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"I get where you're coming from, Michael, but the layout does make pretty good sense, from it's own point of view. Here's my thinking:\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\tEvery musical instrument (or tuning for a string instrument) makes a compromise between what's possible and what's easy. The more things that are possible, the fewer things, generally, that will be easy. Standard tuning for a guitar (EADGBE), for example, makes it easy to play full chords in first position in the keys of C, G, D, A, and E. It's kind of brilliant that way. It's possible to play any melody in any key in standard tuning, of course, but it's not what the instrument is laid out to do most easily. A \"pure\" melody instrument, like a violin or mandolin, tuned in fifths (e.g. GDAE), makes playing melodies (in the keys you have strings for) easy, at the cost of making chords and other keys harder. It's easy to create a driving 2/4 or 4/4 rhythm playing clawhammer banjo, but that style almost forces the player to use different tunings for every key. Not every tune is possible, but that's been sacrificed for the sake of the rhythm.\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\tWhen I look at the Anglo concertina, I see first and foremost that it's laid out to make harmony easy. Press any two buttons on the same row on either side and push and they will harmonize with each other. Pull and that's almost true. To accomplish that somewhat startling feat, quite a few compromises were made, I think, including leaving out lots of notes at the high and low ends to favor useful harmonizing notes and strongly biasing the instrument to the two home keys (C and G).\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\tNow, that doesn't mean you can't play pure, unharmonized melody lines in any key you want (look to the entire nation of Ireland), but it's not what the concertina makes easy. The reason these little squeezeboxes were popular around the world was because anyone could play one \"without a master\". As a beginner, I suppose it depends what you want to do, but it might be simpler to work to the strengths of the instrument.\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\t\"Anglo 1-2-3\" is a phenomenal book, and if you're interested in the history of the Anglo concertina, Dan Worrall's entire 2-volume \"The Anglo-German Concertina: A Social History\" is available for free on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Anglo_German_Concertina.html?id=1-thWE5XRmsC It's utterly fascinating.\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\tHave fun!\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\tMike\n \n"
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