Bellows shake on FR4x?

[davidplaysaccordion]

I will admit that I was never great at doing a bellows shake on my full size acoustic accordion but I could manage it.
But on the Roland FR4x it’s a lost cause. I am trying to learn Vivaldi’s Winter and by the end of it I feel like I’ve done an hour in the gym and even then the effect is pretty pathetic!

Is there any trick do doing it on a Roland or should I just go the gym more?

 

[Dingo40]

A past post by JerryPH:
Post in thread 'Roland FR- line bellows emulation'
https://www.accordionists.info/threads/roland-fr-line-bellows-emulation.7583/post-80420

 

[Dingo40]

A past thread from Reddit:
See first comment by "Omnificunderachiever".

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

 

[JerryPH]

Bellows shakes on a V-accordion... 4X and 8X a bit of a waste of time, IMHO. The 7X was better at this (Pesaturo uses a 7X quite well with bellows shakes, but even he has to exert a much high level of effort on the 8X to get close to, but never reaches the proficiency of the 7X). The reasons for this are actually the technological improvements that Roland made with the newer versions, to get better smoother volume control, they used gentler electronic ramp-up and ramp-downs, that is something that is directly detrimental for a bellows shake because we want INSTANT sound on with a pull or a push.

This is why when you start to do a bellows shake, the volumes take so long to come up, making it sound like the reeds are very slow responding, and hence lower volumes in between directional changes. It has a lot to do with the air pressure sensors and how they react to the pressure differences in push-pull. Before anyone asks, no this is not adjustable, it is hard coded in to the system.

Given that you use volume control 99.5% of the time and a bellows shake 00.5% of the time, it is a fair thing to do. I am not a big fam of "Lady of Spain"... lolol

 

[Valski]

Bellows shakes on a V-accordion... 4X and 8X a bit of a waste of time, IMHO. The 7X was better at this (Pesaturo uses a 7X quite well with bellows shakes, but even he has to exert a much high level of effort on the 8X to get close to, but never reaches the proficiency of the 7X). The reasons for this are actually the technological improvements that Roland made with the newer versions, to get better smoother volume control, they used gentler electronic ramp-up and ramp-downs, that is something that is directly detrimental for a bellows shake because we want INSTANT sound on with a pull or a push.

This is why when you start to do a bellows shake, the volumes take so long to come up, making it sound like the reeds are very slow responding, and hence lower volumes in between directional changes. It has a lot to do with the air pressure sensors and how they react to the pressure differences in push-pull. Before anyone asks, no this is not adjustable, it is hard coded in to the system.

Given that you use volume control 99.5% of the time and a bellows shake 00.5% of the time, it is a fair thing to do. I am not a big fam of "Lady of Spain"... lolol

Not a fan? The all female topless accordion band "Ladies in Pain"?

 

[JerryPH]

female topless accordion band "Ladies in Pain"?

Hahahahaha!!

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Take a look at this, please:

 

[JerryPH]

Please note the effort required to do that on the 4x… have him try to keep that up for 3-4 minutes, and try to get the average 4x user to do it. Also there are 3-4 different types of bellow shakes, those won’t work at all, proven my Cory Pesaturo. Finally, I will bet his settings are not factory.

Just watched this. I’ve played my 8X with settings that gave me moderately leaking bellows. It’s like playing a leaky acoustic, not pleasant., added pulling on an accordion with already stiff bellows… t oo big a compromise for me to be set up to do something that I do once every 5 years, but, if this something you can live with, cool.

Not for me.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

The test for me would be to see how I like playing WITHOUT shaking the bellows but using the serrings recommended in the video. I usually play my 4z with the air regulator closed and the standard curve which would not give me a smooth shake. Some day I’ll try it. But the video is out there for those who might want it.

 

[JerryPH]

I've just spent the last hour actually testing things out on my 8X and will admit that I can get a fairly decent bellows shake, but its still not as easy and clean as on an acoustic and the speeds were much slower. The ramp up and down will prevent the instant on-off and you will miss the first 1-3 shakes before the system wakes up and realizes what you are trying to do. You can do it if it is done SLOWLY (like done in the video), but do it fast, and that number grows way high, like 50-80% of your bellows shakes are not going to be translated because the time it takes for the system to read and process the pressure changes between in and out and the effect is like the sound disappears and volume ramps up. You can *kind of* get around it by starting very slow and building up before you hit a certain speed and it all goes away and cannot respond fast enough

Looking at the video, that was provided by Alan, it shows that very same effect too a bit... a slower bellows shake sounds good, but it starts to crumble when he tries to go faster, like towards the normal speed of a bellows shake as we know and would use it. His last demo is roughly a bit less than half the speed of what we traditionally see bellows shakes done at, not going to happen on a V-accordion.

On top of that, the compromise was that I had the bellows "leaky" enough that I lost about 30-40% of note duration, meaning that for long chords that I could play before in a single direction, now not possible.

Don't even *think* about a 2-corner, 3-corner or 4-corner bellows shake, it is not happening... not even Cory Pesaturo on a 7X could do that, and admitted it as much... while demonstrating bellows shakes on an acoustic at an event that I was at a few years ago.

Try this on your V-accordion:


Note how EASY it should be, and forget about trying to get those accents!

 

[Giovanni]

I've been lucky enough to see Tony Lovello and Dick Contino several times at the Las Vegas accordion convention...amazing bellow shakers. They make it look easy . But it is not !!!!!

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Yes, Tony Lovello must have worked long and hard to perfect those accents while doing a bellows shake on an acoustic. I was able to do something similar with my band but not playing lead, and that was long before I had the 4x. So let me see: If I want to do a bellows shake on the 4x, I have to be comfortable with the changed settings while NOT doing a bellows shake as well. Hmmm. In ensemble playing, I guess I could change settings in the middle of the song, but solo? Anyway, three of the five of us are gone and the fourth isn’t playing any more. But I digress. Yes, I might be able to pull it off given a song that’s ALL bellows shake. How many of those exist?

 

[Valski]

Yes, Tony Lovello must have worked long and hard to perfect those accents while doing a bellows shake on an acoustic. I was able to do something similar with my band but not playing lead, and that was long before I had the 4x. So let me see: If I want to do a bellows shake on the 4x, I have to be comfortable with the changed settings while NOT doing a bellows shake as well. Hmmm. In ensemble playing, I guess I could change settings in the middle of the song, but solo? Anyway, three of the five of us are gone and the fourth isn’t playing any more. But I digress. Yes, I might be able to pull it off given a song that’s ALL bellows shake. How many of those exist?

Hi Alan, Actually back in the 1970's a lot of Chicago style polkas used bellows shake extensively in the chorus. It was much easier on an instrument with fewer bass reed blocks because the left hand side was lighter and therefore easier to achieve. Sometimes we played more than a few of those polkas in an evening. Those days are long gone and that's probably fortunate because my left arm is quite a lot older.

I tried to recreate this on my FR8X however quickly gave up because these instruments were not designed for that function, nor was my arm.

 

[JerryPH]

I've been lucky enough to see Tony Lovello and Dick Contino several times at the Las Vegas accordion convention...amazing bellow shakers. They make it look easy . But it is not !!!!!

To get good at anything is never easy, but if you own a V-accordion and an acoustic (as I do), you will see that the relative effort with each is nowhere the same. The V-accordion requires an even greater effort, and pretty much no matter what you do... your acoustic bellows shakes will always be smoother, require less work and sound better. This coming from someone that is the owner of an 8X.

I hope I've explained myself better.