you turn from abstract systems to actual instruments, if you want to try out a Hayden Duet now, you can only get a poor-quality instrument, it will be heavy and clumsy, when you can ever buy better instruments you will have to pay much more, you will have limited material to learn from, and you will have to buy a very-large concertina to get even a fraction of the benefits promised by the uniformity of the Hayden system. The 46-button Stagi Hayden involves so many limitations that it is only useful as a learning aid to gain intuition about the Hayden system, and it's barely useful even for that.

Note 1. About Electronic Concertinas

Our conclusion mentioned in passing above was, tentatively, that the Hayden discovery seemed to be especially applicable to a large fixed two-dimensional array of buttons over which both hands could move freely. So the Hayden system might really be great for a sort of two-dimensional electronic organ, or a large hammered dulcimer. Many of the advantages of the Hayden system, we found, are substantially compromised when restricted to the relatively-small array of buttons that can be reached by a hand strapped to the end of a concertina and supporting it.

There is another logical alternative, however, and that is to drop the mechanical construction of a traditional concertina, and to move to an "electronic concertina" where the buttons could be re-mapped to produce different notes. This opens up an entirely different approach.

You might design an electronic Hayden with about 46 buttons, give or take, arranging them so that just ONE single key signature was optimized. You would put the I-chord for that key toward the center of the left button array, be sure that there was room for the IV-chord in the standard up-and-left position, be sure there was room for the V-chord and its relative minor in the standard down-and-right position, be sure that all the required sevenths were provided, and do all the other things needed to make playing in that one key as simple and as perfectly-standard as possible. On the right side, for melody, you would put the final for that same key in an easy to reach position in the middle of the button array, with ample notes both above and below.

So now you have a 46-or-so-button Hayden Duet which is absolutely standard for that one key, but other keys will suffer from the problem of running off the four edges. Since this is electronics, you add a dial on the palm-rail which allows the player to select any desired key signature: C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, Ab, A, Bb, B. (You can later add a second dial to select the "central octave" to raise or lower the pitch of the entire instrument an octave at a time to make yourself a sopranino or a baritone version, and a third dial to select the temperament or tuning, ... but those dials are beyond the point here.)

Say that the default key when the concertina is turned on is G. The player turns it on, and finds that in G all the chords on the left side are perfectly standard, and the G scale on the right side is in the easiest central position. The next song is in in Eb, so the player turns the dial to Eb. Now, automagically, the EXACT same fingerings on the EXACT same buttons provide chords for Eb on the left and a scale for Eb on the right!

This really would seem to be a better way of cutting the Hayden array down to the confines of a concertina. Choose a key, the chords and the scale are automatically re-centered, and all the edge-effects (or anyway many of them) are thus made to disappear. Now, playing in any key is—totally—the same as playing in any other key. The auto-transposing feature of the Hayden system now delivers, in all its promised glory.

Or does it? Actually, the auto-transposing is now being done by that dial on the palm-rail, not by the Hayden system. In fact, adding the electronics has just REMOVED most of that advantage of the Hayden system, not perfected it. (What is left is that the major chords have the same fingering, the minor chords the same, etc. As discussed, this may even be a disadvantage, compared to alternative fingerings, if it is not connected to the auto-transposing feature.)

For imagine an electronic Maccann duet with the same dial on its palm rest. If you like playing the chord patterns and scale for the key of C on a Maccann, you can just play the fingering for C and turn the dial to transpose to Eb—exactly as on an electronic Hayden.

So an electronic concertina would perfect the great advantage of the Hayden system to "play in any key with the same fingering", but at the same time would confer that same advantage on the Maccann system! In choosing between the "electronic Hayden" and the "electronic Maccann", we would choose on other grounds—convenience in forming frequently-used chords, fluidity of common chord progressions, whether or not common intervals require immediate re-use of the same finger for melody, and so forth—plus quality and price of available instruments.

We might also choose between Hayden and Maccann based on how well we think the button arrangement reveals and clarifies musical theory—although the musical theory is equally clear on the paper, regardless of how the buttons work; people learn musical theory on pianos, violins, and flutes, too. Abstracting away from the buttons should be the point of musical education.

The one technical development that could make the Hayden system practical for small and light concertina-style instruments is to add that transposition dial to the palm-rail. That same technical development would erase the most-frequently-cited advantage of the Hayden system, and would equally benefit any and all duet concertina systems. [ Back to text ]

Note 2. How Large a Hayden Duet Concertina is Practical?

Again, "Many of the advantages of the Hayden system, we found, are substantially compromised when restricted to the relatively-small array of buttons that can be reached by a hand strapped to the end of a concertina and supporting it."

If much of the disappointment with a Hayden Duet comes from the limited button array possible on a concertina, it's reasonable to explore the question, just how large a Hayden Duet is practical?

The answer, after all the calculations below, isn't too surprising: it's probably about the 55-button size planned by Richard Morse of The Button Box (a man who should know about these things).

It's likely that most people won't want to play any concertina larger than about 67 buttons primarily because of the size and weight. But ignoring weight for the moment, how many buttons can be reached on a concertina, by normal hands using normal hand-straps?

Historically, you have both "narrow, tall" and "wide, shallow" button fields. The Wheatstone "English" had only four buttons per narrow row, stretching in a tall column, typically six to eight rows high—but it was held and played by putting the first joint of each thumb through a loop of leather with a rest for the little finger to steady the instrument. This arrangement has major drawbacks, but it does free the hands to move up and down, by bending the thumbs.

The "Anglo" uses a "hand-strap" mounted to the ends of a "palm-rail"; the hand passes through, until the strap is just above the base of the thumb. In playing, the name "palm-rail" is a misnomer; actually, each hand is arched so that the back of the hand is firmly against the strap with half an inch or so of air beneath the palm. With this arrangement, the Anglo always had wide rows but only two or three of them, making its button-field very shallow top-to-bottom.

The very early Wheatstone "Double" duet had narrow rows and thumb-loops (but no little-finger rests), like an English; the early Wheatstone "Duett" duet had slightly wider rows and leather hand-straps over an open iron "palm-rail", like an Anglo. All subsequent Duet concertinas used wide rows with the hand-strap and palm-rail, like an Anglo.

I believe that there is no problem in stretching the fingers horizontally to reach more than six columns of buttons, certainly up to eight columns. (Though not every finger can reach every column—relevant to the Hayden, see below.) The bigger problem, rather, is reaching up and down while the hand is under and against the hand-strap.

The fingers have to be curved in order for the finger tip to come down on one button. Even when it's intended to press down two buttons with one finger, the finger must curve and then the first joint is "bent back" to press with the pad of the finger. In trying to reach buttons too far away, the fingers get too straight, and the arch of the palm is flattened which removes the pressure from the hand-strap (with loss of control). In trying to reach buttons too close, the fingers are curled to where they are hard to use, and the palm is arched as much as possible pressing too hard against the strap. (The thumb is used to try to control the strap length: the thumb presses harder on the outside of the strap to shorten it when the fingers are reaching far, and the thumb is released to lengthen the strap slightly when the fingers are reaching close to the "palm-rail", but not much adjustment is possible.)

Looking now at Hayden Duets specifically, a complication for Hayden-system concertinas is the expectation that all the chord-patterns and scales will be exactly the same configurations, using the same fingers in the same order. So, the 7th for a major chord will always be to the left of the other notes, and (on the left hand only!) that allows you to use the three strong fingers for the major chords, and use the little finger to add the lower 7th. But (on a Stagi 46) when you reach C7, you find that there is no 7th in the lower octave of the left side, and the only 7th available is in the octave above, too far for your little finger to reach. When you reach F7, you find that there is no 7th on the left side of the buttons at all, and that you must reach the only 7th on the left end, at the extreme right side of the buttons.

Clearly there's no physical impossibility in reaching the 7th notes in either key, but it's a major disruption of the "totally uniform" principle. If the standard for playing major chords on the left is to use fingers 3-2-1 and 4 for the 7th, then if you have to change to using 4-2-1 and 3 for the 7th in C7, and change to using 4-3-2 and 1 for the 7th in F7, then you are playing substantially different patterns. (Not all that different from a Maccann, in fact.) This is the "edge-effect".

But you can't just extend the buttons, even side-to-side, to provide the standard patterns, and still be able to reach them comfortably—in the standard pattern, with the standard fingers. In the case we were just considering, you can move left on the button array (to get more sevenths) only so far before you exceed what the fourth finger can reach.

So this imposes at least as small a "practical" button field on a Hayden concertina as on a different system where the fingering is designed to be more flexible and perhaps also tweaked for the common keys. What's critical is the span between the left and right extremes of movement of any single finger.

The left and right buttons on the Stagi Hayden are nearly as far as I can reach in a standard pattern. The Stagi buttons themselves are big, but the spacing is not all that wide:

Stagi      button size: 8mm
46-button: vertical ctr-to-ctr: 12mm
           horizontal ctr-to-ctr: 17mm

Lachenal   button size: 6mm
46-button: vertical ctr-to-ctr: 11mm
           horizontal ctr-to-ctr: 14mm

So by adopting Lachenal-style (equally, Wheatstone-style) buttons there is potential to get in a few more buttons horizontally, perhaps about up to Richard Morse's layout for a 55-button instrument.

The problem of reaching vertically higher and lower with a hand-strap remains much as on any other Duet concertina. Very roughly, on a Maccann the sizes are like this:

                     Left             Right

    ~46-button:      3 rows           4 rows
    ~57-button:      4 rows           5 rows
    ~67-button:      5 rows           6 rows
    ~81-button:      6 rows           7 rows

—plus or minus a few buttons top or bottom.

I'd estimate that for me a 57-button Maccann is about as far as I can reach comfortably, and for concertinists with larger hands a 67-button Maccann. An older child would find a 46-button about the limit.

The Stagi Hayden has about 4 rows on the left, and 5 rows on the right (top row only half-length, under the longer fingers). I expect that we will find that 5 rows will be the Hayden maximum for small to medium hands, 6 rows for larger hands, as on the Maccann.

The Button Box layout has about the vertical arrangement of a Stagi—4 rows on the left, about 5 on the right—but with more buttons horizontally. (This wider arrangement does provide a C7 and F7, the two chords discussed above.)

BUTTON-   Eb      F       G       A       B
BOX           Bb      C4      D       E       F#      G#
HAYDEN    Eb      F       G       A       B       C#      D#
LEFT END      Bb      C       D       E       F#      G#
                                          B       C#


              Bb      C       D       E
BUTTON-   Eb      f       G       A       B       C#
BOX           Bb      C       D       E       F#      G#
HAYDEN    Eb      F       G       A       B       C#      D#
RIGHT END     Bb      C4      D       E       F#      G#

That's probably about the largest practical button array, in both dimensions, for a Hayden Duet Concertina intended for general use by persons of both sexes. People with large hands could manage another row, students would probably find it a row too many.

So the best-expected concertina implementation of the Hayden System should be contained in about this many buttons, surely not many more. The edge-effects, limitations, and compromises—and advantages—possible in about 55 buttons are what we should expect to live with on practical Hayden duet concertinas.

This is not to say that larger free-reed squeezeboxes of other designs cannot be built. When the Hayden system was first introduced, in 1896 by the Swiss Kaspar Wicki as a keyboard for bandoneons and similar instruments, a somewhat larger keyboard was envisioned: the Wicki keyboard put 51 (or 54) keys on a single end, arranged in six rows each nine buttons wide:

Gb''     Ab''    Bb''   C'''    D'''    E'''   F#'''    G#'''   A#'''
    Db''    Eb''     F''    G''     A''     B''     C#'''   D#'''    E#'''
Gb'      Ab'     Bb'    C''     D''     E''    F#''     G#''    A#''
    Db'     Eb'      F'     G'      A'      B'      C#''    D#''     E#''
Gb       Ab      Bb     C'      D'      E'     F#'      G#'     A#'
    Db      Eb       F      G       A       B      C#'      D#'      E#'

(For full details of the history of this keyboard design, see The Wicki System—an 1896 Precursor of the Hayden System. Hayden independently envisioned nearly-identical keyboards, as in Figure 12 of his patent.)

Bandoneons built to use keyboards this large seem to be played in a rather different way from concertinas (and from bisonoric bandoneons with smaller keyboards); rather than a small loop of a strap sized for a hand to go through, they have a long loose strap from one side of the instrument to the other, so that the player's hand can be moved from left to right across the wide keyboard, with the looseness allowing the hand to be pushed further forward.

As discussed in The Wicki Keyboard, the full design to permit playing in many key signatures with the same fingering employs 18 keys per octave--the 12 tones plus 6 duplicates (left and right). So this makes a “Wicki-Hayden” duet instrument (used here to mean a Hayden-system instrument with the full nine-button-wide rows of the Wicki patent) much larger than a Maccann duet with comparable range. A 46-key Maccann duet has to become a 69-key “Wicki-Hayden” duet; a 67-key Maccann duet has to become a “Wicki-Hayden” instrument with over 100 buttons for the same range, because the “Wicki-Hayden” system has three buttons for every two in the Maccann system. The 54-button arrangement illustrated above has just about exactly the range of the 37 buttons on the right end of a standard 67-key Maccann duet—and arithmetically, 37 times 18/12 is 55.

In trying to use the “Wicki-Hayden” system on a much smaller instrument such as a concertina, the approach is to omit some of the duplicated keys in each octave, trying to bring the button-count back down to something more like 12 buttons per octave rather than the full 18 buttons per octave. The Morse 55-key Hayden duet (right side), for instance, uses this part of the full “Wicki-Hayden” layout:

.        .       Bb''    C'''     D'''    E'''    .       .       .  
    .        Eb''    F''     G''      A''     B''     C#'''   .        .
.        .       Bb'     C''      D''     E''     F#''    G#''    .  
    .        Eb'     F'      G'       A'      B'      C#''    D#''     .
.        .       Bb      C'       D'      E'      F#'     G#'     .  
    .        .       .       .        .       .       .       .        .

This subset, retaining 29 of the buttons and dispensing with 25 (the left side of the Morse design is even smaller, as is usual) manages to get the button-count per octave back down toward 12—assuming the same assignments as in the Hayden patent, it has no more than 13 buttons per octave (there are parts of four octaves in this diagram).

But that very fact explains why, as documented above, one runs into so many "edge effects" with a Hayden keyboard in this size, perpetually having to adopt different fingerings and patterns for each key signature even among the common ones (in the center), and why the less common key signatures (toward the edges) are completely different and mostly difficult.

The “Wicki-Hayden” system gains its advantages of (1) same fingering for the scale in all key signatures and (2) one pattern for all major chords, all minor chords, etc., from the 6 duplicated keys added to each octave. When those are taken away, the advantages mostly go away as well. By the time you get down to the 46-key or 55-key Hayden duet concertina, there are so few duplicated buttons that the variability in different key signatures—of fingering for the scale for chord patterns—is approximately the same as for any other way of arranging unduplicated buttons on a concertina.

The compromises required to fit the “Wicki-Hayden” system onto a concertina, no larger than most people can play and light enough to be responsive, seem to limit or remove entirely most of its advantages. [ Back to text ]

Note 3. Do You Type on a Dvorak Keyboard?

There are some parallels which suggest that the Hayden Duet keyboard occupies a position for the concertina something like the "Dvorak Simplified Keyboard" for the typewriter. Many people seem to believe that the replacement keyboard is better, or simpler, or more logical, or all of the above, but for some reason you can hardly get one and nobody much actually uses them (except for a handful of enthusiasts). So the reputation is mostly maintained by second-hand reports. Both the Hayden and the Dvorak meet this description.

The most famous recent treatment of the Dvorak keyboard is "The Fable of the Keys" by the economists S. J. Liebowitz (University of Texas at Dallas) and Stephen E. Margolis (UCLA) in the Journal of Law & Economics XXXIII (April 1990), on the web at www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html. From the Introduction:

In the economics literature on standards, the popular real-world example of this market failure is the standard Qwerty typewriter keyboard and its competition with the rival Dvorak keyboard. This example is noted frequently in newspaper and magazine reports, seems to be generally accepted as true, and was brought to economists' attention by the papers of Paul David. According to the popular story, the keyboard invented by August Dvorak, a professor of education at the University of Washington, is vastly superior to the Qwerty keyboard developed by Christopher Sholes that is now in common use. We are to believe that, although the Dvorak keyboard is vastly superior to Qwerty, virtually no one trains on Dvorak because there are too few Dvorak machines, and there are virtually no Dvorak machines because there are too few Dvorak typists.
This article examines the history, economics, and ergonomics of the typewriter keyboard. We show that David's version of the history of the market's rejection of Dvorak does not report the true history, and we present evidence that the continued use of Qwerty is efficient given the current understanding of keyboard design. We conclude that the example of the Dvorak keyboard is what beehives and lighthouses were for earlier market-failure fables. It is an example of market failure that will not withstand rigorous examination of the historical record.

After examining the history, Liebowitz and Margolis conclude the opposite of what we have all heard so often:

The consistent finding in the ergonomic studies is that the results imply no clear advantage for Dvorak.

Interestingly, the coming of "electronic typewriters" (that is, personal computers) has made it much easier to try a Dvorak keyboard—just unplug one and plug in the other, though even so you almost never see one. Electronic concertinas would have much the same advantage; substituting ends from Maccann to Hayden probably wouldn't involve a plug, but it wouldn't be very difficult, and apart from the keyboard mechanics the rest of the instruments would be identical modulo programming. [ Back to text ]


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Head-to-head comparison:
Stagi Hayden Duet vs.
Lachenal Maccann Duet
both 46-key, both £500 ($800)

Links to related documents

gaskins-wicki-system The Wicki System—an 1896 Precursor of the Hayden System
by Robert Gaskins
The concertina keyboard system known today as the "Hayden" system, which was independently discovered by Brian Hayden and patented by him in 1986, had also been discovered and patented 90 years earlier by a Swiss inventor named Kaspar Wicki. Wicki's 1896 Swiss patent (CH13329) is clear and unambiguous, including a keyboard diagram labeled in standard musical notation.
Posted 01 March 2004
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Hayden-GB-Patent-No-2131592 Arrangements of Notes on Musical Instruments (1986)
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British Patent No. GB2131592, 1986. 14 figures, 17 pages. This was an independent re-discovery of the system that had been patented by Kaspar Wicki ninety years earlier. "Various arrangements of touches on Musical Keyboards previously evolved are detailed … . The present invention places notes on musical instruments along several adjacent paths … . Keyboards for Organs, Accordions, and in particular Concertinas are described in greater detail … ." [from the Application]. Date Filed: 02.12.1982; Patent Granted with effect from 20.08.1986; Date of Last Renewal: 29.11.1989; Date Not in Force: 02.12.1990; Patent Ceased on 02.12.1990. [Patents Register Entry, UK Patent Office]
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maccann-patent-1884 Improvements in Concertinas (1884)
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British Patent No. 4752 of 1884, Provisional Specification (12 March 1884) and Complete Specification (18 November 1884) with two figures. 4 pages. The one and only patent dealing with the Maccann Duet concertina. Maccann's invention creates a fully chromatic Duet (capable of playing in all key signatures) based on the older diatonic Wheatstone “duett” system.
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gaskins-chords-maccann How to Play Chords on Any Maccann Duet Concertina
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Explains how to play chords to accompany songs on Maccann Duet concertinas of any size and from any period. Intended for beginners, assumes no knowledge of musical notation or theory. Includes a chord chart suitable for the lid of a concertina case. 51 pages.
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hayden-playing-chords Playing Chords [for English, Anglo, and Maccann Duet]
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"I would like to explain the system that I use when teaching players about chords, their structure, and placement. Chords are what I am most requested to explain at folk music workshops or gatherings as I tend to use chords a lot in my own playing." (From the introduction.) Includes a novel notation for chords which is used elsewhere on this website. As published in Concertina Magazine (Australia) in three parts, 12-14 (1985), 12:5-7, 13:12-14, and 14:8-10; with corrections in 15-16 (1986), 15:14 and 16:1,6,9.
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maccann-duet-homepage Maccann Duet Concertinas
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Concertina Library directory of all information on this website about Maccann Duet Concertinas.
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hayden-duet-homepage Hayden System Duet Concertinas
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Concertina Library directory of all information on this website about Hayden System Duet Concertinas, including most of Brian Hayden's published articles.
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