What an English ceilidh actually asks of a concertina

Playing for an English ceilidh or barn dance is a different job from playing in a session. The tunes are often the same, but the demands are not. You are there to make people's feet move, in a hall with poor acoustics, for three hours, with a caller talking over the top of you. On a good night the floor is packed and nobody can hear the fine details.

So the concertina's role is rhythmic and structural rather than decorative. In most bands you are doubling a melody line with a fiddle or melodeon, adding bellows-driven pulse and a little left-hand harmony. Anglo players have the advantage of that punchy, percussive bellows change; English players have the advantage of legato cross-row phrasing and a fuller chord texture. Neither is better — but both need to be serving the dance.

The practical upshot is that you need a small, deeply familiar repertoire rather than a huge, shaky one. Thirty to forty tunes you can start at any tempo, in any sensible key, without thinking, will carry you through a whole season of bookings.

The working core: jigs, reels and hornpipes that dance

English dance repertoire leans on a handful of tune families. Build your sets around these:

• Jigs (6/8) — The Black Nag, Nonesuch, Haste to the Wedding, The Keel Row, Balance the Straw. These carry most circle and longways dances and are the most forgiving for a nervous band.
• Reels (4/4 or 2/2) — Speed the Plough, The Fairy Dance, Soldier's Joy, Roxburgh Castle, Morpeth Rant, Cumberland Reel, Jamie Allen. Reels drive big, energetic dances; they also expose any weakness in your timekeeping.
• Hornpipes — Harvest Home, Boys of Bluehill, Fisher's Hornpipe, The Trumpet Hornpipe. Played with a gentle lilt for stepping dances, or flattened out as a reel when a caller needs more drive.
• Polkas, marches and slip jigs — La Russe, The Primrose Polka, Drops of Brandy. Useful for processions, children's dances and the awkward middle of the evening when the floor is still filling.
• Waltzes — The Ash Grove, The South Wind. Keep one or two ready for the last dance and for the inevitable couple who want something slow.

Keys, registers and cutting through the band

Agree keys before the gig, not during it. On a 30-key C/G Anglo you are comfortable in G, D, A, C, E minor and A minor, with B minor available in part. A D/G melodeon player has a similar map. Fiddle players will happily follow you anywhere, which is exactly why you should not lead them into E flat on a whim.

Register matters more than volume. Middle-range reeds carry further in a hall than the top octave, which can sound thin and shrill when pushed. Save the high octave for the final time through a tune, and use left-hand chords sparingly — two notes on the off-beat is usually plenty. Constant chordal chugging muddies the melody line and tires your hands long before the interval.

Setting tempos with the caller

The caller is in charge of the dance; you are in charge of the pulse. Get used to asking two questions at the start of each item: how many times through, and how fast. Then count in two full bars of the tune rather than a bare "one, two, three, four" — it gives the dancers and the caller something to hang on to.

• Reels — around 100–112 beats per minute for a crotchet pulse. Below 96 they drag; above 120 the caller loses the floor.
• Jigs — around 116–132 for the dotted crotchet. Beginners' dances want the lower end.
• Hornpipes — 84–96, with a little swing for stepping, straighter for a big set dance.
• Polkas — 108–120. Waltzes — 96–120, depending entirely on the dance.

Rehearse with a metronome at roughly 80 per cent of gig speed, then record yourselves and listen back. Watch the floor as you play: a thinning set or a crowd of confused faces is more reliable feedback than any click track. If the caller raises a hand, hold the tempo steady and let them catch up — do not speed up to "help".

Building and maintaining a set list

Standard ceilidh sets run to two or three tunes of 32 bars each, played six to eight times through. Join them deliberately: keep the key the same, or move up a fourth or fifth for the last tune (G to D, D to A). A key change in the wrong place will lose you half the band for a bar, which the dancers will hear.

Write your sets out in large, clear type — a notebook or tablet on the floor by your stool. Practise the joins obsessively: most bands fall apart in the four bars between tunes, not inside them. The test of a set is playing it six times through without stopping, talking, or losing your place. Learn tunes by ear from recordings wherever you can, and use notation only as a memory jog rather than a crutch.

Keeping the instrument gig-ready

A ceilidh is hard on a concertina: warm halls, cold cars, damp church rooms, and three hours of playing. Check the bellows for pinholes, keep the end bolts snug but never overtightened, and make sure the reed pan is seated properly after any work. Most tuning drift you hear at a gig is temperature, not damage — let the instrument come up to room temperature before you judge it.

Carry a small kit: spare straps, a couple of springs, a screwdriver that fits the end bolts, and a soft cloth. Wipe the ends after playing, because sweat corrodes the action over time. Store the instrument somewhere with stable humidity and never leave it in a hot car. For reed work and proper tuning, find a specialist and leave it to them; home filing ruins more reeds than it fixes.