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Decbox

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Just joined and what a great resource this is. I’ve been playing since age 9 and I’m 48 now and still loving it!!
Originally a PA player I switched to CBA about 20 years ago.
Main instruments are Guerrini Symphony President and Solton Artiste 2000. Both are LMMM and Midi.


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Welcome! And especially welcome as a PA to CBA convert.
We don't have enough of these (my personal opinion). Many people try, and almost equally many people give up.
 
Hello,
Welcome to this accordion forum.
With your experience in accordion playing, I sure want to read your posts on this forum.
How long did it take you to switch from PA to CBA? Autodidact, or did you have a CBA accordion teacher?
 
Welcome decbox! What kinds of music do you like to play?
 
Hey Guys!!
Thanks for the kind comments. I’m going to try to answer some of your questions:-
I’ve been playing since age 9 and I’m 48 now. Started on PA with a teacher but struggled till I was 13 then it all started to fall into place. I live in Ireland so it was Irish and Scottish music first but at age 15 I got an LP of CBA maestro Fintan Stanley and my perception of music was changed. I was really taken by his Continental music.
I continued on PA and had success at Fleadh Ceols which are traditional Irish competitions.
However I had been borrowing a CBA from a friend and finally got one at age 22. It was great initially but eventually became hard work as I knew I had to be as good on it as I was on PA.
I finally made the complete transition to CBA about 20 years ago,though you’re never really finished learning. I play and sing Irish Country Music for a living but I also enjoy Musette Tango Gypsy Jazz and Light Classical pieces when I play at home.
The big difference in making the change for me was how small the “target” became. You can hit a Piano Key in an almost infinite number of places. Not so the button of a CBA!!!!!



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Stephen said:
Hello,
Welcome to this accordion forum.
With your experience in accordion playing, I sure want to read your posts on this forum.
How long did it take you to switch from PA to CBA? Autodidact, or did you have a CBA accordion teacher?

Hi Stephen
I had one lesson on CBA just for scale fingering. The rest I figured out myself. I suppose it took about 5 years as I was working in a band playing PA and keyboards so I couldn’t just leave the PA and start on the CBA. I had to play both and still do.
Although I much prefer the CBA.


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Hi Decbox - and welcome !
It seems the CBA is more widespread in Ireland and Scotland than I imagined. But then perhaps when you're tuned into one instrument you don't notice the others. Is the diatonic played much over there ?
 
Corsaire said:
Hi Decbox - and welcome !
It seems the CBA is more widespread in Ireland and Scotland than I imagined. But then perhaps when youre tuned into one instrument you dont notice the others. Is the diatonic played much over there ?

Hi Corsaire
The diatonic is the “go-to” instrumental for Traditional Irish Music in Ireland and there are very few CBA players here. It’s the least popular of all systems unfortunately.


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Hi Dec,

I heard an LP of Fintan Stanley many years ago, and was rather surprised to learn that he had started to play a French spec CBA (I think it was a Piermaria). He seems to have started a trend, as one or two others whose names I can no longer remember followed suit. About that same time Jimmy Clinkscale in Scotland started to import French CBAs (Cavagnolo and Maugein from France, and Crucianelli and Piermaria from Italy). I know that quite a few of them went to Ireland, but don't know who the players were. In any case it was a short lived experiment. I think he maybe sold a dozen or so, but when the stock ran out it wasn't replaced. I bought one or two French instruments from him, but had to teach myself to play, as no CBA teachers in Scotland were interested in teaching anything other than on 5 row with the same fingering for all scales etc.

I persevered with it for many years but never made anything of it. Scottish audiences aren't interested in listening unless most of your repertoire is "local", which I suppose is fair enough. I just play at home for my own entertainment, and I see you seem to play Continental and other material on your CBA mostly at home yourself. I would imagine that Irish audiences would insist on Irish music as the bulk of their entertainment when an accordion is produced.

I don't think a Scottish player would have "got away with" introducing French instruments with the success that Fintan Stanley did, at least not back then.
 
Maugein said:
I would imagine that Irish audiences would insist on Irish music as the bulk of their entertainment when an accordion is produced.
I think its the same in a lot of places. Here in Brittany they expect to hear Breton music on a diatonic though a CBA player might slip through unnoticed ! Anything else is of less interest, and they always want tunes they know.
 
Decbox said:
Just joined and what a great resource this is. I’ve been playing since age 9 and I’m 48 now and still loving it!!
Originally a PA player I switched to CBA about 20 years ago.
Main instruments are Guerrini Symphony President and Solton Artiste 2000. Both are LMMM and Midi.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hi Maugein 96
Fintan played a Fratelli Crosio at that time. I’ve become quite friendly with him over the years and I’ve seen him with a Zero Sette, Beltuna and more recently a Piermaria which has his Crosio reeds in it. It’s MMM. Although he is revered in certain musical circles in Ireland and rightly so, he never was accepted by the Traditional Irish Music fraternity. But then again by his own admission he’s not a trad player. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20181128/1b9dc1fcbeccf5829a736f2647d16aea.jpg>1b9dc1fcbeccf5829a736f2647d16aea.jpg


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Hi Dec,

I think that's the very LP I mentioned. If it has a souped up version of "Pigalle" on it then it's the same one.

I actually bought the LP from Jimmy Clinkscale, but it disappeared along with my first wife, along with several other of my possessions.

I've seen Fintan on You Tube with another CBA player using a French box at what looked like a wedding venue, either in Ireland or in the US, and he plays a selection of decidedly non-Irish material in the clip. I remember thinking "How did he get away with that with an Irish audience?" In hindsight I think it might have been in the US, as I seem to remember another clip of him with the Tommy Mulvihill band, who I believe is a US born musician of Irish descent.

The only pro Scottish player I know of who openly turned his back on Scottish music for swing/jazz/musette is/was Tommy Kettles, who played a big Cavagnolo Vedette 10 CBA, which I think was LMMH. I heard him playing in a French restaurant in Edinburgh, and he was superb. However he only got a handful of tunes over before the crowd demanded that he play a few Scottish tunes, which he did very much tongue in cheek. A guy at the next table commented that he should ditch the Cavagnolo and get a real accordion that could play Scottish music. I reminded him that he was actually in a French restaurant, and he reminded me that he was 6'4" and 10 years younger than me. His friends were looking for trouble so I never said another word all night.

At that point I decided that I'd better confine myself to playing my "Continental" music at home, as I knew it wouldn't go down as well as the drink at any of the local venues.

I haven't heard much of Fintan recently, but he could certainly handle a CBA, whether he was appreciated by the home crowd or not.
 
maugein96 said:
Hi Dec,

I think that's the very LP I mentioned. If it has a souped up version of "Pigalle" on it then it's the same one.

I actually bought the LP from Jimmy Clinkscale, but it disappeared along with my first wife, along with several other of my possessions.

I've seen Fintan on You Tube with another CBA player using a French box at what looked like a wedding venue, either in Ireland or in the US, and he plays a selection of decidedly non-Irish material in the clip. I remember thinking "How did he get away with that with an Irish audience?" In hindsight I think it might have been in the US, as I seem to remember another clip of him with the Tommy Mulvihill band, who I believe is a US born musician of Irish descent.

The only pro Scottish player I know of who openly turned his back on Scottish music for swing/jazz/musette is/was Tommy Kettles, who played a big Cavagnolo Vedette 10 CBA, which I think was LMMH. I heard him playing in a French restaurant in Edinburgh, and he was superb. However he only got a handful of tunes over before the crowd demanded that he play a few Scottish tunes, which he did very much tongue in cheek. A guy at the next table commented that he should ditch the Cavagnolo and get a real accordion that could play Scottish music. I reminded him that he was actually in a French restaurant, and he reminded me that he was 6'4" and 10 years younger than me. His friends were looking for trouble so I never said another word all night.

At that point I decided that I'd better confine myself to playing my "Continental" music at home, as I knew it wouldn't go down as well as the drink at any of the local venues.

I haven't heard much of Fintan recently, but he could certainly handle a CBA, whether he was appreciated by the home crowd or not.

Hi Maugein
Fintan emigrated to the USA around 1977. He became part of the Irish Entertainment scene in the Boston area. I have a Take the Floor feature on Tommy Kettles somewhere on CD.
I see you mentioned you had a Guerrini CBA with a mad sharp coupler. I have a similar one. Was yours Cassotto?


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Hi Dec,

Sorry,

I ran into a technical problem when I changed my e-mail address a few days ago and had to re-register on the forum.

The Guerrini was my first accordion and it was just a standard LMMM with no cassotto. I bought nearly all my accordions from Jimmy Clinkscale's shops in Melrose and Galashiels. His son still sells bits and pieces of accordion related material from his home address, but the shop closed down years ago.

Everything over here that has three MMM reeds in it is usually window smashing musette, as you are probably aware. I couldn't justify forking out twice the cash for a French box when I was just starting out, so the Guerrini was a compromise. I bought it new about 1986 and it appeared for sale recently in England. The musette in it was too strong for my preference and I never kept it long.

I went on to French boxes after that, and stayed with them. I had to teach myself to play as nobody here was into French musette as a main interest. I struggled a bit then jacked it in completely when I had a bad car accident in 1997 when I nearly lost the third and fourth fingers of my right hand.

However, a few years later I bought another accordion with part of the compensation I received and had to go to Lesson 1 Page 1 all over again until I could get all of my fingers working again. That took about three years, by which time I gave up any hope of entertaining people with the box. I therefore just play at home for my own entertainment. Earlier this year I actually managed to find a CBA teacher who handles most styles, and I go and visit him twice a month for lessons.

He says I get great sounds out of the instrument, but it's just that I need to learn how to turn it into music!

My left hand was neglected after the accident and badly needs work. The right hand is as good as I'll ever get it, and unfortunately that means it's never going to be quite good enough. However I still enjoy pretending to be an accordion player, although most of my pleasure these days is from listening.
 
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