Useful exercises and workouts to improve melodeon playing?

[Revles]

got some really useful info here.......I still struggle with the upper octave.............as with all instruments scales.that iI often neglect.are really good practice..must fo more of it. I also like the idea of playing in octaves...had a go when I borrowed a cajun single row in C...............but I also used it to discipline myself to playing on one row more......I cross rows far too often and my sound comes out too smooth rather than lumpy.........so I try to play everything at the moment on single rows where possible..Les.

[Andrew Wigglesworth]

got some really useful info here.......I still struggle with the upper octave.............as with all instruments scales.that iI often neglect.are really good practice..must fo more of it. I also like the idea of playing in octaves...had a go when I borrowed a cajun single row in C...............but I also used it to discipline myself to playing on one row more......I cross rows far too often and my sound comes out too smooth rather than lumpy.........so I try to play everything at the moment on single rows where possible..Les.

One of the bits of advice I was given early on is to learn tunes in the upper and lower octaves (the same tune that is). It really helps in learning your way around the instrument.

[Andrew Wigglesworth]

I'm pretty sure that argument couldn't be sustained, it can easily be refuted by people who can go just as fast with four fingers.  Speed isn't everything and I suspect that it's effect upon style is much more important.

You're probably right Andrew. It struck me in between the time of my last post and your reply that it could be that the reason the 3-finger technique makes such sense to me is that my aim is to play in the style of those Irish players - for all I know it could be a hindrance for playing in other styles!

If you find you can put into words what the tangible effect on style is, I'd be interested to hear your take on it.

There are a couple of things that stuck me immediately twiddling around with it all:

English players seem to do a lot of octave/chordal work with the right hand.  For instance, you could be playing a note with the little finger whilst playing the note an octave below, or parts of a chord.  The full spread of four fingers is pretty much needed for this.

I'd think that there are quite a few tunes which seem to make the use of four fingers necessary.  I'd be interested to see how someone would get around "La Bastrinque" or "Dark girl dresses in blue" with three fingers on a D/G box.  Then again, I could stand corrected :-)

The three fingered style means more moving of the hand up and down the keyboard.  This constant repositioning of the hand means that you more often have to play the same note with different fingers consecutively to get the hand in position or play short runs with a single finger.

As I mentioned above, all of this is on a D/G melodeon, though with tunes learnt from C#/D players on the D row, so I think there will be some similarity in experience.

[Andrew Wigglesworth]

Self correction:

Actually "Dark girl dressed in blue" is perfectly possible.  Good fun this, it's making me think more about how I'm playing tunes.

[Theo]

Last few posts moved to new topic "Dark Girl Dresses in Blue/Modes" in Tunes

[Québécois]

I'd be interested to see how someone would get around "La Bastrinque" or "Dark girl dresses in blue" with three fingers on a D/G box.  Then again, I could stand corrected :-)

[risto]

One important thing missing from this site is the fingerings for all scales. It would be a big job considering all the tunings used (and the three or four finger preferences) but a very useful thing for all us beginners. Besides, does there exist a common way of presenting accordion fingerings, what I recall seems as if each uses ones own style...?

[Québécois]

[george garside]

I think I have seen as many "fingerings" as I have seen melodeon players!
 

quite agree - there is no definitive right way to  finger any button box, be it a one row (obviously played on the row) or optional accross rowing on 4th apart boxes or compulsory cross rowing on semitone boxes.  To me it seems sensible to practice scales in whatever keys you want to play & do so up to a fair speed whilst retaining accuracy. This helps to develop finger movement and navigation of buttons involved in particular scale as well as complimentary bellows reversals.  The most important bit is to try to always have a finger ready over the next button BEFORE the note is required - this makes for quick & accurate playing.  In order to do so a system of either 'walking' up & down the keybord or sliding up & down (or combination of both ) is required.  Quite how this is done depends on both personal preference, levels of skill & of course the needs of a particular tune  but a VERY ROUGH guide is to play 2 or 3 buttons then move up or down as appropriate.  I find it also helps to  play the keynote with the saem finger whichever octave you are in , so if in G start on G with ist finger & next higher G again with first finger unless the higher G is the highest note in a tune , in which case I may settle for little finger as going no higher.

Another thought is that if the fingering & bellows movements are extremely difficult there may well be an easier way of doing it that you hav't found as yet! - so experiment with that part of the tune to find an easier way of approaching it.  Keeping bellows tight also helps as it gives much more accurate control of fast ins & outs by using the wrist muscles rather than arm or shoulder.

this is probably as confusing as it is hopefully enlightening !   Has anybody developed a method of fingering applicable to all keys and tunes i.e. a basic 'universal' way of doing it.

george

[Québécois]

Another thought is that if the fingering & bellows movements are extremely difficult there may well be an easier way of doing it that you hav't found as yet! - so experiment with that part of the tune to find an easier way of approaching it.

Absolutely. Each phrase of a tune that appears difficult to render deserves developing a "strategy" on how to play it. When learning a new tune I usually print the dots and make notes on the difficult passages with colour markers as a reminder of bellows movement and buttons to use. Once muscle memory has set everything sounds so much better.

[Steve Jones]

One tip says to study each phrase of a tune, figure out the corresponding button numbers (starting at 1 from the lowest note); the lowest number is where the index finger should land and the highest number is where the pinky should be. Works often since 4 buttons (usually) cover 8 notes and typical phrases rarely extend beyond an octave.

Well, this wouldn't work so well in Irish music, where there are lots of phrases going well over one octave and quite often two complete octaves. Incidentally phrases of this type are where I have found using 3 fingers to bring the biggest benefits. I do "study the phrase", but in terms of how I can move through it most efficiently, not where fingers should be statically placed.

OTOH, picking up on what George said about using the first finger on the tonic: I have developed a similar strategy mainly playing on the D row (C#/D box) - when I have to zoom up the keyboard quickly I like to make sure I land on second octave D with my first finger, which gives me a familiar vantage point from which to tackle whatever comes next in the higher reaches. Works well in many tunes, especially those in D and G. I suspect everyone works out tricks like this to suit their style of music and style of playing. 

[george garside]

typical phrases rarely extend beyond an octave.[/b]

[/quot e]


trouble is that whilst many phrsesneed only 8 notes this doesn't necessarily mean that they are on 4 buttons on a semitone box.  Also  some 4   phrases sit accross octaves being part in one & part in a higher or lower one.  hence the 1st finger moving up to keynote so as has been mentioned it acts as a navigational aid &  you are following a paattern rather than diving obout randomly for a particular tune. Perhaps this is less important on a 21 button semitone box as the scope upwards is limited however becomes more important on 25 key 2 row or 37 key 3 row.

george

[risto]

Certainly good pieces of advice but I was thinking of just scale practises.

It is very typical for a beginner practising on his own to use fingerings which work (or seem to work) with the undeveloped playing hand but will eventually not bring the best of results. This is very common with guitar players (if you allow the parallelism), and not many beginners can intuitively reinvent the fingering systems which have been found to be the best during the history of guitar playing. The same must apply to accordion playing. Much time can be lost and persistent bad habbits can develop when practising things the "wrong way". "Each to their own" is therefore not a good answer IMO.

With the new C#/D reeds I will have to relearn all my tunes and while doing that I perhaps should post proposals for fingerings of the related scales as initial starting points which you can then chop down as you please.  :)

[george garside]

Certainly good pieces of advice but I was thinking of just scale practises.

It is very typical for a beginner practising on his own to use fingerings which work (or seem to work) with the undeveloped playing hand but will eventually not bring the best of results.

With the new C#/D reeds I will have to relearn all my tunes and while doing that I perhaps should post proposals for fingerings of the related scales as initial starting points which you can then chop down as you please.  :)

one of the reasons for 'fingering' to not work well is  because to some people playing a 'scale'  only entails doing so for the middle octave - then when the tune goes higher you are buggered! - so scales need to be at least the middle octave plus whatevr you have on your box above it. (and for that matter below it!) and this is where the problem of  a standardised way of playing comes in.  The push pull set up can never be equated to a linear piano keybord as the bellows movements are crucial  and on both semitone & 4th aprt boxes there are 'alternative' notes available.

eg a scale (mid octave only ) in G on BC (or  same fingering gives A on C#D) can easily be fingered as follows

 note      G  A  B  C  D  E  F#  G                                                  G  A  B  C  D  E  F#  G

finger       1  1  2  2  3  3  1    1 but it can also be done just as well  1  1  2   2  3  4   4   3  (using E on outside row)

and these are not the only ways of doing it.  However with both of these you finish on high  G with 4th or 3rf finger which is not very handy for proceeding furthur.

Therefore another way would be --

note           G  A  B  C  D  E  F#  G                                                   G  A  B  C  D  E
finger          1   1  2  1  2  1  2    1    which then puts you in line for       1  2  3  2  4   3


now in the real world  a tune such as jimmy allen cn be played using the first fingring as it doesnt go beyond the high G note , another is the hullican jig.   -  another tune in G  may require a start with eg 1st finger on D followed by a swift slide up to ist finger on G (eg Molly Malone)


it is therefore important to practice DIFFERENT ways of playing each scale rather than seeking a standard/universal /best set of fingering (as is possible on piano keybord)  There just isn't one.

at the end of the day it is essental to know where every note is (including bellows direction) & tis applies just as much to non readers as they  still need to know the route to higher & lower notes in a given tune or to put it another way from one note to the next.  The ideal situation is to try to develop playing to the stage where you can play any note with any handy finger  rather than thinking in terms of  this finger should be playing that particular note.  You then have a direct connection between brain and box and the fingering will often sort itself out in the same way os the brain/gob connection of a singer (they don't think in terms of 'open wider' 'purse lips'  'breath more air out' or whatever - they think of the tune and the gob does the right things (mine never does!) 

to sum up its back to as many ways of playing as there are players.   I heard very good friend of Jimmy  Shands (& a fellow shand morino player) say that Jimmy played the 3 row box in a way that was subtly different to anybody else - and this was a bloke who had been tought by JS.

bottom line - don't worry about formal ways of doing it - just experiment and get on with it  - but always be prepared to do more experimenting  - button box playing is a lifelong learning curve.


george (just trying to confuse the issue even more!)

[Québécois]

bottom line - don't worry about formal ways of doing it - just experiment and get on with it  - but always be prepared to do more experimenting  - button box playing is a lifelong learning curve.

george (just trying to confuse the issue even more!)

Right on, George!

One thing most people do (including myself) when confronted to learning a new kind of instrument is try to make sure they "get it right" from the beginning. We all wish there is a "best way" to do things that will make it "easy" and speed up the learning process.

I guess the "path of least resistance" concept can apply here too, meaning that, when learning a tune, find the most effective finger/bellows/hand setup according to your style and current abilities.

[Bisoronic Bloke]

First whisk 5 raw eggs and hold in mouth for 15 seconds before swallowing.
Next snort 0.5 grams of chilli powder in each nostril.
Third insert asparagus into nostrils and bury face in chopped onions.

After this anything to do with melodeons is easy.

Seriously though, Playing in 6ths is useful (2 button gap pull, one button gap push) and John Kirpatricks advice of playing slowly and staccato really does work.

[risto]

... John Kirpatricks advice of playing slowly and staccato really does work.

This shows how different a playingstyle you have with a CBA as they practise LEGATO.

[Falseknight]

I guess we are talking B/C here?

[risto]

I guess we are talking B/C here?

Not particularly. If you check the initial post it was about practices.

[Kautilya]

I guess we are talking B/C here?

Not particularly. If you check the initial post it was about practices.

Practising scales
I seem to remember someone saying that scales can be interesting "in a context"; and they mentioned some pieces which could need some scale practise to get up to  speed to play the piece (bumblebee flights apart).

Could one try playing just sections of the pieces to get the scale practice? Although range might pose a few problems depending on how many buttons you have.

Here's a slow one, often used it seems for beginners, which has a little bit of scale work; and is that  a grey Paolo S?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvH_-G61NY0

A lot of buttons in this one, plus stretches of scales;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAox6myQ9UQ&feature=related

or on straight accordion keyboard with some bass scale work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmTG9wTfrzk

Another at around 2'51", alas on the piano, and at around 6.20 and 8.20

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEH17GCig34

Perhaps there are others out there.

sorry forgot these scales at around 1"26 but there seem to be some fingering problems from the very start

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aajtw30-YG0