Switching to CBA

[Deleted member 48]

“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
― Albert Einstein

He's also made some quotes I don't second, but this one has some mathematical sense.
The CBA layout has perfect simple repeat pattern, adding always a half tone. It can't get any simpler than that.

True, the PA layout has some repeat pattern at octave scale, but it's not as simple as possible. The number of adult dropouts in piano students I have seen in music school... Very few adults with a family life, starting in their 20s or 30s with piano lessons, reach the end of piano study.
A lot of these quit piano study in the 3rd or 4th year, when... the music pieces with sharps and flats, and modulation and transposition come on the menu... Have seen some advancing very rapidly in 1ste and 2nd year, (actually advancing faster than the children in first years, because they are very motivated), but then pieces become increasingly chromatic... And the brain doesn't quite follow the fingers...

 

[george garside]

“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
― Albert Einstein
.
A lot of these quit piano study in the 3rd or 4th year, when... the music pieces with sharps and flats, and modulation and transposition come on the menu...



Does that mean that those formally studying the box only play tunes in C for the first 2 or 3 years. I expect my students to be fluent in at least FCGD in the first year, but then I keep theory to an essential minimum.

george

 

[Glenn]

One simple beauty of the PA keyboard is that if a note sounds higher then you play a higher up the keyboard.
On the CBA this is not always true as you have to fold that simple linear reaction into the zig-zag of its buttons.
This is why the PA is perhaps easier to start with.

 

[Deleted member 48]

PA favorises cherry picking in piano and piano accordion study, by avoiding sharps and flats in the first years of study. Might be easier to start with, but that could be recruitment tactics for students piano teachers and PA teachers can use...
It would be more honest to tell the students right from the beginning the consequences of staff music notation, keyboard layout, etcetera and the effects on further piano or accordion study. Beginning students can fool themselves easily with piano layout making rapid progress on the white keys in the beginning.
In cauda venenum...
the poison is in the tail
Using the metaphor of a scorpion, this can be said of an account that proceeds gently, but turns vicious towards the end

Many piano and piano accordion tutors begin with simple tunes in C, some in G, F and D.
Eg some Russian and some German accordion tutors will introduce keys having more sharps and flats in an early stage of study, making less difference between C and other keys. In modern temperament there is no reason to make distinction between keys, its just a matter of difference in pitches.

Chopin thought B key to be more ergnomically convenient than C on the piano...

http://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-default-setting-for-western-music-the-C-major-scale-Why-not-A-major
In fact, while C major is an easy key to negotiate for beginners playing beginning music because it uses no native black keys, and is in that respect maybe the easiest key to read, its for precisely this reason that it is a relatively difficult key for pianists at the advanced level in some applications: the lack of black keys makes it a difficult key to grip ergonomically at the keyboard, particularly for quick runs up and down the surface. Having no black keys to lend a tactile topography to the motion of the hands renders playing in C major a bit like ice skating. When teaching scales and exercises to pupils, for example, Chopin would usually reserve C major for last, as he considered it the most technically awkward key in which to play with great velocity.

The fact that the C scale is perfectly linear on the piano is a result of the piano keyboard taking C as a basis for the layout.
The zig-zag of the C scale on the CBA or other zig-zag patterns is not a characteristic of the CBA layout.
The zig-zag is a result of the C scale with its alternate whole step and half step intervals.

On B-system and C-system accordion layout, every note that sounds higher is in logic order on the CBA keyboard. There is no fundamental difference here with the piano layout.
On the accordion higher means going down.
On the piano higher means the hands going to the right side.
Both logical in one direction, see no fundamental difference, no real zig-zag on the CBA. Just 2 rows on the piano, and 3 on the CBA, thats all.

 

[donn]

I guess it's the piano keyboard players who must be the towering intellects.

Have you thought about how Chopin's comment about C major and ice skating would apply to the CBA keyboard?

 

[Deleted member 48]

Honestly, yes, I think piano keyboard layout is more demanding on the player than CBA.
People are just scared by the number of buttons on a CBA, especially when these button are all unicolour.
Personally I have no special gift for musical talent, consider myself to be under average. But my 10 years of CBA study have passed without a problem.
You don't need to be smart to study chromatic button accordion.

About Chopin on the CBA with ice skates, I fear Chopin would rise again from the grave putting his 10 fingers (including thumbs) firmly around the accordionists neck, and probably squeezing with considerable strength...
Chopin is said to have assisted an early accordion recital in the 19th century. He didn't switch to the accordion, and kept playing piano layout, with some success.
Liszt is said to be favorable to 6+6 whole tone layout on the piano, but being a virtuoso on traditional piano layout, he also kept strumming the white and black keys.

 

[simonking]

Very few adults with a family life, starting in their 20s or 30s with piano lessons, reach the end of piano study.

I dont think anyone has ever reached the end of piano study, or any musical instrument for that matter. There is no end!

 

[george garside]

indeed!

G

 

[Firebird]

A lot of these quit piano study in the 3rd or 4th year, when... the music pieces with sharps and flats, and modulation and transposition come on the menu... Have seen some advancing very rapidly in 1ste and 2nd year, (actually advancing faster than the children in first years, because they are very motivated), but then pieces become increasingly chromatic... And the brain doesnt quite follow the fingers...[/quote]

Im not surprised the brain cant move on from 2yrs of C!

Flo Glorions excellent CBA tutor has the student playing in every key under the sun, from page one. You quickly realise everything is possible, and all your neural pathways learn together. Get out there and enjoy it! As well as some hard graft, of course. Ahem.

Im reminded of my daughters violin lessons at school, when they were not allowed to pick up the bow for the first term. Is it any wonder she gave up?

 

[george garside]

I can't understand the reason for piano acc students being restricted to C for ever either unless its just a ploy by teachers to drag things out for remunerative purposes! Same could perhaps be said for exams and grades to lock students in including those who realy only want to be able to play 'jolly tunes' rather than seriarse classical
'pieces'.

In my world of trad and folk music I have no handy means , such as grades' to lock students into long term tuition and so have to help them to make fairly rapid progress to maintain their interest. So as to keys on the continental row 1 scale will do for all or on 3 row 3 scales. On British Chromatic 5 scales aare required. On piano boxes I work on the basis of the white keys being the main road upon which all keys aare based. Therefore C = all on the main road. F & G = main road with one diversion to a black key. D= 2 diversions. etc etc. This works very well and can be understood without any theoretical explanation.

george

 

[donn]

Yeah, when you get into the teaching business and start trying to herd people through the process ... who knows. Clearly there's a psychological aspect to those black keys, but other instruments have their oddities too. For example guitar - tuned in 4ths, except where it isn't. Or woodwinds, loaded with keys according to a design that seems to have been the work of an eccentric madman. But as easy as it is to be terrified by these irregularities, it's almost as easy to accept them as a natural extension of your body. That unconscious mastery is really the basis for any kind of successful playing - I don't believe conscious, cognitive operations have anything to do with getting the notes out, it simply must happen out of sight, in a cerebral domain where algebra and such things are quite irrelevant.

I wonder if adults have a harder time of it partly because over the years our "conscious" linear thought processes become increasingly dominant, so it's harder to let the `right hemisphere' or whatever play its natural role during a challenging situation. I know it's a fact that we lose neural plasticity and so forth, but don't think that fully accounts for the difficulties one encounters.

Anyway, this is sort of close to something I've wondered about - I know several melodeon players who took up the instrument as adults and seem to have managed quite well, despite what seems like it would be a horribly baffling push/pull problem. Is it possible that as preposterous as it sounds, it's actually easier to learn to play common idiomatic tunes on this diatonic system, for some obscure psychological reason?

 

[george garside]

the simple 2 row or 1 row box does seem to be largely intuitive . However I wonder if this is more to do with the lack of theoretical musical background of many taking up the melodeon as adults.

In other words they, not being able to read the dots, start with a clean sheet so to speak!. I specialise in teaching people to play by ear ( including experienced readers) and find those who cant read progress much quicker.


Without benefit of scientific proof or knowledge of the intricate workings of the grey matter I would liken it to a similar process to singing.

To sing you need basic ingredents:

- a tune or tunes stored in the brain. memory or whatever.

- a natural ability to operate the gob to produce a range of sounds.

Given those abilities in effect you think the tune and automatically send the right signals to the gob to reproduce the right sounds in the right order.

Now to the melodeon ( or for that matter most instruments)

the basic ingredients are just the same

- a tune or two in the head

- the ability to fluently operate the melodeon (or other instrument) to produce the sounds in the head.

So without the need for thought about the names of the notes, time signatures, keys etc etc you think it and signals go down the arm to produce the right sounds in the right order.

This basic process can be much improved by developing detailed listening skills across the board.i.e. listen to the detailed phrasing dynamics rhythm of a tune you are 'learning' and just as importantly operate a 'feedback loop'' to constantly check that what you are playing accurately matches whats going on in your head.

The main problem for readers wanting to learn to play by ear is that of totally eliminating imagined visual input i.e. picturing the dots and or keyboard chart and moving over to a totally aural process!

or something on those lines!!

george :ch

 

[Deleted member 48]

quote: "I know several melodeon players who took up the instrument as adults and seem to have managed quite well, despite what seems like it would be a horribly baffling push/pull problem. Is it possible that as preposterous as it sounds, it's actually easier to learn to play common idiomatic tunes on this diatonic system, for some obscure psychological reason?"

Absolutely, the melodeon is very popular with adults and people starting with accordion at 50+ or 60+. Nice to see them enjoying to play music at old age. Absolutely true.
In his book in German, "Das Akkordeon oder die Erfindung der populären Musik: Eine Kulturgeschichte", Christoph Wagner mentions the 1-row melodeon with 2 basses was a major breakthrough for democratisation in music making.
The 1 row melodeon was a diatonic bubble the player couldn't escape from. It was impossible to play out of key. Precisely this characteristic made it so popular.
People didn't have to study solfège, staff notation, didn't have to take accordion lessons. In an hour they started playing tunes, few could tell if they had been playing for years or for minutes/hours.
The reverse being you're very limited in music choice in a 1 row diatonic accordion.

Playing jazz music with variations on a 3-row diatonic 18 bass accordion, I have seen it in concerts by the best French Castagnari and Saltarelle virtuosos, but it would take me years or decades to achieve this on a 3-row diatonic.
On my CBA it's a matter of a few weeks or days.

The choice of what accordion type to learn, for me, depended on:
what kind of music genres do I want to play? (answer: any music genre)
what is the easiest possible keyboard layout to learn pieces of all difficulty levels? (for me: 5-row or 3-row CBA)
what's the time frame of my study in music school? (in my country it was 10 years)
Most important of all: who am I going to ask for advice? (back in 1989, being already 17 years at that moment, answer for me: professional accordion teachers with a higher conservatory grade for accordion)

Back in 1988/1989, me and a friend, before actually entering music school, we brainstormed a few weeks about these questions, and compared layouts on paper sheets.
After this we both went for CBA C-system.

My experiences in music schools are a lot of people are motivated by listening to a record, a CD, ... or overwhelmed by a concert performance. Then they decide in an instant they also want to play like this artist.
Without any form of analysis on paper, or a question list with goals and how to achieve these goals, and without consulting professionals like teachers, they start something, and sometimes sadly, to discover much later there may have been an easier or more rational path to achieve the goals with less effort.

I do have respect for amateur musicians who achieve their dreams whatever the cost and effort, but for me, with no special gift or talent for music, I needed some reflexion before starting accordion study.
Did not regret loosing a few weeks of brainstorming before starting, these weeks have actually helped me a lot in achieving the goals without too much effort.
The CBA as a sort of layout matrix system is almost an automatic calculating machine in itself.
Playing also the Hayden duet concertina, also a regular interval layout, I feel the same, the layout system is a no brainer. Never took Hayden-Wicki duet concertina lessons with a teacher, yet no problem in playing beginner's tunes. Suppose my CBA experience helped me in playing this concertina. Learning to play the melody side of this concertina took only a few days.

I think the best advice I could give to those who want to switch to CBA is, go and ask several professional accordion teachers for advice. First of all, how old are you? (Let's be honest, no music instrument is easy to learn when a complete beginner is over 40-50-60 years of age, unless you have some experience in playing music instruments before). How much time do you want to invest in the transition period?
Take some time to reflect before starting.

 

[Glenn]

people starting with accordion at 50+ or 60+. Nice to see them enjoying to play music at old age

I wont rise to the bait :lol:

no real zig-zag on the CBA. Just 2 rows on the piano, and 3 on the CBA, thats all.

By the way, I see the PA as one row only. You move up 1cm and you get the next note.
On the B-griff CBA in my possession I have the distinct feeling of flowing across three rows as I play (not very well I admit) but in my mind thats how I view the difference.

 

[Nonny Mouse]

Can you borrow a CBA for an hour/day to see how it feels? If it feels good, then go for it!

Off the topic, but feel I should reply to this one -

Stephen wrote:
"Very few adults with a family life, starting in their 20s or 30s with piano lessons, reach the end of piano study."

By this I assume you mean a grade 8 or the equivilant?

Very few adults with a family life reach the end of piano study BECAUSE they have a family life. 8-10 years of being taught lessons, passing grades, inbetween doing everything else life throws at you costs alot, both in time and money. Over the course of 10 years your life can change an enormous amount. Music is seen as a luxury and will be the first thing to go if times are tight.

It's unlikly that the people who drop out stop playing, at that stage you should be able to take yourself further. Maybe not quicker - but is it a race to the top?

 

[Deleted member 48]

True, drop out rates are due to multiple factors, the family life being only one of these.
By reaching the end of accordion or piano study, I mean ending the whole cycle and passing the final exams.
Just noticed in the past a lot quit when the pieces in keys with more than 2 sharps or flats, even more than 1 sharp or flat, are on the menu.

Borrowing a CBA for a couple of hours without a professional present, can scare off people used to the piano keyboard. Precisely because it will feel a bit strange in the beginning when you play the C Major scale on a CBA.
Many would drop it instantly before even taking a look at the layout on paper, because of this new feeling or emotional response to an unfamiliar new layout.

When performing music, emotions make the muses weep
when choosing a music instrument purely emotional, it sometimes make the teachers weep, and maybe also the family members? lol
The choice of music instrument to express my musical emotions, I wanted that choice to be the result of a balanced opinion.

But without a doubt my first accordion lessons came with some emotional effect on some family members when football or Eurosong was on TV.

 

[donn]

the simple 2 row or 1 row box does seem to be largely intuitive . However I wonder if this is more to do with the lack of theoretical musical background of many taking up the melodeon as adults.

I'm sure there are several factors, not least the more accessible repertoire - the player who could well be satisfied to play a basic set of tunes that are quite well suited to the instrument, will see the light at the end of the tunnel quite soon after beginning study. My point is just that compared to the black keys on the piano keyboard, the push/pull mechanics of a melodeon seem like they'd be quite terrifying, but for all that, it seems to present no real problem, or maybe even somehow is an advantage in some obscure way.

 

[Anyanka]

I'd support the borrowing of a CBA - I started out with a cheap B-system from eBay because I couldn't find one to borrow! No teacher, no books, just trying to work out tunes that I'd not coped with on the PA. After two days of messing about with it, I knew that I wanted to make the switch. I didn't worry too much about scales at that stage.

re playing only in C for the first couple of years... that strikes me as very very strange. Classical piano tuition includes other keys both in scale and tune selections almost from the very beginning.

 

[george garside]

Lets not forget that a very significant number of box players - of all types of box- and whether dotists or earists - have absolutely no interest iin or yearning for ''accordion study'' whatever that may mean and even less interested in passing 'exams and grades''.

They are not substandard or inferior players just as grade eighters are not neccesarily superior players.

Unless one is intending to be a full time professional musician the only reason for playing has to be enjoyment and enjoyment is the driving force for many to whom the thought of ''study'' and ''exams and grades'' would be a monumental turn off.

as an example the current Scottish senior accordion champion and prodigy 19 year old Brandon Mcphee does not read the dots! His famous chart topping forebear Sir Jimmy Shand on being asked by a smart arse commentator 'are you a good reader Mr Shand' replied ''Aye laddie, I can read the dots for any tune I already know!''

Neither school is superior and neither is inferior it just a question of personal choice.

george :ch

 

[TomBR]

The push-pull system is very intuitive, for some....
It doesn't take long for most people to get a tune out of a harmonica if it takes their fancy.

Conversely, my partner (shortly before we got together) wanted to try concertina and got an Anglo (push-pull) but it made no sense to her. It may not be related but she has a classical background on piano and baroque recorder. I suggested a change to English concertina (unisonoric) and she's loved it ever since.

(I only say baroque recorder because she plays at a high level, not "Amazing Grace" at school!)