Accordion music fill-ins.

[Jimmy Lawlor]

Please I would like to be able to play a fill-in whenever the melody note consists of a tied dotted minim or a semibreve or similar. I can only play from sheet music and long melody notes tend to be monotonous. Are there any such accordion publications available perhaps ? Thanks any suggestions would be greatly appreciated Jimmy Lawlor.

 

[debra]

Fill-in has been used for centuries, at least in some sense. In baroque music there was almost always a "continuo" part which consists of the bass part plus a scheme of chords. Whoever played the continuo had to follow the chord scheme but could "fill in" whatever (s)he wanted.
When I arrange baroque music for accordion ensemble I make sure to include the continuo part and do precisely what you ask for: use melodies to fill in the gaps, where either other parts have rests or have monotonous long notes.
Your problem is that you "can only play from sheet music". You are certainly not unique in this. Improvisation is a talent of few rather than many. (And that's why I include the filled-in improvisations in my arrangements.)
So generally I have rather bad news: there is not much sheet music where the places normally filled in by improvisation are already filled in by a "ready-made improvisation".

 

[JerryPH]

Welcome to the forum!

How about posting the name of and a video of all or part of the song for us to see exactly what you are talking about? Paul is correct in that if the additions you seek are not there, that it is difficult to find music that has it... that however does NOT mean that you cannot place it in there yourself, right?

 

[jozz]

there is software that actually does this

you feed it a chord progression, time signature, rythm, and tempo and it will hand you an A.I. fueled "improvisation"

I forgot how it's called but you might Google it

it can give you somewhere to start

 

[Jimmy Lawlor]

Thanks so much for your reply, it is much appreciated.
It seems one needs to be very gifted, which sadly I'm not.
I note a great suggestion from JerryPH in his reply to my query suggesting if I post a particular tune
that perhaps someone on the forum would be kind enough add a few notes to help me sound a bit more "professional" ..This I will try to do ASAP..
Again thanks, most grateful. Jimmy L.

 

[Jimmy Lawlor]

there is software that actually does this

you feed it a chord progression, time signature, rythm, and tempo and it will hand you an A.I. fueled "improvisation"

I forgot how it's called but you might Google it

it can give you somewhere to start

That sounds like something which would be perfect for me thanks for your reply and great suggestion, I will try to track it down on Google. Jimmy L.

 

[Jimmy Lawlor]

Welcome to the forum!

How about posting the name of and a video of all or part of the song for us to see exactly what you are talking about? Paul is correct in that if the additions you seek are not there, that it is difficult to find music that has it... that however does NOT mean that you cannot place it in there yourself, right?

Thanks JerryPH. I will try to post one simple tune so that the forum can understand better what I am trying to explain. Not being blessed with a musical ear I suffer greatly from a lack of confidence, which means I worry a lot in case I play notes that are musically incorrect..Jimmy.

 

[Jimmy Lawlor]

I'm trying to post this foxtrot tune so that you might understand and advise me about filling in or perhaps add suitable notes under the tied minims and semibreves for me..Thanks a ton..
I'm not if this will post for me,

 

[JeffJetton]

It seems one needs to be very gifted, which sadly I'm not.

Nope, you don't need to be gifted. Well, you do need the gift of motivation and perseverance, but that's about it.

Anyone who is able to ad-lib a nice fill in the appropriate circumstances has spent a lot of time doing the following beforehand in order for that to be possible:

• Listening to fills that other people do in similar circumstances.
• Experimenting with trying to replicate those fills and also creating fills of their own (even if they are just random notes at first!)
• Evaluating how well they did, remembering the things that worked, making adjustments to the things that didn't work, and then going back to listening and experimenting all over again.

So my first advice to you would be to simply try playing something during those long, monotonous spots. Play anything at all. It doesn't have to be good. Just put your fingers on some notes and see if you like what happens. If not, try something else.

Keep at it long enough and you'll eventually get something that works. It might not be the best possible thing to play, but it won't be bad at least! More importantly, you'll have done some valuable practice and started to develop a new skill.

Again, everyone who is a good "filler" was, at one point, a lousy "filler" (no different from you) who did this sort work in order to become good.

There are a lot of tricks and rules-of-thumb that you will learn though. I'll give you one for free. Notes from the major pentatonic scale often sound good over a major chord. So, over that first F major chord, you could try playing any of the following notes, in various combinations and octaves: F G A C D

 

[Jimmy Lawlor]

Thanks Jeff for all of that both the encouragement and about the pentatonic scale. I will have a go at what you suggest and do some experimenting. I am much obliged. Jimmy.

 

[Lucio76]

I would say that some tunes have to be "boring". Some melodies could lose all their beauty without long notes.




As you can hear, even when there're a lot of instruments, the melody is clean and long notes are untouched by the arrangement.
On that fox I don't see any improvement in adding fills on long notes if you play it by yourself.

Fill-ins are fine when you are playing with someone else because they work as embellishments while the melody is still played by another instrument.

Anyway, if you want to add something to those notes I would suggest focusing just on rhythm and/or harmony:

- play the long notes with your pinky and add some rhythmic accents playing chords with the remaining fingers.
or
- harmonize the melody

I wouldn't try anything more on this song.

 

[Jimmy Lawlor]

Thank you Lucia 76. Maybe I'm being busy making work for myself, I just thought I should do more that just sitting on the one note for so many beats ! I appreciate your remarks and advice and I'll try touching the appropriate chord, in time and under the melody note..

 

[NickC]

I struggle with trying to make arrangements more interesting. I agree with Lucio. In this particular case, there are a lot of harmony lines on the melody. I would start by trying to emulate the vocals. That will fill it up a lot.

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

My typical technique is to chordify the single notes, that is play the underlying chord as beats or an arpeggio under (or above) the single notes or add a lower third note to make each note into a two note chord, EG instead of say G,A,B (in key of G for example) I'd play G+E (or G and D, depends on what the left hand is doing), A+D#, B+G etc, and also to add 'twiddly bits' as I call them around some of the note transitions, eg instead of D to E, go D, D# E or maybe D, D# E, F then back to E etc. The accidental notes are so quick they don't really clash with the underlying chord.


At the risk of embarrasing myself, here are a couple of quick attempts.
First is on the Roland with a Bk7M backing module and the second is without the backing module.

 

[Lucio76]

The second video shows what I was talking about.
Great!

 

[Jimmy Lawlor]

Thank you David and Lucia. Your recordings are very good and informative David, you certainly make the tune much more interesting... I tend, to play it much slower which 0f course means the long notes are very long and monotonous... consequently I thought a few fill-ins were called for.. I'll have a go at it again, a bit faster and try to do as you suggest ..Thanks again Jimmy.

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

I didn’t listen to it before I played it so had no idea how fast or slow it was supposed to go so I just picked a tempo and went for it. ‘Slow’ for me is a 160 tempo lol I always tend to play too fast and struggle to slow down but I’ll have another go playing at a slower tempo but it’ll probably be very similar.

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

On that record recording the 'fills' are coming from the backing music. So while the voice holds the main note, the backing orchestra is moving around it and towards the next phrase.

 

[JerryPH]

Thank you Lucia 76. Maybe I'm being busy making work for myself, I just thought I should do more that just sitting on the one note for so many beats ! I appreciate your remarks and advice and I'll try touching the appropriate chord, in time and under the melody note..

It's times like this that the words of some imaginary guitar player always sing in my head... "the music's gotta live man... it's gotta breathe:. Every time I see any musician trying to dazzle someone with "useless extra notes", that pops in to my head.



There is a time for blazing speed, a time to impress... but doing that on a song where it takes away from the story or the feeling it evokes... never a good idea.

 

[jozz]

It's times like this that the words of some imaginary guitar player always sing in my head... "the music's gotta live man... it's gotta breathe:. Every time I see any musician trying to dazzle someone with "useless extra notes", that pops in to my head.



There is a time for blazing speed, a time to impress... but doing that on a song where it takes away from the story or the feeling it evokes... never a good idea.

here's another great example (albeit a drummer)

cracks me up everytime!