Hearing One's Own Music.

[Aileron]

Hello,
I am very much a novice learner on the PA. When I play a melody without the bass, I can hear the tune. When I play the harmony without the melody, I can hear it. However, when I play both together I hear the melody as a series of notes but cannot hear it as a recognisable tune. This results in a less than satisfactory musical experience. I have a Chinese 72/34/III & a Weltmeister Rubin 60/30/II instrument, both have the same traits, so I presume that it is not due to excessive bass volume.

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know of a remedy?
Regards, Aileron.

 

[Geronimo]

When I play a melody without the bass, I can hear the tune. When I play the harmony without the melody, I can hear it. However, when I play both together I hear the melody as a series of notes but cannot hear it as a recognisable tune. This results in a less than satisfactory musical experience. I have a Chinese 72/34/III & a Weltmeister Rubin 60/30/II instrument, both have the same traits, so I presume that it is not due to excessive bass volume.

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know of a remedy?

Practice, practice, practice. At first on separate hands, always listening while you are playing and trying to bring out most of the expressive content of either hand. You need to practice until the hands are doing their job sort-of automatically and it is just your listening that is shaping the parts into cohesive wholes.

Then you put everything together and practice over and over, listening attentively to one hand at a time and trying to resuscitate its meaning and expressiveness even with the other hand interfering.

It takes a long long time to actually be doing this for both hands (or even three or four voices running simultaneously) at once, so the first challenge is to be able to this at least for one hand while the other is mostly acting mechanically. There is the additional problem of a common bellows for all hands together: this is mostly addressed by primarily serving legato voices with the bellows and learning how you can control the articulation of other voices by button/key travel depth control. Another skill set area not acquired easily in short time.

Bringing out actually polyphonic play instead of fattening up notes with chords is a lot of what nuanced accordion play is about. It also takes work and dedication and practice.

 

[accordian]

I am a beginner myself of 8-9 months and personally I found that playing the song is the first part then once you're confident with it using a metronome. as with myself when using a metronome it sounds better and more accurate. after a little while especially for the bass you start to realize how to make the bass patterns sound better eg. with a waltz on the pah pah you play it a little harder / open the bellows faster. and as geronimo said when playing both hands try to concentrate on one that is going wrong, play that hand on it's own then play it with the other hand but focus on it.