Duo Penguinistan successfully finished a Christmas concert at Komorebi hall in Obu-city Aichi, Japan. Komorebi hall is brand-new—it was opened only in last July, we feel privileged to be the first guitarist and melodica player there. The venue is formal, but still cozy and has a lovely acoustics for our small instruments. We are very grateful for the audience to be in the concert, the help of the truly great staff, and the director who gave us this great opportunity.
Programme:
Part I
Christmas Carol : We Wish a Merry Christmas
Catalan Christmas Carol : 1. El Noy De La Mare 2. La Nit De Nadal 3. La Filadora
Bela Bartok : Romanian Christmas Carols Series I
John Frederick Coots & Haven Gillespie : Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Robert Wells & Mel Tormé : The Christmas Song
Vittorio Monti : Czardas
Ryusuke Koarashi : Foreign Hill
Part II
Bulgarian Folk Song : 1. Vido, Vido, Byala Vido 2. Dilmano Dilbero
Christmas Carol : Silent Night
J.S. Bach：Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring
Irish Traditional : 1. Irish Medley (The Road to Lisdoonvarna, The Swallowtail Jig and The Swallowtail Reel) 2. Londonderry Air
We had a mini (Christmas) concert for children at Aichi Children’s Health and Medical Center. It was only 30min, but we did enjoy the nice, intimate atmosphere with them.
Yoshihide Otomo : The Opening Theme of Amachan
Irish Medley (The Road to Lisdoonvarna, The Swallowtail Jig and The Swallowtail Reel)
（The Road to Lisdoonvarna, The Swallowtail Jig and The Swallowtail Reel）
Duo, with a wonderful vocalist & melodica player—Rika Legum, had a Christmas concert for kids and their parents at Parkfield Primary School. Thank you all for coming, we really enjoyed the performance.
Rain Dance, composed by Ross Edwards in 1978, originally for two recorders. This short piece features Hemiolic rhythm—juxtaposition of 3/4 and 6/8, and uses pitch materials similar to a Japanese scale called Miyako-Bushi Onkai. For more information regarding the composer & the piece, please click here.
We Wish You a Merry Christmas, arranged for 2 melodicas and guitar, became purchasable from here (English) or here (Japanese). For those who are looking for a novel repertoire of Christmas, this may be what you want. The arrangement was originally requested by our student, so technical difficulties were mostly avoided. The point for arranging was an interplay between instruments (especially two melodicas) with changing textures, avoiding just to repeat same material many times. So the theme is played differently each time. Melodica parts can be played alternatively by violin. The sample movie is available on youtube.
We have been running a club called ‘Melodica Club’ since January. The club is dedicated to enjoy melodica ensemble in multiple parts, and to find different capability of the instrument.
We have been working a lot on arranging and searching for new repertoire for this club, and gained considerable numbers ranging from Renaissance to contemporary. ‘Merry-Go-Round of Life’ is one of those repertoire of us, a theme from an animation film called ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’, included by a member’s request in the club. Ryusuke arranged it for three parts, and Ayumi performed all the parts for this recording. We hope you will enjoy it.
Posted a video on youtube, a performance at Bath International Music Festival in 2013. This piece, Three Hungarian folk songs from Csik, by Bartok is included in the first album.
Please notice that we have recently changed our name from Pocket Penguin to Duo Penguinistan (or “Duo Penguinistanica”, with Latin suffix), and duo.penguinistan.com is the new URL of our website.
Most of professional melodica players do adjust or repair their instrument for fulfilling their musical requirement, and so we do. Last November, we had repaired about 10 melodicas of students who bought newly for playing in ensemble. With two of those instruments, we made two videos of comparison before and after repairing to check how different they are.
Melodicas used in the video are products by Stagg, a Belgian manufacturer that produces musical instrument at a reasonable price, possibly the cheapest ones we can buy in the UK. The structure of the instrument is same to Hohner’s, so those have similar timbres. Two melodicas (Blue and Black) in the video have identical form, but the material of the reeds is different.
The example of the short piece is “OSHIN’s Theme“. Did you get the differences?
Here we had improved three points by repairing.
1. Response
When melodica needs too much blowing in for making a sound, we say the response is bad/slow. Most of the newly bought melodicas do not respond good usually, some keys need much effort to blow in, since the reeds are not adjusted appropriately. You can hear it in the video that some notes are very much delayed, sometimes even does not come out especially when playing soft sound or chords.
2. Reduction of key noise
There are some causes of making key noises, and some solutions to each of them. Here we mend only a noise which is caused by key touching the bottom. Sometimes we use the key noise for adding an attack to the sound but it depends on how much it is and how the quality is.
3. Reduction of spring noise
Keys of melodica put back in its place by small springs, but it is a cause of noise, do you hear a high, continuous sound like a reverb in the video? that is the spring noise.
These three points are very basic ones where the repair could be easily done for just 30 min to 1hour, but still may be very effective as you can see in the video. (We should adjust the pitch as well, but it takes much more time and cost, so this time did only for a few melodica students really wanted to do.)
Pocket Penguin performed in an event, 3rd Interfaith Festival, in SOAS. We performed Ryusuke’s new piece for two melodicas, rather surprisingly, that was the first attempt for us to play two melodicas in public. We really enjoyed playing it and the acoustics in the place.
Performers:
Viola da Cunha (Mezzo Soprano) Ryusuke Koarashi (Guitar, Melodica) Ayumi Toyama (Melodica)
Programme:
De Falla: 4 Spanish Popular Songs Koarashi: Non-title (For 2 Melodicas) Granados: El Majo Discreto, Amor y Odio Rodrigo: De Los Alamos Vengo Madre Folk Song: Sari Gelin Gershwin: I Got A Rhythm, Summertime
