Let's do some drumming.
This is an exercise to help you feel the up/down. Sit with your palms on the tops of your thighs. Now pat out a steady rhythm, alternating hands: "RIGHT-left-RIGHT-left, MIssiSSIppi, MIssiSSIppi, MIssiSSIppi,.MIssiSSIppi, GOOD-n-PLENty, GOOD-n-PLENty, GOOD-n-PLENty, GOOD-n-PLENty, ..."
Keep this going but start a tune in your head. "Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony, ..." Notice who's beating out the notes -- your right hand. For the dots-readers, the melody is quarter notes and your hands are beating out eighth notes.
Now close your eyes and sing the chorus: "Yankee Doodle keep it up, ..." Feel where "kee" is? In your left hand. "Yankee Doodle dandy." Same thing. "Mind the music and the step," The "the" is in your left hand, too. "And with the girls be handy." Back to all-rights on that.
Do it again more slowly a few times and then go into the verse: "Father and I went down to camp ..." Feel "father and"? Both hands.
The right-left alteration is the up-down of your pick. Most notes are on a down-pick, but some aren't.
Go ahead and pull your pick out of your pocket, and beat along to the tune on the inside of your thigh or your trouser seam. Feel where the notes come? It's that alternation that makes the tune feel and sound the way it does.
There are two, common kinds of concertinas, confusingly called "English" and "Anglo." The more common, English concertina has its buttons set out in neat, horizontal rows. Every button sounds the same note whether you're pushing the bellows in or out, and you can play the same note with either hand on either side. Easy. Logical.
Anglo buttons are laid out with all the logic of a typewriter keyboard. Like bassoons, if you pick up two different instruments, they may even have different fingerings. In and out? Different notes.
Watching one Anglo player walk another through a tune is a hoot. "Okay, first you push this note with this finger, then (turning the instrument around) pull and press this one, ..." Even simple tunes require getting the bellows shifts right.
Why, in heaven's name, would anyone ever play one? Listen. As with Cajun accordions, the needed bellows shifts create the bounce of the music. You can pick out an Anglo on a recording with no problem at all -- English concertinas are smooth, flowing, boring.
Your changes in hand while beating rhythm -- your changes in pick direction when you play -- make the tune sound and feel the way it does.
Clawhammer banjo gets this in spades. Do you make this melody note with your thumb? That one with the back of your middle finger? The next, plucking the string with your left hand? They all feel and sound different. A Tony Trishka or Bill Keith album is a seamless ripple of rolls. A Dan Gellert or Bob Carlin clawhammer tune is all textures, every note a different timbre from the next.
Once you start to feel this, it's forehead-smackingly obvious. Try these two exercises, one on mando, one on thighs:
On your thighs, do Glenn Miller's In the Mood . Notice especially the hemiolas in the verse -- the repeated, three-note arpeggios that alternate between starting in the right hand and starting in the left. What's that mean about playing it? You have to swap back and forth, alternating starting with a down-pick and starting with an up-pick. You'll feel the same thing in Dulcimer Reel or Hemiola Rag.
On your mando, play Yankee Doodle and strum all the beats. Strum in eighth notes while you play the left hand normally. Up down up down up down up down .... However, emphasize the melody notes. Sharpen up the contrast until the non-melody notes beats are audible, but not a big deal.
Next, shift when you play some of the melody notes -- swap them from downs to ups. Launch the "Yankee" on an up-pick, half a beat before the down you'd normally start it on. Feel how that changes it?
You're playing exactly the same notes, since the B part ended on the same, G note that the A part starts on; you're just playing continuous, eighth-note G's from the end of one part right through the beginning of the next. Still, you can feel and hear the difference between kicking off with a strong down-pick versus with a strong up-pick.
When you move beats around like this, the dancers won't analyze it, but they'll feel it.
Even playing melody, your mandolin is a drum.
