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CBA method for begginers

  • Thread starter Thread starter vaeel
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vaeel

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Hello

What do you think is the "best" method for complete begginers learning c system. I was looking at the maugein books beacuase of the roxys YT videos.

What are your thoughts, what books do you recommend?
 
Presumably you are intending to follow a formal (exams and grades etc) course of learning. If however you are not I would recommend a lot of scale practice using a keyboard chart ( plenty on internet) only one scale needed on a 5 row and 3 on a 3 row. Once you can nip up and down scales without thinking you have the 'roads' along which any tune can only go up and down.

The other vital thing is to get the hang of bellows control - the bellows are not a bloody great air pump but are the very soul of the box as they are the main volume/dynamics control


george
 
Hi vaeel,

The vast majority of available methods for C system CBA have been written by French players, and there are quite a few of them.

The biggest issue with CBA concerns the fingering, and if you've been watching YT, you'll probably already have noticed that hardly any two players use exactly the same fingers on the same notes.

Very few people will have had the time or patience to work through all of the available method books to make a decision as to which is the best one.

I have seen Manu Maugain's method, which runs into three volumes and has a CD to accompany each one. It is probably one of the most expensive CBA methods available, although it is very well presented.

One of the main criticisms of all of the French CBA method books concerns the total omission of exercises using the 5th or inner row, and from memory Manu Maugain's book is the same as the others in that respect. In fact I'm almost certain he plays 4 row accordions. This is a throwback to the time when CBAs only had three rows of treble buttons, and to this day most CBA accordions in France only have 4 rows. The 5th row has always been available as an option, but its use has been at the discretion of the player. In short if you want to use the 5th row you have to work out the options yourself.

What this means is that if you learn the French way you'll be keeping to the outer three rows, and only using your 4th row occasionally for chords, and to avoid situations where your hand would be in an awkward position if you stayed on the first row.

The advantage of French methods is they require you to build strength in all of your right hand fingers, and the thumb and little fingers are both used as auxiliaries, with most of the playing been done with the middle three fingers of the right hand. The little finger is actually used more often than the thumb, and you'll see a lot of French players resting their thumbs on the side of the treble keyboard during normal playing. This is not "wrong", it's just the way they do it, but it doesn't look natural to non-French types who want that thumb to be one of the main players, like they do with PA.

Hope that hasn't put you off Manu Maugain's method. He teaches you to use the thumb to play scales and chords, but it is a French method after all. I will say that his fingering makes more use of the thumb than most of the other French methods I have seen.

I haven't really seen any non-French CBA method books, and I believe that Galliano's effort may be geared more towards what people expect of an "international" method. His method is just one volume with a CD but it is expensive for what it is, and has its critics.

I'm not a teacher or a pro player, but have had an interest in French accordions for a long time. Hopefully somebody with teaching experience over all 5 rows of CBA will pick up on this and be able to offer you further advice from a practical point of view.

There is no "correct" fingering for CBA. You have to use the method books to get a grounding, then adapt your fingering to the playing styles you will develop as you progress. Please don't do what most of we self taught people do. That is to get fed up part way through a method book, and decide to change to another method. That will set you back months if not years.

As George has commented, don't forget about the bellows. I did and still suffer the consequences. Most method books will show you which direction to move the bellows in each exercise. Pay attention to that, and use the air button when necessary. No point in trying to repeat a passage with your bellows already at near full stretch on your left arm.
 
indeed there is no single 'best' fingering method and the choice of which finger to use for which button can also vary from tune to tune depending on the note before and the note after and/or where right hand chords are being added.

as to using the 5th row as far as I am aware its main ( but not exclusive) function is to enable 12 keys to be played using only one scale. Learning 3 scales on 3 outer rows is a better way to go in which case the 4th row and indeed the 5th can be used to simplify difficult bits of fingering here and there.


george
 
Also, during the Roxy's video about learning the CBA, he recommends that you work through all of the Palmer-Hughes books, even though they pertain to the Piano Accordion, after you have some experience with CBA fingering. His reasoning was that one must crawl before walk before run and the slow progression of Palmer-Hughes allows that to happen gracefully.Work through both.
 
george garside post_id=64178 time=1541761788 user_id=118 said:
indeed there is no single best fingering method and the choice of which finger to use for which button can also vary from tune to tune depending on the note before and the note after and/or where right hand chords are being added.

as to using the 5th row as far as I am aware its main ( but not exclusive) function is to enable 12 keys to be played using only one scale. Learning 3 scales on 3 outer rows is a better way to go in which case the 4th row and indeed the 5th can be used to simplify difficult bits of fingering here and there.


george


George,

A teacher in Scotland, whose name I now cannot remember, prepared his own C system CBA fingering system for use with the Sedlon Method. The book was sold at various Scottish accordion outlets with loose leaf fingering inserts, and he used the same fingering for every scale across the 5 rows. I remember Morag Robertson showing me the books (three volumes) at her shop near Falkirk in Scotland.

She exlained to me that most Scottish students at that time (late 80s) used the Sedlon method, but needless to say I opted for a French book by Medard Ferrero, which gave the thumb the big thumbs down. Aside from the fact that it is now very old fashioned, you needed fingers like elastic to be able to cope with the fingering he used, so it wasnt the ideal choice for the mature student.
 
StargazerTony post_id=64180 time=1541765800 user_id=2434 said:
Also, during the Roxys video about learning the CBA, he recommends that you work through all of the Palmer-Hughes books, even though they pertain to the Piano Accordion, after you have some experience with CBA fingering. His reasoning was that one must crawl before walk before run and the slow progression of Palmer-Hughes allows that to happen gracefully.Work through both.

I had never heard of the Palmer-Hughes accordion method until a few years ago, but it seems to be the main learning tool in North America.

It may be as well to mention that most English language accordion method books are equally suitable for PA and CBA. The only thing different about CBA is the fingering in the early stages. Once you get your preferred fingering sorted out, then any accordion method would do. Sheet music for accordion doesnt have any headers saying it was written specifically for PA, CBA, or diatonic.

A popular choice with Italian CBA players is the Anzaghi method, which was written for PA, but also shows fingering for CBA in the lessons. A bit expensive (usually about $50 US on eBay from Europe), but it is one of the few which have stood the test of time. Tunes in the exercises are obviously Italian. Dont buy it from Italy as the shipping charges are crippling from there.

 

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I'm working through the Galliano book. It sometimes makes some sudden jumps in difficulty from one page to the next.
I'm also using the Palmer-Hughes PA books.

I have Gary Dahl's book of Italian songs for PA. That's been really helpful because I have to convert all the right hand fingering to CBA, so I've learned a lot through that process. Probably way too advanced for my level (especially when I add the left hand) but I'm enjoying it. And because I have a Roland with headphones I can play the songs 20 times in a row without driving my family nuts.
 
Can u pm me on this I can sort you on c system. I have no idea about B.
John from Dublin.
 
The Strumenti e Musica website wrote in march 2018 about a new CBA C-system tutor (published february 2018).


https://www.strumentiemusica.com/en...riff-by-biscardi-crisafulli-gianforte-mazzei/

On Amazon, it says multilingue (In Italian and English ?), sadly no inside pics of the contents:
https://www.amazon.it/fisarmonica-Sistema-pianoforte-bottoni-italiana/dp/8894334864

https://www.ibs.it/metodo-per-fisarmonica-sistema-pianoforte-libro-vari/e/9788894334869


Metodo per fisarmonica. Sistema pianoforte e a bottoni (C-griff). Ediz. italiana e inglese. Vol. 1

Ivano Biscardi,Salvatore Crisafulli,Giuseppe Gianforte




Editore: Aloe

Collana: Metodi e didattica

Anno edizione: 2018

In commercio dal: 20 febbraio 2018

Pagine: 168 p., Brossura

EAN: 9788894334869
 
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