losthobos said:
Cheers John, yep guys settled for similar stance i have.... Not sure i have understood the italian... Got nasty feeling he said he'd boil my bollocks if i didn't listen properly.... Either way I've got the picture.... Cheers
Terry,
My Italian is pretty much non existent, but I think he said he'd nail them to the church steeple!
Dingo40 said:
John,
Great clip: thanks!
In some ways, the question of "correct" position is paralleled in the way the violin is handled.
In particular, " violinists " tuck the instrument under their chin, while "fiddlers" tuck it into their elbow
Now, this sometimes appears to lead to what may appear to the outsider as needless suffering by violinists.
For example, you can see that tucking the violin under the chin often results in irritation to the skin of the performer's neck, where the violin rests against it during long sessions of playing. But those affected will persist with the affliction rather than change position to the fiddler's hold which doesn't impinge on the neck.
( I'm sure someone will point out that virtuosity in violin playing absolutely necessitates the violin be tucked under the chin
)
Dingo,
Early CBA theory in the western part of mainland Europe was that a violinist can play all orchestral music using just 4 fingers so a CBA accordionist should be able to do the same, without having to worry about all the stretching on a piano type keyboard. I think the fiddle folkies mainly use just 3, but the virtuosi violinists naturally use 4. Either way it took a long time for CBA players to get the "thumbs up" to use all 5 right hand fingers.
Medard Ferrero, whose method was "the" French CBA bible for many years, advised his pupils that "those who persist in using their thumbs won't acquire such a good technique as those who only use 4 fingers." For the type of French accordion music of the day he was perfectly correct on that score.
I mainly used his method for self tuition. However, after a bad hand injury I was obliged to use my thumb, as I couldn't get my ring and little fingers to work independently of each other for years. When I did eventually manage it my right hand was all over the place. I eventually bowed to the cognoscenti who demanded that the thumb be used, and when I eventually took lessons I got fed up with the teacher telling me to get my thumb off the side when I wasn't using it. Therefore, the thumb began to earn its keep on the keyboard, but only when I had the accordion tucked under my chin!
To this day, although I now use whatever fingers are most comfortable, any time I play one of the really old musette standards the thumb is locked on the side of the treble keyboard, as those tunes were written to be played with 4 fingers only, and that's the way I learned them.
At one time the vast majority of accordionists played popular and folk music, and a good percentage of them couldn't read music at all. These days part of what keeps the accordion alive is its use in classical music, and that can only be a good thing for the instrument and its image. However, there is at least a generation or two of us left who never had any aspirations to do it all by the book.
As far as I'm concerned there is no absolute right and wrong way to do anything with an accordion, but I maybe wouldn't want to go to sea in one!
