Melodeon.net Forums
Discussions => General Discussion => Topic started by: tiny on July 29, 2009, 08:00:35 PM
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I'm sure I have read in a well known music store catalogue that the Melodeon is an easy instrument to learn to play. Well from my experience I don't find this correct. What do you think?
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It depends, its easy if you are the sort of person that finds melodeon easy! Sounds stupid but it's true.
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I think it's easy to play badly... ;D :|||: (prime example right here!)
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It is for some people, and not for others - depends how the brain's wired I guess. I find rather the same with other instruments - I tried for years to get anywhere on the guitar; other people seem to have no problem whatsoever with it! :-[
I think everyone's got the ability to learn to play an instrument quickly; the trick, of course, is finding what instrument.
Cheers,
Clive
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In one way I think it is. One of the things that really inspired me was once I could play a simple tune with basses it sounded "professional", none of these problems you get with many instruments of not only having to master the note but getting the tone right too.
Also, many people seem to be able to pick up a box and quite quickly get a tune out of it (a lot simpler than on say a fiddle or trombone) and, voila, they're hooked >:E
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Compared with a lot of instruments it is easy. To get a sound all you have to do is hold down a button and move the bellows. Compare that with a violin, or many wind instruments - it takes a long time just to learn to produce the right sound. Even with guitar it's not always easy to fret the strings correctly at first.
The keyboard has a simple logic to it, and the chords are ready-made, just press a button. It's hard to produce a really horrible discord without really working at it.
Most people with some musical ability and who can get their head around the push-pull idea (an important caveat) are able to produce a recognisable tune fairly quickly. Of course, then begins a lifetime of trying to play it well.
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I'm sure I have read in a well known music store catalogue that the Melodeon is an easy instrument to learn to play.
Have you tried any other instrument?
Having been struggling to learn the fiddle for about three years I can definitely say the answer to that question is "Yes and no"
Yes its pretty easy, compared with the fiddle, to learn a simple tune, even with treble and bass. After never playing any instrument it took me a few months to feel comfortable playing tunes like Winster Gallop. Now with the fiddle its taken me 3 years to get so I can make a pleasant sound and can play in tune most of the time.
When it comes to playing more challenging material I think melodeon is harder because usually a major step, such as learning to play in a different key, means learning new fingering patterns. Whereas with a fiddle once you have mastered the basic technique and have a decent tone and intonation its a much smaller step to play harder stuff.
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Theo You say it very well.
I play piano at basic level, will never progress any further probably don't want to. Learning violin very painful to the ears at the moment, but I expected these instruments to be fairly difficult, as I did the melodeon. All instruments in my mind are challenging, the melodeon and harmonica ( which I don't play) included. I feel that it is devalued (probably not the correct word) to be described as an easy instrument. I love my melodeon. rabbiting on now!
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Yes its pretty easy, compared with the fiddle...
When it comes to playing more challenging material I think melodeon is harder...
Excellent summation. I've been playing fiddle for ~20 years (guitars for 40...) and melodeons for only two. I started gigging with melodeons within my first year--something it took me many years to do with fiddle. But, as Theo said, I'm only playing simple music on the boxes.
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I'm sure I have read in a well known music store catalogue that the Melodeon is an easy instrument to learn to play. Well from my experience I don't find this correct. What do you think?
I'll talk in terms of D/G 2 row
Going up and down rows it is really easy. One of my 'kids' party tricks is to play 'Grand old Duke of York' against 4 chord bass with the infants fist, him sat on my lap. Or end of an empty pint glass for that matter.
Playing in its main keys (D/G/Em) it is quite easy. The built in F# blues scale is a cakewalk. Except you don't have any bass chords :(
Keys like Am A major B minor and C 'repay study' as they are not linear or intuitive on the box. Anything else a pig without a 3rd row, and often a challenge even then. The most restricting thing 'out of key' is your basses. If you want to go there, continental system would have been a better choice.
.. and I somehow find melodeons don't like jig rhythm ???
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.. and I somehow find melodeons don't like jig rhythm ???
Are you sure it's firing on all cylinders? Might be worth a squirt of RedEx up your orifice.
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I'm sure I have read in a well known music store catalogue that the Melodeon is an easy instrument to learn to play. Well from my experience I don't find this correct. What do you think?
Funnily enough a very similar discussion is taking place on another forum - "is the recorder a real instrument?" There is a similarity. Both are fairly easy to learn the basics of, i.e. the initial technical difficulties are not great, certainly compared to say wind or string instruments. However, no instrument is easy to play really well, fiddle, recorder, melodeon, whatever.
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[Funnily enough a very similar discussion is taking place on another forum - "is the recorder a real instrument?" There is a similarity. Both are fairly easy to learn the basics of, i.e. the initial technical difficulties are not great, certainly compared to say wind or string instruments. However, no instrument is easy to play really well, fiddle, recorder, melodeon, whatever.
The recorder IS a wind instrument, and it needs as much effort to play it in tune as any other. This is the trouble with teaching it to kids in school, who are taught the fingerings but not how to listen to what they are playing.
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The melodeon is not that easy - I took a while to get the hang of changing the bellows (EC player :P) once that was cracked the rest was not too bad (inc. basses). But I still watch in awe some of the two row guys. F'rinstance, played guitar in Theo's band a couple of years ago and, watching him, often wondered how do you do that ???. Yet BCC# has a logic I figured out. As was said before - it depends on how your'e wired.
Tony (can play pedal steel guitar, can't play piano ::)).
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I think that some instruments are very easy to get a noise from- the melodeon being one of those instruments. Some instruments are very difficult to get a noise out of and therefore are perceived by some to be more difficult to play - anyone tried getting a note from a flute? The truth is, in my experience, that most instruments are quite difficult to play well.
AL
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Some instruments are very difficult to get a noise out of and therefore are perceived by some to be more difficult to play - anyone tried getting a note from a flute?
Yep, that's easy! :D Any stringy on the other hand... *shiver*
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Some instruments are very difficult to get a noise out of and therefore are perceived by some to be more difficult to play - anyone tried getting a note from a flute?
Yes, many times, and I almost succeeded once!
My husband had no problems with it, but then he can get a note out of a biro top. It was his habit of playing empty bottles and other likely (or unlikely) objects which made me suggest he try a flute.
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What Theo pointed out: after one masters basic technique of any instrument -- embrochure on winds, fingering/bowing on fiddle, etc. -- things even out and they're all difficult to take to the next level. I started sax at age 9 and guitar at 11, so executing the mechanics on those is like pushing a button which, with all things equal in comparison, is quite easy. I wouldn't want to be a beginner on those instruments later in life, though...that's what the melodeon is for ;)
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In my humble opinion, it is easy to learn the melodeon to such a standard that you can play a recogniseable tune in a short period of time. Getting to this stage on a fiddle will take considerably longer.
Basics can be picked up in a short period of time on a melodeon.
Mastering the instrument however can take a lifetime.
Learning your way across two rows, knowing where each note is on each direction, that takes years.
Melodeon life is I feel also full of surprises. For instance, I've been trying to master an old Morris tune, "Old Molly Oxford". I found myself in the situation where I knew where each note was, how to get each note without too much change of direction......everything was coming along just great......BUT, then I had to ask myself, "But what should it sound like?" ITunes had about four different versions of the tune ( which means 4 x 79 British pennies spent on research) before I realised that a) What I was playing sounded nothing like any of these versions and b) My playing probably never would.
Keep at it.....it won't be long before you are as good as the average Morris musician. (wink)
Phil
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Have you listened to Lester Playing Old Molly Oxford (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/goldfrog/lester/tunes.html) Phil?
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When it comes to playing more challenging material I think melodeon is harder because usually a major step, such as learning to play in a different key, means learning new fingering patterns. Whereas with a fiddle once you have mastered the basic technique and have a decent tone and intonation its a much smaller step to play harder stuff.
Theo, I've been pondering this remark of yours for the past day or so and have come to the following conclusion: you are a box player who has relatively recently taken up the fiddle and I am a fiddle player who has relatively recently taken up the box, and one of us is suffering from the "convex hilltop/receding summit" delusion - where at any point in your progress you think you know where the top of the mountain is but the closer you get the farther away you realize it is.
I think it's you, of course. ;)
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I started both fiddle and box at roughly the same time, found them both fairly easy to scratch out a tune. I'm struggling with playing the 2 1/2 row though, not quite so logical, whereas I can adapt fairly quickly to different fiddle tunings
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I've seen an ad which states that a one row melodeon is a very intuitive instrument to play. I assumed this to mean that one could start picking out easy tunes without much in the way of instructions unlike a string or a brass instrument.
Jack
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I've been playing the violin for about 12 or 13 years (mainly classical & folk), and recently took up the melodeon, and I have to say that I've gotten a tune out of the box a lot quicker than I ever did from my violin. I'm also sure that even at the complex end of the melodeon it probably isn't as difficult as mastering the heady heights of classical violin (not sure I'm ever going to get there, as it takes me weeks to get to grips with some of the Vivaldi pieces!). However whether an instrument is easy or not to pick-up makes no difference at the end of the day, the difficulty of an instrument to learn isn't somehow an indication of an instruments worth - I love my melodeon as much as I love my violin & both give me equal pleasure...and I suppose a little pain also!!
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I started both fiddle and box at roughly the same time, found them both fairly easy to scratch out a tune.
Except, in the beginning, while the box is always in consistent tuning and, chances are, good voicing, the fiddling will often suffer from poor intonation and poor voicing, I'll wager..
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I found the 'bowing' pretty easy, i suppose that is just luck more than anything, so I never went through the cat wailing phase. But I agree, even now I rarely get though a tune without a couple of notes that could do to be a bit more in tune, though I try and cover it with lots of brashness.
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I have been playing a D/G box for about 20 years and I am just beginning to feel happy with some of what I play. I always feel that it could be better and that others would critise me for the way I play. I first played out for a morris side about 3 months after picking up the box as I was the nearest thing to a muscian we had. We were a side that wrote thier own dances and so we put dances to tunes as I learnt them. They were very basic but the formula worked. As I played alone I developed a technique that made the box as loud as I could get it by using lots of bellows movements and also to add emphis to certain phrases of the music. A couple of years ago I found that this was considered to be a bad thing and after so long I can't change it, it's automatic. My advise is play the way you feel is right for you and in the fits the circumstances and let the stuffed shirts who insist that opening the bellows more than about 2" is a sin do thier own thing.
To cut a long story short I found it an easy instrument to get a tune out of but I am still trying to master it. What does come with time is knowing exactly where a note is by ear and so being able to play a lot more by ear a good trick in a session.
Sue
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The recorder IS a wind instrument, and it needs as much effort to play it in tune as any other. This is the trouble with teaching it to kids in school, who are taught the fingerings but not how to listen to what they are playing.
OK, my response was not written carefully enough, though as a recorder player and oboist I can tell you it is much easier to play a recorder in tune than an oboe. There are aspects of the recorder, however, which are much more difficult than the oboe. The keywork on "modern" woodwinds is partly there to make fingering easier and to make legato playing smoother.
The point I was attempting to make is that whilst both recorder and melodeon may be perceived as easy instruments and whilst it is relatively straightforward to pick out an easy tune on either, playing them to a high standard is (in common with all other instruments) not easy.
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Come on. Recorder fingering is not that illogical, and for a simple, open hole instrument to play in tune chromatically over two and a half octaves is quite a design feat. Compare and contrast with the bombarde!
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I think the thing that sets the melodeon apart is the relative ease with which a determined but naturally non musical person can learn to play to a very basic standard enabling them to play with others and experience this wonderful thing. It is thus such and inclusive, happy and enabling instrument.
Like most really worthwhile things in life hwoever to get to an advanced level is a lifetimes work. But the genius of it is you don't have to.
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I think the thing that sets the melodeon apart is the relative ease with which a determined but naturally non musical person can learn to play to a very basic standard enabling them to play with others and experience this wonderful thing. It is thus such and inclusive, happy and enabling instrument.
Couldn't agree more - except that I would put it alongside the ukulele in its simplicity to be able to make music rapidly.
AL
btw I play both the melodeon and ukulele - hum...?
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I think the thing that sets the melodeon apart is the relative ease with which a determined but naturally non musical person can learn to play to a very basic standard enabling them to play with others and experience this wonderful thing. It is thus such and inclusive, happy and enabling instrument. Like most really worthwhile things in life hwoever to get to an advanced level is a lifetimes work. But the genius of it is you don't have to.
What a wonderful summary of the box that is.
In my view this is so close to the quintessence of melodeonism that I think it might usefully be added to this board's FAQ (Do we have one)? Chris
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I would put it alongside the ukulele in its simplicity to be able to make music rapidly.
Ukulele? I could never understand how to play these stringed instruments. How do you play melody and chords on only four strings? ???
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Ukulele? I could never understand how to play these stringed instruments. How do you play melody and chords on only four strings?
But Sebastian - count how many fingers you have! Dead easy ;D
And also it lends itself to being played and sung with at the same time. Something a lot of box players struggle with for some strange reason.
AL
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But Sebastian - count how many fingers you have!
What do I have to do with them?
Seriously, when I got my first melodeon, I did immediatly (*#+!@ spelling!) know what to do. I have no idea what to do with these four strings to play a melody together with chords. Do you have a link?