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WoodyPhyseter

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Lanaudiere, Quebec. CANADA
Hello community, you can call me Woody. let me introduce myself and my "new" accordion.

So I'm one of those people that had all the opportunities to let music be center of my life but decided that having 1000 interests and 100 hobbies is better suited for me.
As a child and teenager I played violin, piano, and guitar. Then have also come upon playing bass, djembe, melodion, and the tin-flute. About 7 years ago I got my hands on a 60 button piano accordion and then gave it to a close friend of mine who moved to another continent. I had it all cleaned up, rewaxed and tuned with new leathers. Just to say I had a lot of fun with it and learned quite a couple songs, some of them were "infernal gallop", "if i were a rich man", "the chicken dance" and more.

As I recall the songs were very easy to learn and I was quite good in my opinion. Maybe I'm getting old but it's taking me alot longer to learn songs with my "new" accordion. I'm pretty sure I used to learn accordion songs through videos, something that I'm not as interested in now.

So here we go, I wanted a 100 button 'Bayan' accordion. Don't judge me! I wanted a chromatic button style piano accordion because I'm too familiar with the 'piano' layout and needed to start fresh to get back into reading sheet music. The bayan was cheaper and easily found online so my wife got it for me for my birthday this spring. Ultimately I'd like a cheap freebass bayan one day but want to get familiar and practice on stradella to not be overwhelmed. I want to learn right this time and learn from sheet music. Having this different keyboard has really been fun, though I'm not sure that I have the fingering correctly (melody side) and sometimes find myself jumping a couple rows up or down from lack of available fingers.

a couple questions that I hope this community will be able to help me with are:

-B-system fingering do's and don'ts

-On the bass side Stradella system, are there hand positions for keys? I tend to play near the the C note and then find myself looking for the flat note thrice in a song that's nowhere near.

-Since I have a 100 bass bayan, I'm missing the diminished chord, as I understand I can substitute for the "flat chord" of the true bass note? but then it's so far. is there a better trick for substituting diminished chords?

-Tricks on converting piano sheet music to Stradella system accordion sheet music.

-What are your personal tricks on learning to play, unfornately for me, I cannot focus on the bellow direction until I make less mistakes as they could affect my tempo.

So that's that, I hope I won't get booted for choosing a B-system chromatic 100 bass accordion. And if not, I hope to hear from you all.

have a good night.
 

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Welcome Woody! Nothing wrong with a 100 bass B bayan that I can see! I believe there are several people in here that play a bayan. "It's not WHAT you play, it's THAT you play" is my motto.

"On the bass side Stradella system, are there hand positions for keys? I tend to play near the the C note and then find myself looking for the flat note thrice in a song that's nowhere near." Not sure what you mean with this question.

Generally speaking, to convert piano music, try to determine what chord(s) are being played in the bass, and just write them in, (unless you recognize them on the fly, in which case, no conversion necessary). You may have to intuit the active chord, and adjust bass runs and solos to what can be accomplished with Stradella.

There are close substitutions for the diminished chords, but I don't know, someone else will answer that question.

My general tip for learning is to keep within your ability. Start with basic tunes that you can learn within a week. Resist the urge to start learning 18 different tunes that are above your ability. And if you think you will continue and become a real cordeen player, learn your chords right away and start right out playing your lower harmony with your thumb, index and middle fingers with your melody right away ("chording"). Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Mostly though, HAVE FUN!!!!! Just my 2 cents, I could be wrong.
 
Welcome Woody! Nothing wrong with a 100 bass B bayan that I can see! I believe there are several people in here that play a bayan. "It's not WHAT you play, it's THAT you play" is my motto.

"On the bass side Stradella system, are there hand positions for keys? I tend to play near the the C note and then find myself looking for the flat note thrice in a song that's nowhere near." Not sure what you mean with this question.

Generally speaking, to convert piano music, try to determine what chord(s) are being played in the bass, and just write them in, (unless you recognize them on the fly, in which case, no conversion necessary). You may have to intuit the active chord, and adjust bass runs and solos to what can be accomplished with Stradella.

There are close substitutions for the diminished chords, but I don't know, someone else will answer that question.

My general tip for learning is to keep within your ability. Start with basic tunes that you can learn within a week. Resist the urge to start learning 18 different tunes that are above your ability. And if you think you will continue and become a real cordeen player, learn your chords right away and start right out playing your lower harmony with your thumb, index and middle fingers with your melody right away ("chording"). Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Mostly though, HAVE FUN!!!!! Just my 2 cents, I could be wrong.

Thanks for the warm welcome. I don't know, it seems like there's a rivalry between C-system and B-system and majority voting that B-system is almost exclusively reserved for eastern European music. Anyway.

my first and only current song is "tarantella" and am glad with the result, it may be a little less suited for a beginner but I really enjoyed the challenge and it got me limber for more music. I'm in need of exercises for the melody side, I'd like to fill in some of my practice time with playing scales along with some bass notes to accompany, but I've been hesitant to do that as I'm really not sure of the traditional B-system fingering and don't want to get good with bad habits. Yeah I'm a very by the book kind of guy.

regarding my question for hand positions, I'm not sure either what I mean. I see how the stradella system is intricately designed to always play the same base sequence (fingering) to play a scale. Most simple traditional songs are played in C or G or D for which the center of my bass side is great for. As I understand, if I played a song that was in a Cflat key, I'd probably be playing most of the rythm section near the 'bottom" of the bass side of the accordion. A semi-terrible example of my confusion is from the song "la cucaracha" (I know its harder than I though it was), the song mainly plays Am D7 Em and G; Then it goes G/B_ (fine) to Bflat dim to D7/A. As Bflat and G are only three buttons apart (two in between) I see why I should quit complaining, but I've seen Bflat and A together in another song of my interest, and so the buttons seem to be far apart and I just feel like there must be a better way. That's all, I guess that's part of the accordion, jumping around to get that special effective note/chord.

I bought a book titled: "Melodic adventures in Bass-Land" by John Caruso and still practice the first four excercises. But I havn't bought a bayan book as they are all exclusively russian songs only. Not that I have a problem with russian music, I love it. just that I don't want to fall down that rabbit hole. You know? I need variety.

Thanks Dingo, glad to be here.
 
There’s an A note right next to the Bb row. It’s the the counter bass on the F row. Sometimes it’s worth looking to see if you can play a bass run elsewhere on the bass side as it may be easier there. Also consider using your little finger to reach down to a minor third bass note, eg you are on C row playing Cm, reach down to the Eb note with your pinky for the altérnate bass.
 
Welcome Woody. There is no "fight" between C system and B system. They are just different.
Whether people play C or B system is mostly (but not exclusively) a regional thing. There are mixed orchestras and ensembles (which negates the regional aspect). In the Netherlands for instance B system used to be the most popular, but it is rapidly being overtaken by C system, which is mostly due to piano-accordion players who first learn the melody bass getting C-system melody bass by default, and then later also get C system when switching to button.
In a distant past I am coming from Belgium where depending on the smaller sub-regions people play C system, B system or even something else ("do2" comes to mind).
As I play C system (coming from piano accordion in the past) I cannot help you much with B system fingering.
 
Thanks for the warm welcome. I don't know, it seems like there's a rivalry between C-system and B-system and majority voting that B-system is almost exclusively reserved for eastern European music. Anyway.

my first and only current song is "tarantella" and am glad with the result, it may be a little less suited for a beginner but I really enjoyed the challenge and it got me limber for more music. I'm in need of exercises for the melody side, I'd like to fill in some of my practice time with playing scales along with some bass notes to accompany, but I've been hesitant to do that as I'm really not sure of the traditional B-system fingering and don't want to get good with bad habits. Yeah I'm a very by the book kind of guy.

regarding my question for hand positions, I'm not sure either what I mean. I see how the stradella system is intricately designed to always play the same base sequence (fingering) to play a scale. Most simple traditional songs are played in C or G or D for which the center of my bass side is great for. As I understand, if I played a song that was in a Cflat key, I'd probably be playing most of the rythm section near the 'bottom" of the bass side of the accordion. A semi-terrible example of my confusion is from the song "la cucaracha" (I know its harder than I though it was), the song mainly plays Am D7 Em and G; Then it goes G/B_ (fine) to Bflat dim to D7/A. As Bflat and G are only three buttons apart (two in between) I see why I should quit complaining, but I've seen Bflat and A together in another song of my interest, and so the buttons seem to be far apart and I just feel like there must be a better way. That's all, I guess that's part of the accordion, jumping around to get that special effective note/chord.

I bought a book titled: "Melodic adventures in Bass-Land" by John Caruso and still practice the first four excercises. But I havn't bought a bayan book as they are all exclusively russian songs only. Not that I have a problem with russian music, I love it. just that I don't want to fall down that rabbit hole. You know? I need variety.

Thanks Dingo, glad to be here.
Hi again Woody,

There's a few answers for you. For books, I started with Mel Bay's Easiest Accordion Book and the "Sedlon" method which can be found online. Many people use the Palmer Hughes method. A little more advanced are the Italian methods by Anzaghi and that other one whose name escapes me. Again, I recommend starting with something super easy, even though you may be annoyed playing simple songs. The Mel Bay is good for that, plus has the music to play along with.

The Tarantella is good, though not that easy, congrats. Yes, the Bb to A jump is long, it takes practice but it can be done and will come in time.

Hang in there, you can do it!
 
The other thing that took me a while to get my head around is that flats and sharps are sort of interchangeable. That is Bb is also A# etc which means that if you are at the upper end of the bass board say, and need something down low, you might be able to find it by going UP rather than down. As an ex piano player, used to playing on a keyboard, that just seemed to be something I would not normally think of. It's a bit like playing in two keys at once. As an piano player, it's not something you typically think about even though you know it.
 
Hello community, you can call me Woody. let me introduce myself and my "new" accordion.

So I'm one of those people that had all the opportunities to let music be center of my life but decided that having 1000 interests and 100 hobbies is better suited for me.
As a child and teenager I played violin, piano, and guitar. Then have also come upon playing bass, djembe, melodion, and the tin-flute. About 7 years ago I got my hands on a 60 button piano accordion and then gave it to a close friend of mine who moved to another continent. I had it all cleaned up, rewaxed and tuned with new leathers. Just to say I had a lot of fun with it and learned quite a couple songs, some of them were "infernal gallop", "if i were a rich man", "the chicken dance" and more.

As I recall the songs were very easy to learn and I was quite good in my opinion. Maybe I'm getting old but it's taking me alot longer to learn songs with my "new" accordion. I'm pretty sure I used to learn accordion songs through videos, something that I'm not as interested in now.

So here we go, I wanted a 100 button 'Bayan' accordion. Don't judge me! I wanted a chromatic button style piano accordion because I'm too familiar with the 'piano' layout and needed to start fresh to get back into reading sheet music. The bayan was cheaper and easily found online so my wife got it for me for my birthday this spring. Ultimately I'd like a cheap freebass bayan one day but want to get familiar and practice on stradella to not be overwhelmed. I want to learn right this time and learn from sheet music. Having this different keyboard has really been fun, though I'm not sure that I have the fingering correctly (melody side) and sometimes find myself jumping a couple rows up or down from lack of available fingers.

a couple questions that I hope this community will be able to help me with are:

-B-system fingering do's and don'ts

-On the bass side Stradella system, are there hand positions for keys? I tend to play near the the C note and then find myself looking for the flat note thrice in a song that's nowhere near.

-Since I have a 100 bass bayan, I'm missing the diminished chord, as I understand I can substitute for the "flat chord" of the true bass note? but then it's so far. is there a better trick for substituting diminished chords?

-Tricks on converting piano sheet music to Stradella system accordion sheet music.

-What are your personal tricks on learning to play, unfornately for me, I cannot focus on the bellow direction until I make less mistakes as they could affect my tempo.

So that's that, I hope I won't get booted for choosing a B-system chromatic 100 bass accordion. And if not, I hope to hear from you all.

have a good night.
I play a B-system chromatic, good to know I'm not alone on here!
 
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