What made you want to play the accordion?

[maugein96]

Hi Donn,

I'm a bit like yourself with those upper M reeds, although they were frequently used in virtuoso musette pieces to give approximations of bird song. To get the best out of them you need to have developed good finger strength, and you'll see "thumbs off" players bringing the thumb back on to give a little boost when they play up there. Thumb on the side way down that keyboard is quite difficult.

These high reeds are obviously restricted to CBA, where the typical range can end up more than a full octave higher than a standard 41 key PA, and that's why they never feature much in standard accordion works. I would hazard a guess that the classical boys also make good use of them, and might be the reason that some of them are keen to switch from PA. The extra buttons will also allow the bassoon register range to extend upwards as well, but I'm now in technical territory, and I'll get caught out if I try and expand on that theory.

Personally, I tend to get a bit uncomfortable towards those high notes, as I find the pitch can be a bit rough on the ears especially with a "wet" tuned instrument. That's one of the reasons I ended up playing smaller three voice instruments, although they tend to take a few of the lower bassoon notes out of those as well as cutting out some of the high M notes. With electric guitar some instruments have a range of slightly more than 4 octaves, but I seldom venture there.

I have a little 2 voice Hohner that has an almost perfect range for me with 46 "playing" buttons, yet with one or two musette tunes I play, its range is not sufficient. I do believe that full-sized French built/spec accordions are credited with having the greatest range available. Paul DeBra highlighted that in a recent post on Italian CBAs.

 

[losthobos]

I'm in it for the chicks...

 

[JerryPH]

Has anyone ever seen the film House of Fools?

Nope. But its in my Netflix queue now. Thanks for the tip! :ch[/quote]

That YOU for the tip! I am going to look for it there now.

 

[Ferretcatcher]

I was living in Edinburgh in the late 1980s. One Saturday, I was bored and went out for a walk; I found myself outside a music shop on Causewayside. In the window was a shiny piano accordion. I lived in a tenement and I fancied getting back into playing music. Since I played my father’s pianoforte, from the age of eight, a piano accordion was a logical choice and much more portable (and affordable) than lugging a piano up a stairwell.

At the same time I bought “The Scottish Accordion” sheet music book compiled by Douglas Muir and started learning pieces form that. Soon after this I got involved with the Edinburgh University Scottish country dancing society (as a dancer) and ended a up on an international dance festival in Belgium.

I've since moved to Cumbria and played in a ceilidh ban for about ten years. I subsequently, sold my first accordion (which actually was a Baile) because I quickly realised its build quality was a poor and upgraded to a second hand Horner Atlantic IV. I’ve sold this instrument as well and
as a challenge I've started learning the chromatic button accordion (I bought a Roland FR- 1XB). It is much more manageable (in terms of size and weight) but I've had to completely “rewire” my brain so I could the play the treble.

 

[cat]

I'm an incorrigible player and student of music of all kinds - started at age 9, learning by ear, but concurrently studied classical and flamenco guitar. Whenever I hear something evocative that I can't shake, I procure the instrument and learn the style, including some obscure ones like trad Gaelic clarsach, Norwegian hardingfele, Chinese guzheng.. I think it got totally out of hand when while still in my teens I was exposed to John McLaughlin's Shakti, the eclectic group Oregon, and working out Michael Hedges pieces from Aerial Boundaries. There's a long story attached to every instrument I play, but here it's accordions -

I was working out Satie's Gnossienne #3 on anglo concertina and hit a brick wall when it modulates to E. So it required a piano accordion. Since then - and giving up drumming which I did semi-pro before having kids - I've become infatuated with boxes; I'm addicted to highly syncopated music, and accordions allow me to deploy my appendages in syncopated fashion - without a big drum kit in my small house.

The kicker with accordions was New Orleans - one of the things I used to do is play tenor banjo in a dixie-style brass band. I started applying Professor Longhair to the box, and improvising blues.

These days, when I go to jams I bring fiddle, cello, and accordion.

 

[cat]

Has anyone ever seen the film "House of Fools"?

One of my favorite accordion flicks - posted a clip or two on an adjacent thread.

 

[96Bass]

When I was seven, my older brother started taking guitar lessons where accordion lessons were also given. That is where I first saw an accordion.
I don't remember being drawn to the sound as much as I just wanted to push all the buttons.
I kept bugging my parents and they finally allowed me to take lessons.

 

[Valski]

I don't recall the exact details about starting with the accordion. I was either seven or eight years old and remember pestering my parents for an accordion. My first instrument was a used 12 bass that was a loaner from my music teacher until something more appropriate because available. This turned out to be a gently used 120 bass piano accordion with a fancy crest named Noble. This was a little too big for me but children grow and it quickly became just right for me.

I don't know what influenced me, but the sound of the accordion was magical and ever since it's been the only instrument for me. In the mid 60's there were a lot of people playing the accordion especially since I grew up in a neighborhood where most families were made up of recent European immigrants. There were Germans and Hungarians and Poles, Ukrainians, Slovaks and most numerously there were Italians. So it seemed that these sounds were all of around and it was wonderful.

Windsor Ontario is right across the river from Detroit and in those days crossing the border was a slight formality and we made those trips without a thought. Detroit was my home town but much larger and it was much the same mix of recent immigrants so there was even more wonderful accordion music by gregarious and happy people. This experience has always meant that I equate accordion music as something joyful.

I'm definitely not as accomplished as some of you, but can usually carry a tune so as not to make a fool of myself. My wife encourages me to continue playing because she claims that when people are experiencing music they're not likely to argue about politics and she's right.