For enthusiasts of early banjo
NOT A BANJO
A guy walked into my museum this morning with this 1850s French (Busson) flutina in it's original box. It looked and played like it had just left the shop. I'd never had the chance to try one before. It's "push-pull" (two notes per button) like my accordion and concertina but COMPLETELY opposite directions on every note. It was like driving a standard in England. I turned off the left side of my brain long enough to get through "Golden Slippers" by instinct, but as soon as as I started thinking, it all fell apart. It's quieter than a concertina or a later 19th century accordion. It's hard to imagine it making much of an impression in a minstrel band. (Admittedly, I was playing a trifle "carefully".) Gues that's why there's a minstrel banjo network and not a minstrel flutina network.
Views: 109
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Comment by Carl Anderton on February 5, 2011 at 12:22am
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Awesome. I'd love to play banjo with a flutina player. I guess they went the way of the dinosaurs?
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Comment by Ian Bell on February 5, 2011 at 8:00am
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A button accordionist or anglo concertina player could turn into a flutina player fairly easily - trick is to find a working flutina. (I'm not sure I can talk the owner out of the one in the picture)
Didn't Cory from Long Island say he found one? I think the two rows of keys are pitched in C and G. The Howe's accordeon/flutina books have things mostly written out in C but you could presumably just move over to the G row to play along with a low-tuned banjo. We'll work on this.
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Comment by razyn on February 5, 2011 at 1:41pm
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Yes, all the flutina players were smothered by the ash after a large asteroid hit Yucatan.
You can imagine how much everyone missed them.
I recently ran across an interview about what may be the oldest surviving example of one of these little squeezeboxes (precursors of the piano type, chromatic accordions):
http://free-reed.net/essays/dillner_interview.html
There are instructions for this bassackward P and D system in Elias Howe's 1843 Accordeon Preceptor, which I believe one may view online.
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I looked at that Howe's fingering chart the last time flutinas came up. It seems fine - until you try it. My 35 years of doing it the other way definitely got in the way. The instrument in the pictures appears not to have been played very much. It certainly is in good shape. Maybe I should ask to borrow it and take a proper stab at it.
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Comment by Dave Culgan on February 5, 2011 at 3:20pm
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I finally found a good one on ebay for real cheap, looks just like the one in the pic, with a little scuffing. Its not a museum piece and I've had to put a lot of patches on the bellows, replace valves, mess around with reeds, etc. I've broken it and fixed it enough times now that I'm playing the hell out if it now, Foster and other antebellum parlor stuff along with some minstrel favorites. It seems like the best strategy for getting a louder and fuller tone is to incorporate harmony notes or full chords where possible. The drone system is just I and V chord, but songs with a simple chord structure sound really cool with the bass and chord drones (les deux bascules de harmonie) engaged. I have a later one row box with the conventional push and pull but I've set it aside realizing I can't switch back and forth. Mine's in the key of C. Although its chromatic, issues with reeds have kept me from doing much in G or other keys other than A minor. Dave Culgan
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Dave - I was intrigued by the drones on the one I was fooling around with. I didn't know about that feature and turned them on accidentally while I was playing. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on - I thought I'd broken something!
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