Three row chromatic fingering?

[AimlessWanderer]

Im not suggesting tuning it yourself

I havent tried tuning yet, and I wouldnt want to learn on something I want to play regularly, at the moment Id definitely have retuning done by the professionals.  I just measured the current tuning to see if anything was wildly out.

Apparently Android emulators for linux are a thing: Anbox for example.

Ahhh... gotcha. Yeah, the hand held tuner will be good enough for that, I reckon. Ill certainly look into that emulator biz too, and see if I can get them to talk to each other.

---

Glad its all falling into place as it were. Im sure I read somewhere that it is possible to tune the reed blocks without the instrument being present, but they often require tweaking after they are put back inside the instrument. 

Dont know how accurate you need the tuning to be, and maybe somebody else has the scientific answer to the situation, i.e. it may be necessary to take or send the entire instrument away for a retune, and not just the reed blocks on their own. 

The reeds that dont sound may be stuck or broken. If they arent broken you can often free them by blowing hard through them like a mouth organ, until they free off. Dont tell anybody I suggested that as theyll tell you that you could damage the reeds by wetting them with saliva. I wouldnt do it on a brand new £30,000 apparatus with chin registers, free bass, tone chambers, alarm clock and a coffee machine built in, but you havent got a lot to lose on the box youre working on. If you do free them off chances are theyll have gone out of tune anyway, but you never know.  

I always keep a multi purpose specially built precision tool for all of my more fiddly jobs. 

Its called a 10lb hammer, and I learned how to use it to good effect on building sites in the 60s. It isnt infallible, and sometimes you need to use it twice in particularly delicate situations. Its great for resolving every type of fine engineering difficulty imaginable. Just thought Id mention it as an option. Ive a feeling Id have used it by now, but Im sure your patience and aptitude are far greater than mine.  

A year or two back a member bought a brand new expensive top of the range accordion that was vibrating on the bass side. She steadfastly refused to identify the maker or the model but asked several pertinent questions that had a good few of us racking our brains and searching the internet on her behalf. Parts were shipped back and forth across the Atlantic, but alas the problem never went away. This went on for a good few weeks. Every time another question, and every time refusal to identify the make and model. I decided I had the answer, and I think you can guess what it was. 

I banned myself from the forum for a while before the mods got involved, and I dont know how it all turned out. 

I wasnt suggesting you did the same, but 10lb hammers are relatively cheap at the moment!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10Lb-4-5...-Handle-Demolition-Post-Driving/143230620806?

10lb lump basher? You amateur!

Splitting maul!!! All the joys of a lump basher, with added force multiplier option. For safety reasons it should never be used sober, and preparation with cheap lager is recommended. Being hit in the face by flying lumps of debris hurts too much otherwise.

I think Im more stubborn than patient, but it still equates to not giving up easily. For gunk shifting, on a jammed reed Ill do the same as I do with a harmonica, and plink the reed with the toothpick off a Victorinox pocket knife. I aint putting my gob anywhere near it! Even with cheap lager to wash the nasty taste away The same patience might not have been afforded to the uncooperative member who bought the new box, and decided to torment folks here, instead of returning it back to the seller/manufacturer under warranty. If its brand new and top of the line, you dont need to ask any questions off anyone. That privilege only applies to the fearless numpties like me, who buy stuff online because its cheap, never having held it, heard it, or knowing anything about it.

Accuracy of tuning isnt a priority for me, to be honest. The only person Ill be tormenting is myself, and possibly any neighbours that work night shifts. If it sounds like I probably pressed the right key, and not like I trapped a cats tail in the bellows, thats good enough for me. The tuning shifting a few cents due to the acoustics of the enclosure, wont stop me having fun.

 

[maugein96]

Im not suggesting tuning it yourself

I havent tried tuning yet, and I wouldnt want to learn on something I want to play regularly, at the moment Id definitely have retuning done by the professionals.  I just measured the current tuning to see if anything was wildly out.

Apparently Android emulators for linux are a thing: Anbox for example.

Ahhh... gotcha. Yeah, the hand held tuner will be good enough for that, I reckon. Ill certainly look into that emulator biz too, and see if I can get them to talk to each other.

---

Glad its all falling into place as it were. Im sure I read somewhere that it is possible to tune the reed blocks without the instrument being present, but they often require tweaking after they are put back inside the instrument. 

Dont know how accurate you need the tuning to be, and maybe somebody else has the scientific answer to the situation, i.e. it may be necessary to take or send the entire instrument away for a retune, and not just the reed blocks on their own. 

The reeds that dont sound may be stuck or broken. If they arent broken you can often free them by blowing hard through them like a mouth organ, until they free off. Dont tell anybody I suggested that as theyll tell you that you could damage the reeds by wetting them with saliva. I wouldnt do it on a brand new £30,000 apparatus with chin registers, free bass, tone chambers, alarm clock and a coffee machine built in, but you havent got a lot to lose on the box youre working on. If you do free them off chances are theyll have gone out of tune anyway, but you never know.  

I always keep a multi purpose specially built precision tool for all of my more fiddly jobs. 

Its called a 10lb hammer, and I learned how to use it to good effect on building sites in the 60s. It isnt infallible, and sometimes you need to use it twice in particularly delicate situations. Its great for resolving every type of fine engineering difficulty imaginable. Just thought Id mention it as an option. Ive a feeling Id have used it by now, but Im sure your patience and aptitude are far greater than mine.  

A year or two back a member bought a brand new expensive top of the range accordion that was vibrating on the bass side. She steadfastly refused to identify the maker or the model but asked several pertinent questions that had a good few of us racking our brains and searching the internet on her behalf. Parts were shipped back and forth across the Atlantic, but alas the problem never went away. This went on for a good few weeks. Every time another question, and every time refusal to identify the make and model. I decided I had the answer, and I think you can guess what it was. 

I banned myself from the forum for a while before the mods got involved, and I dont know how it all turned out. 

I wasnt suggesting you did the same, but 10lb hammers are relatively cheap at the moment!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10Lb-4-5...-Handle-Demolition-Post-Driving/143230620806?

10lb lump basher? You amateur!  

Splitting maul!!! All the joys of a lump basher, with added force multiplier option. For safety reasons it should never be used sober, and preparation with cheap lager is recommended. Being hit in the face by flying lumps of debris hurts too much otherwise.

I think Im more stubborn than patient, but it still equates to not giving up easily. For gunk shifting, on a jammed reed Ill do the same as I do with a harmonica, and plink the reed with the toothpick off a Victorinox pocket knife. I aint putting my gob anywhere near it! Even with cheap lager to wash the nasty taste away The same patience might not have been afforded to the uncooperative member who bought the new box, and decided to torment folks here, instead of returning it back to the seller/manufacturer under warranty. If its brand new and top of the line, you dont need to ask any questions off anyone. That privilege only applies to the fearless numpties like me, who buy stuff online because its cheap, never having held it, heard it, or knowing anything about it.

Accuracy of tuning isnt a priority for me, to be honest. The only person Ill be tormenting is myself, and possibly any neighbours that work night shifts. If it sounds like I probably pressed the right key, and not like I trapped a cats tail in the bellows, thats good enough for me. The tuning shifting a few cents due to the acoustics of the enclosure, wont stop me having fun.  

---

AW,

Each to their own choice of weapon. Had to look up splitting maul, a joiners/woodworking tool that wouldnt have been much use to us. What we mainly used the 10lb hammers for was to put cleats in to mortar joints in brick walls to hold 6 cast iron waste pipes in high rise buildings (up to about 6 stories). If any of the pipes were out of true at a joint when the connections were complete we gently persuaded the offending pipe back into line with said hammer, sometimes having to do it off a three piece 60 foot ladder. 

Also, any long heavy duty screws which were a bit stiff were summarily executed by hitting them with the big precision head. If they went in they went in, and if they didnt they just snapped. 

Any biggish hammer was known in Scotland as a Glasgow screwdriver, and as plumbers that was precisely how we put screws in. We were on bonus, and the proper ratchet screwdrivers were too expensive in those days. They were also guaranteed to get stolen if you left them lying around. 

First time I saw the inside of an accordion I was having problems with, I had to overcome my desire to give it the treatment, but I restrained myself and managed to fix it. 

My wife wont let me do DIY in the house with good reason. Modern plumbing fittings arent up to much abuse either, as Ive discovered once or twice! I havent worked as a plumber for about 47 years, and the UK public should be glad of that. 

You could say the 10lb hammer was the Swiss Army knife of the 60s plumber (at least to those of us who worked on new build sites). 

Keep tinkering away. Sounds like youre enjoying it!

 

[Chrisrayner]

Hmm. I grew up identifying a BFO hammer as a Birmingham screwdriver. That was when Birmingham had a manufacturing industry.

 

[maugein96]

Hmm.  I grew up identifying a BFO hammer as a Birmingham screwdriver.  That was when Birmingham had a manufacturing industry.

Chris,

I think every major city in the UK had a name for certain tools. In Glasgow they have their own version of rhyming slang, and it could be difficult if we were working in a squad along with "Glesca Keelies", as we apparently used differently named tools to do precisely the same things. 

There is probably a Manchester screwdriver, but I wouldn't know. 

Since we moved to Rubery at the end of last year I'm brushing up my Brum, so to speak. Much the same as when I visit relatives in Donegal when I have to brush up my Erse!


Neighbours no good as dialect coaches, as they're from Wednesbury in the Black Country. "Ope y'am gooin ti loike it 'ere!" Wait for it, their surname is Macdonald!

 

[Chrisrayner]

Indeed, to the unacquainted ear Brum and Black Country are similar. If you coom from there they’re chalk and cheese. Mutually intelligible perhaps, but your brain gets warm doing the translations. Hope you enjoy living in Rubery.

 

[maugein96]

Indeed, to the unacquainted ear Brum and Black Country are similar.  If you coom from there they’re chalk and cheese.  Mutually intelligible perhaps, but your brain gets warm doing the translations.  Hope you enjoy living in Rubery.

We had the same issues, being on a big industrial fringe to the east side of Glasgow. We had heavy steel and engineering, coal, iron, and shale mines (but no nailmaking). The sort of place where colloquialisms abound. 

The two accents were very similar, but ours was punctuated with what Glasgow people referred to as a "coarseness" (can you believe that?). The teachers at school tried hard to rid us of the Ulsterisms we had inherited from the oldies, but they were wasting their time. These days the Glasgow and North Lanarkshire dialects are a lot closer than they were, but to the trained ear they are still discernable. The kids no longer have grandparents and parents from Ulster to influence the way they speak, but they haven't quite shaken off what often sounds more like Belfast than Glasgow. 

Oddly enough, very few people from my home area were from the south of Ireland, and I have no ancestors from anywhere on the island other than Ulster. 

Rubery will do us nicely, and my wife feels as though she has come home. We had been coming here regularly for about 25 years after she moved north, so we had a reasonable idea what to expect. We do get the odd stare when we converse in thick Jockanese, but we both lived in England previously and are used to that.

 

[Dingo40]

Hi maugein96

I am intrigued by your comments about playing stradella using 3 fingers  just use three fingers like Brazilian players do Could you elaborate a little please.

Regards

Tiposx

Hi Tiposx,

I havent made any real study, as I have very little knowledge of music theory, but if you watch most Brazilian players they use fingers 2,3, and 4 to walk all over the Stradella bass rather than try and play the usual accompaniment.

If you watch this clip youll get the idea. All of the bass is played without the little finger or the thumb. They manage to work it almost like a free bass. I dont know what if any system they use, but if you check out other accomplished Brazilian players on You Tube they all play like this guy. No pinkies, no thumbs, no problems about right or wrong.

John,
Heres a young lady using the technique described above:

(Like a spider walking all over the bass board  )

 

[maugein96]

Hi maugein96

I am intrigued by your comments about playing stradella using 3 fingers  just use three fingers like Brazilian players do Could you elaborate a little please.

Regards

Tiposx

Hi Tiposx,

I havent made any real study, as I have very little knowledge of music theory, but if you watch most Brazilian players they use fingers 2,3, and 4 to walk all over the Stradella bass rather than try and play the usual accompaniment.

If you watch this clip youll get the idea. All of the bass is played without the little finger or the thumb. They manage to work it almost like a free bass. I dont know what if any system they use, but if you check out other accomplished Brazilian players on You Tube they all play like this guy. No pinkies, no thumbs, no problems about right or wrong.

John,
Heres a young lady using the technique described above:

(Like a spider walking all over the bass board  )

Hi Dingo,

Most Portuguese CBA players use the French 3/3 bass system, so they get that extra row of single note bass options on the inside of the counterbass row. It seems to be the case that all Portuguese pro players have knowledge of that walking bass technique and thats probably why it is also found in Brazil, albeit on 2/4 bass instruments.


In the Azores they use PAs almost exclusively, and Ive never seen any players from there use the bass technique from their mother country. I have a cousin who goes to The Azores every year to meet up with relatives from Bermuda, and my granddaughter goes to the Alentejo on the Portuguese mainland, at least twice a year. Sadly, neither of them are into accordions, as Id love to find out more about Portuguese accordion music and the instruments they use. I also worked with some Portuguese guys for years, but they thought accordions were exclusively for old folks.  

Oddly enough, use of that extra bass row is not covered in any French method book Ive ever seen, and the missing link may be in a Portuguese method book, but I dont have any 3/3 bass accordions even if I found such a book. Maybe a Brazilian book, but I dont think they do much by anybodys book there at all. 


Check out this guy. He is a very flamboyant Portuguese player and teacher, and if given enough scope he can be as off the wall as Tostao from Brazil :-



My wife isnt allowed to fly to The Azores, although we can go to Portugal. Ive only been twice, and heard (but never saw) accordions both times. They were being played in private workmens social clubs, and not open to the general public.


We could only fly to The Algarve from local airports when we lived in Scotland, but the avenues are now open to go elsewhere, (or rather they will be open after a certain virus named after a Mexican beer allows it). 

Im just waiting for the Martians to land and Ill be off to a better world.

 

[Dingo40]

John,
Thanks for your interesting insights and the clip 
Again, we have the tarantula like motions of the left hand.
I myself have a Balkan tuned  3+4 bass Giuletti PA circa 1970, not that I can use these extra bases , I just like the sound of it!

Regarding the dreaded COVID19, the country appears to have gone "nuts" .
Though, currently, little affected where I live, apart from a decidedly obvious shortage of toilet paper in the supermarkets   and reports of scuffles over same, and bans on international travel and gatherings exceeding 500, life goes on much as before 

 

[maugein96]

John,
Thanks for your interesting insights and the clip 
Again, we have the tarantula like motions of the left hand.
I myself have a Balkan tuned  3+4 bass Giuletti PA circa 1970, not that I can use these extra bases , I just like the sound of it!

Regarding the dreaded COVID19, the country appears to have gone "nuts" .
Though, currently, little affected where I live, apart from a decidedly obvious shortage of toilet paper in the supermarkets   and reports of scuffles over same, and bans on international travel and gatherings exceeding 500, life goes on much as before 

Dingo,

Balkan tuned instruments are probably (to my ears) the least offensive of all the tuning variants. I like the "Spanish" sounds on my Maugein Mini Sonora, which also has a very good modern Paris MM Americain, but I've never owned a Balkan accordion. Wouldn't know what to do with that extra bass row, as the method books I used were French and only covered 80 and 100 bass accordions (in five rows). 

It's more or less business as usual here (for the moment). Most years just short of 30,000 people in England alone die from flu complications, so I think we should just all stay in from October until April every year in an effort to get that figure down. If you die from any other type of flu nobody is interested, but there are too many small businesses on the go and most of them have been ordered to close, or so it would appear. The virus is nowhere near as serious as panic and greed, which is evident in the supermarkets. Toilet paper! In the 70s I worked alongside Iranian and Turkish military personnel, and they couldn't believe how much of the stuff we carried around. Best just to use sand, but hope the builders' merchants don't go into lockdown or I'm snookered!

 

[Dingo40]

Well put, John!

 

[AccordionUprising]

Just found this (and thought it was this year), quite an adventure. The reveal when the photo showed a Belgian bass! Never seen the inside of an accordion! And I'd forgotten that, in edition to everything else, the Belgians put the bass in upside down. ?

The plus of the mushroom basses seems to be that they don't fall below the button-board when traveling. That can be a disaster if 120 buttons fall and get tangled or bent. But I guess you have to unscrew the mushrooms, so I can see the disadvantage. I gather some newer instruments have something to keep the basses from falling? Seems a good innovation.

Very entertaining. Hope all's going well.

The Brazilian players's left hand is a joy. Forró bands seem to be where zydeco was in the early 1980s, increasingly blowing global accordion minds. Great to see and hear.

 

[Pipemajor]

Just found this (and thought it was this year), quite an adventure. The reveal when the photo showed a Belgian bass! Never seen the inside of an accordion! And I'd forgotten that, in edition to everything else, the Belgians put the bass in upside down. ?

The plus of the mushroom basses seems to be that they don't fall below the button-board when traveling. That can be a disaster if 120 buttons fall and get tangled or bent. But I guess you have to unscrew the mushrooms, so I can see the disadvantage. I gather some newer instruments have something to keep the basses from falling? Seems a good innovation.

Very entertaining. Hope all's going well.

The Brazilian players's left hand is a joy. Forró bands seem to be where zydeco was in the early 1980s, increasingly blowing global accordion minds. Great to see and hear.

But whet did you find?

 

[AccordionUprising]

But whet did you find?

Sorry, Just meant that I found this thread, a year later. But found it very interesting.