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Author Topic: Cross row v across the rows. Evolving techniques.  (Read 6382 times)

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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: Cross row v across the rows. Evolving techniques.
« Reply #40 on: August 21, 2017, 11:27:37 AM »

Yep!
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Thrupenny Bit

I think I'm starting to get most of the notes in roughly the right order...... sometimes!

Gary P Chapin

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Re: Cross row v across the rows. Evolving techniques.
« Reply #41 on: August 21, 2017, 05:02:42 PM »

I cannot speak from an English background, because I don't have one, but I do have a coupla thoughts.

1) My process of learning a tune is almost exactly as you describe it. I try learning it from a number of angles. It's a way of immersing myself in the tune and figuring it out (especially if the basses are unclear). However I "end up" playing it, I don't consider this wasted time at all.

2) Even within a tradition, different tunes -- to me -- tend to call for an idiomatic approach. The old Auvergnat bourrees, I almost always play them up and down the row. Ditto with mazurkas (not counting Deliq mazurkas!) ... while waltzes I find I play more across rows because it sounds the way I want it to sound. Breton music, I tend to play more across the rows (if only to grab that Fnat while playing in A minor on a GC box).

None of this leads me to grand pronouncements, except to affirm you in your efforts.

Gary
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boxer

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Re: Cross row v across the rows. Evolving techniques.
« Reply #42 on: August 24, 2017, 07:16:17 PM »

surely the idea is to decide how you want the tune to sound, based on the range of options your instrument offers, and that you are capable of deploying, and then using whatever works best to meet your aim at each step in the tune.

to adhere exclusively to one or another type of fingering, just for the sake of stylistic orthodoxy, possibly at some cost to the tune, would seem a bit unwise to me. 

but what would I know?  I play B/C and don't have the luxury of multiple choices that the fifth-tuned chaps enjoy.
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Tone Dumb Greg

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Re: Cross row v across the rows. Evolving techniques.
« Reply #43 on: August 24, 2017, 10:57:48 PM »

surely the idea is to decide how you want the tune to sound, based on the range of options your instrument offers, and that you are capable of deploying, and then using whatever works best to meet your aim at each step in the tune.

to adhere exclusively to one or another type of fingering, just for the sake of stylistic orthodoxy, possibly at some cost to the tune, would seem a bit unwise to me. 

but what would I know?  I play B/C and don't have the luxury of multiple choices that the fifth-tuned chaps enjoy.

Your right Boxer, it's a stylistic choice. And, from what I can work out, it's a choice not available on semitone apart boxes.

I can, and do, play tunes up and down the row. This is probably the closest to  the B/C approach. It's the way I originally learned to play to play for dance and I still quite like it
.
I can play across the rows in a "continental" fashion. This it what tends to happen if I am learning a tune that seems to need that approach. To be honest, it's not my strongest area, but I am working on it (still).

What I do mostly is play (sort of) in between the rows where I will sit, for a bar or few, as seems right, on the row that gives me the notes I need with the chords I need, in a convenient bellows direction.  A passage set against an Em chord will be based on pull notes on  the D row. A passage against a D chord can  be on the D row or the G row according to bellows optimisation. A passage based on a C chord will probably move between the rows. A minor will be pull notes based on the G row.  A passage based on G will be mostly push notes on the G row. Hopefully I didn't get too confused describing this. I've never actually thought it through before. Be aware that the row you are based on varies according to chord choice and air availability. 

This is a way of playing that, it seems to me,  is natural to the 5th apart tuning. A lot of players do it. When playing "between" the rows you may opt for a choice of up and down or across the row fingering. Or a mix. This is where it really becomes a stylistic choice and, as I said, that choice doesn't exist on a "chromatic" box. It's definitely not a matter of forcing a style on a tune at the tune's expense.

As I play I recall the wisdom of Lao Tzu immortalised in the Tau Te Ching, 2500 years ago:

"Is not the space between Heaven and Earth like a bellows?
It is empty, but lacks nothing.
The more it moves, the more comes out of it. "
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Greg Smith
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ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin. Ambrose Bierce
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