hais1273 said:
Interesting clip. Thankyou Liberty Bellows in the US also have a number of clips about how to play Balkan music . I've been working on 7/8 time with my accordion teacher, I'm not sure the right hand fingering is any better or worse that any other demanding "Folky" piece, but what I find very difficult is the uneven rhythm 123 12 12 or 1*3 1* 1* . ( Asterix = a rest) A the moment my attempt at Jovano Jovanke and Ajde Jano just sound like loads of notes in a row and not much like music at all. Oh well, more practice.
Hi hais,
You'll see from my last post that I had jumped the gun and presumed that nobody would be interested. There is an error issue with the player's website and it would probably be best not to try and visit it.
There is no way in this world I could learn timings and rhythms from a teacher. I'm happy enough with approximations but in my experience teachers want it precisely as it's written down, and I haven't got the patience for that.
As ever with accordion I always have problems with the left hand.
I don't really bother with what the time signatures are, as I can tell by ear whether I'm on the ball, or miles off it.
I dabbled with Greek bouzouki and you sort of get a feel for those "oriental" aspects of Bulgarian and other Balkan music. I opine that only one person in a million would be able to play that sort of music to a professional standard without having been brought up listening to it from a very young age.
I love all sorts of Balkan music, although when I tried to learn it from the scores in a Hal Leonard book it just never worked for me. The player in the accompanying CD kept adding grace notes that weren't in the score, and being mainly an ear player I just couldn't work it all out. The scores were effectively over simplified.
As you say, practice would appear to be the key, although a native Bulgarian teacher would probably make a huge difference. Fine if you want to invest a lot of time and effort into learning that particular sort of music, but most of us like to vary it a bit, so we don't get into any one particular style enough to make a real job of it.
It is probably better to persevere with a few tunes that you gradually get to know, like the two you mention, otherwise you end up all over the place with bits of this and that, like I frequently do.
I've started off on many musical adventures with the accordion and got nowhere with the vast majority of them, largely because they are too far away from the styles that have become natural to me.