Anglo Concertina in the Harmonic Style

A wonderful book, extremely helpful to this beginner concertina player. The numbers for fingering are very useful and make playing tunes much clearer and easier. I highly recommend this author’s books.

I like this book a lot. I had been playing concertina about a month when my husband bought this for me. I figured out fairly quickly how to play a basic melody, which was fine, but it wasn’t enough. I craved harmony and accompaniment, which I knew the concertina was capable of. At first it was difficult to play the melody and then try to put the left hand in; I didn’t think I would get it. But it came together on “You Are All I Have”, a beautiful waltz in the book. This is so much more satisfying than just a single melody line. There are plenty of traditional British and Irish tunes, but I’m really glad that the author also included “St. James Infirmary”, “The Song From Moulin Rouge”, “Over the Rainbow” (especially beautiful) and other tunes not usually played on the concertina. And if you can’t figure out exactly how a tune goes, you can go to Youtube where Coover plays all of them. That helps a lot. The tablature system is fairly easy and you can catch on to it. Right hand buttons are shown above the notes, left hand buttons below and the pull is indicated by a line over the top. It’s a pretty good system. The one downside, I would say, is that, then, transferring to regular music, I’m somewhat lost without the button numbers. Many of the tunes indicate both the chord name (G, C,F, Dm) and the buttons you need to push, but one tends to look at the numbers and ignore the names. I’m sure this is remedied with continued practice (or covering up the numbers?). A very fun, helpful book, worth every penny!

I loved this book as soon as I received it because of the range of great tunes and opportunity to learn how to play them with interesting and often quite complex chords and accompaniments. The explanations and diagrams are easy to follow. The tunes get gradually more difficult but offer such a lovely range of types and styles that you feel encouraged to work through them. This may be quite a difficult book for an absolute beginner, but perfect for someone with a reasonable grasp of the instrument who wants to get better and improve their playing in the harmonic style.

I have since purchased an English Concertina. I can read music and already play other instruments, so the English Concertina was a better fit for me. However, the Anglo Concertina book was a nice introduction to the Concertina, was easy to follow, and includes some fun music, which I can enjoy with my English Concertina as well.

All the tunes can be scanned to see and hear what they are supposed to sound like. Between Gary Coover and his buddy, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, you'll be on your way to becoming a master concertina player.

After playing the accordion, piano, and keyboard for over 50+ years, I developed arthritis. My fingers made playing keys extremely difficult.. Since my fingers were a little crooked, playing an instrument with buttons seemed the way to go to continue playing music. I purchased a 30-button concertina and needed to learn from a book. I live in a rural area, so that was the only way to learn. This book's instruction starts out very basic and then build your skill level gradually. It's a great beginner's book 1

If you're a melody player who throws in an occasional chord, on a 30 button anglo, Gary Coover's "Harmonic Style" will open your eyes and provide interest. Like all Gary's books, it teaches an approach not just a few tunes!

Best instruction available. Would love to see a 2nd book based on harmonic style.

Libro scritto molto bene e molto belle e varie i brani proposti. Trovo molto utile il QR Code sulle varie pagine che permette di collegarsi velocemente ai video YouTube in cui vengono suonate le varie musiche.

This tutor deals with the issues for mastering the harmonic style (melody and chords) and is less suitable for the Irish single note style. I haven't had it long but at first glance I can see that it is much better than any other Anglo tutor I have seen so far and exactly what is needed. (Dan Worall's excellent book on William Kimber is not really a tutor and is restricted to Morris tunes) For the beginner or the advancing student, lots of real transcriptions in easy to read notation, good playable pieces from the tradition. For the price I think a CD would have been good although the material is out there on Youtube and I'm giving it 5 stars anyway.

I love Gary Coovers notation method. Since I started playing concertina exactly one year ago I've only used his books. I wouldn't suggest this as your first concertina instruction because it's a little more advanced but after you've got the basics and you've got a 30 button concertina, it's a must have in my opinion. I haven't found any other notation method that's as easy and quickly to grasp as Gary's. The only downside is that it's so easy it'll make you less likely to learn how to read music without his notation! He also has a lot of videos on YouTube in which he plays tunes from the book, so that's a good source to learn from as well.

Lots of tunes to learn. Well laid out and easy to understand.

Unfortunately amazon does not give a view of the included sheetmusic. The harmony for the songs is entirely written in numbers. Not as musical notes on the staff together with the melody. As it's done with classical guitar for example. As i read sheetmusic i find the numbers very confusing. Especially as the left index finger plays notes/button number 5. But my right index finger is playing button number 1. Added to the confusion are symbols for push/pull and more symbols like an X when one is not supposed to play harmony. Overall it's unnecessary information overload. For someone comfortable reading sheetmusic this book is awkward and confusing.