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Having trouble with fingering on the right hand

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Jillity

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I've just started learning the accordion and can play a couple of tunes fairly successfully. I seem to remember when I was a child I had to learn fingering on the piano. My piano teacher taught me to go up and down the scales using the correct fingering. That was so many years ago I've forgotten it all now. Is there anything similar I can do on the accordion and is there a good book or online resource that would teach me the basics? I have lots of friends who play accordion but I'm not allowed to see them due to the lockdown.
 
Just read your post. I think it would help if you used an accordion tutor book. The one I started with was the Sedlon Accordion Method, from memory I think that books 1A and 1B are still in print. Maybe cost around £10 now. These books do give you scales (both right and left hand) and fingering to use. That said, I also used a really comprehensive accordion tutor by Berben (think it is published in Italy) called "Method for Accordion". It goes from beginner to advanced level and has a comprehensive section on all the scales, major, minor, chromatic, and arpeggios and gives the correct fingering to use. However when I bought mine a few years ago it was £25. So it will probably be more expensive now. It is quite an expensive book, but has absolutuely everything in it you need to know about playing the piano accordion. Maybe would be a good investment??? Hope this helps.
 
Just read your post. I think it would help if you used an accordion tutor book. The one I started with was the Sedlon Accordion Method, from memory I think that books 1A and 1B are still in print. Maybe cost around £10 now. These books do give you scales (both right and left hand) and fingering to use. That said, I also used a really comprehensive accordion tutor by Berben (think it is published in Italy) called "Method for Accordion". It goes from beginner to advanced level and has a comprehensive section on all the scales, major, minor, chromatic, and arpeggios and gives the correct fingering to use. However when I bought mine a few years ago it was £25. So it will probably be more expensive now. It is quite an expensive book, but has absolutuely everything in it you need to know about playing the piano accordion. Maybe would be a good investment??? Hope this helps.
Thank you. I'll have a look at those.
 
If you go to this page and scroll all the way down you will find the Sedlon method free with commentary. I used this to great effect when I started like you:


Good luck!
 
Palmer Hughes has lessons from absolute beginner onwards. A lot of their music is dull,but it’s a very respected series,in print since the late fifties.
 
Jility,
Fingering for adult beginners is just another "hassle " to come to grips with ?
Learning scales as an adult is like practicing golf putts in order to improve your motor car driving skills: they're just irrelevant.
Sooner or later, you'll realise that, although there are "fingering principles ", such as avoid using the same finger twice in succession, avoid using the pinky on a black note, use as many fingers as possible ( not just the chosen few) before moving to a different hand position, try to cover the range of notes in a melody in as few hand placements as possible, utilise repeat fingering for repeat runs in a given piece, etc, the fingering for a given piece is largely a matter of personal preference and has little to do with practicing scales, except where ornamentation and jamming is concerned. There they are simply a necessity. ( Not something I'm good at: started too late in life ?)
 
Yes, I tried practising the scales as I did when I was young but it seems to work better if I use my own fingering for different pieces. It's not always easy with an instrument that has to be in an upright position but I'm sure it will get easier with practice.
 
All printed fingerings are, at the end of the day, suggestions. Still, I'm in the "learn the rules before you break them" camp. The fingerings in a well-edited piece of music are worth paying attention to, even if you later decide to change them.
Jeff - I agree with that 90% of the time. However, there are, to me, some editors whose fingerings I simply cannot wrap my hands around (no pun intended). As my father taught me, you have to pick a teacher and learn from him/her. In my case, I continuously learn from my teacher (Charles Nunzio) even though it's been many years since he passed on. I try to get more and more music that he arranged and/or edited. The fingerings are, to me, so good. He also provided the fingerings for a lot of Frosini's pieces.
 
Scales, arpeggios and other fingering exercises are just a tool to help you develop both physical and mental dexterity that can then be applied to any piece that you play. The more you practice them so that they become second nature, the more choices you have when playing a piece and the less you have to think about fingering so that you can concentrate on reading the music or playing the piece.
I don't do scales so much but I will do arpeggios and trills and repeating the same note with a different finger each time.
On the bass side I'll try to stretch the reach for my pinky like a C chord but stretching down to the G by the Ab instead of playing the G above the C or running chromatic scales up and down the bass buttons, stuff like that, anything that puts you outside your comfort zone is good once in a while.
 
I was told to start with easy piano books-if you are playing a piano accordion.
 
I was told to start with easy piano books-if you are playing a piano accordion.
There are some basic differences between PA and piano technique. I would advise to use accordion-specific books.
 
But would this be a problem in just familiarizing oneself with the layout of the keyboard?
 
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