on stage for your entertainment the jammers...the jammers are a small group of musicians who perform ceilidhs in the Manchester & Cheshire area.

The melodeon is a great ceilidh instrument and the Jammer's line-up showcases Brian Bateman as their number-one melodeon player. Brian has over 30 years experience of traditional music and folk music and play's regually in other ceilidh bands as well as perfoming seasonal mummers plays, playing for morris sides and singing at various folk and English song clubs.

What is a Melodeon? Melodeons are a type of accordion that have buttons rather than keys - these are what we call diatonic instruments - each row of buttons plays a single scale without the sharps or flats, although many melodeons feature one or two extra buttons per row to play the main accidentals in the given scale. Most English-music melodeans have two or three rows of buttons in the keys of D&G (two row) and D,G & A (three row). Melodeons are often compared to harmonicas beacuse they work on the same principle of the suck-blow action for different notes, although with a melodeon it would be push-pull against the bellows.

The bass-baritone is a bass guitar that looks like a five string acoustic guitar and sounds like a double bass - confused? Well that's understandable because the bass-baritone-guitar was built as a one-of for ceilidhs by its player Daniel. Dan also's plays, the big ukulele at folk clubs and rhythm guitar.

What is a bass-baritone? Baritone guitars were introduced in the 1950's, most have six strings and are played like a conventional guitar but sound lower. The five string bass-bartione-guitar is different, it plays like a conventional bass guitar although it doesn't play as low but it does play much higher. The vocal range of the bass-baritone-guitar is a little lower than a cello.