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Author Topic: Stages of learning- my experience and what's next? How did your playing develop?  (Read 3770 times)

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Blake

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Hi Folks, I've been playing D/G and C/G for about three years now.
I'm wondering if my learning trajectory is typical, and if so, what can I expect with continued practice? I play some other instruments and can read music

Early Beginner
Began with Pignol-Milleret, which felt like being thrown to the lions. My playing was halting, and I could absolutely not sight read the music on the instrument. Everything was labored head-scratching. My left hand only did the Bass-chord bass chord pattern

Beginner
Still not sight reading, but feeling more coordinated. I can play a small handful of tunes with a regular tempo. The keyboard is far from intuitive, and I feel a bit constipated playing. My bass at this point is still rudimentary.

Late Beginner
I find some tunes to do melodic studies with to try to make my playing stop sounding so halting. A tango by Delicq, and Fanny Poer help a lot. I begin to rely on tabs only most of the time, not all the time.

Beginning Intermediate
Bass is still disappointingly simple. I take some lessons and develop the metronome habit with helps. Lessons also teach me to keep the treble end stationary.

Intermediate, where I think I am now
I can sight read simple tunes without tabs. I know a couple different basslines. I can fiddle with an accent note or play in thirds here and there. I'm playing some Delicq tunes and Andy Cutting tunes at tempo, working on expressiveness.

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What comes next? I feel that being able to sightread and that I am developing a more intuitive relationship with the keyboard has been a long, long time coming, but will be rewarding.
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arty

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Thinking about the bass side and trying to make it more interesting.

I bought a copy of the Naragonia Tunebook http://naragonia.com/music/tunebook-diatonische-accordeon-met-tablaturen/ , which is full of wonderful music, ( I am quite a fan of Naragonia ). It isn’t the book on it’s own, which has been such a help but, it is the fact that Pascale and Thoon have recorded every tune in the book and made them available on YouTube. Filmed close up, one can clearly see how they play the bass, which is so helpful and, frankly, inspiring. All the tunes are playable on a 2 row 8 bass instrument, although all the recordings are on a G/C instrument. https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVkuB2NasfPApiTMwbEn0QMAUJkkEV13r

I would heartily recommend that book, to anyone wanting to develop their bass side play. I have learnt a lot from it and continue to do so.

Having said that, it is no secret that I am a lover of Stéphane Delicq’s music. He played an oom pah pah bass almost exclusively, so we shouldn’t dismiss it, as it does have it’s place and it’s uses. I suspect, as he frequently played for dance completely on his own, the oom pah pah provided a good strong and steady rhythm for the dancers to follow.

Enjoy your music Blake, it sounds like you are doing great! You ask...”what comes next?”  I can’t answer that, because I am probably in the same place as you. I am enjoying playing faster tunes and I am also enjoying the fact that, when I make a mistake I can usually play my way out of it, instead of coming to a complete stop.

Enjoy it more - that’s my answer!
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malcolmbebb

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I would suggest that this is a good point to evaluate where you want to go musically, because that will define what skills you will need to concentrate on next.
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Chris Ryall

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1. 1986:  Awful. The cat used to attack me
2 Got a few polkas and dance tunes together
3. Playing for Morris, tidies your technique
4 1991: Started going to France, met Norbert Pignol
   “at the back of the chateau”. Yup, he’s fierce!
5. Got to their Master Class 1996. Sorted out my left hand!
6 Learned how to “play in chords” mainly from France. I recall
   Stef Deliq “playing for us” at Grande Bal. Next year “in Paris” 😉
7 Got deeply into improvisation, it stemmed from the chords
   Became a regular at the val d’Isère courses (week holidays!)
8. 2004 Bought a three row, started to play in “off piste” keys
9. Finally cracked singing with the box. “Once I was a millionaire”
10. 2007 got my first 18 bass. 👍 It UTTERLY changed my approach!

Now basically a singer (again) after a 34 year journey of about 200,000km 😳 Play a C#DG, rt end chord based style in keys that “suit my voice”. eg “millionaire” song has moved from C to Bb. Happy and still learning new songs, often Blues.  I do wish British players would improvise more.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2020, 10:30:14 AM by Chris Ryall »
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Julian S

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I would suggest that this is a good point to evaluate where you want to go musically, because that will define what skills you will need to concentrate on next.

I reckon that is an excellent ongoing mantra for whatever the stage one is at in playing !
A lot of my learning early on was through playing for dancing, and with others - but that is so problematic at the moment. But I really recommend it.
 Oh - and playing by ear as well as sight reading (I'm much better at the first so lately I've been practicing transposing tunes whilst reading the dots...musical isolation is getting to me !)

J
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george garside

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started farting about (definitely not playing) a mouthy while at primary school and eventualy managed a few recognisable tunes- while at least recognisable to me!

acquired a Bc box when about 14 ( DG' s didn't exist) and slowly worked out some tunes mostly in C 'cos there was bass to drive a  rhythm . A mate of mine acquired an identical box (hohner double ray) and we got to the stage that if we sat facing one another if one new a tune we could both play it simply by watching the others fingering and bellows reversals.

when in my twenties I bougt a 3 row BCC# trichord  with 12 stradella bass  and was amzed how easy it was to play than a BC, the third row reversals  making it easily chromatic.  eventually  added 96 bass 3 row which I still enjoy playing.

about 25 years ago joined a north west morris band  and found that everything they played was in D or G  so for light weight and portability with    bass for D & G I added a DG pokerwork which ,to me , is still the ideal 'morris box' 

At some point I started a ceilidh band  and mainly used a 'posh' 3 voice DG box  as it was easier to play all night than the big BCC# due to the aging process and onset of angina.

Still play BCC#, BC and Dg  and all three have their merits and disadvantages.

as to type of music I see myself as primarily aa dance musician  but enjoy playing for song accompaniment  etc .  I play very much 'treble lead'  and on the row on the DG with minimal row crossing to get better bass harmony but don't do and have no desire to play ''bass lead'' style, but of course each to his/her own!

Keeping mainly on the row on the DG  avoids having nasty 'accidents' when switching to BC of BCC# where using both or all three rows is of course the norm unless you want to play in just B or C!

My ? progress  over the past 60 or so years has been very much on an unplanned seriarse basis  and devoid of plans anad goals.   I have always and still do  have a go at any tune I like the sound of and want to play.  This is followed  by honest listening (?careful analasys)
of what it sounds like ( usually crap to begin with)  and then following an honest appraisal or of it spending considerable time  turning the bare bones of a tune badly played into  music  by  working on  things like  rhythm, dynamics and phrasing  .

My advice to anyone fairly new to the box is to concentrate on learning to play the box using a linited range of tunes rather than  focusing on the playing of new tunes of whatever genre turns you on.   Complete mastery of the box can make adding new tunes as easy as humming of whistleing  as the mechanics of playing the notes becomes automatic so time can be spent on final or 'polishing' of a tune

as to site reading  its far from essential and and playing 'by ear' leaves more scope to  develop your own 'arrangement' of a tune

Me,I can read the music for any tune I already know!

Its supposed to be fun, not a chore

george
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Thrupenny Bit

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I think it is a very healthy thing to occasionally stop and look at what you are playing, how you are playing it and re-evaluate the situation with a view to 'where to go next'.

I'm reminded of a point Squeezy made in a thread somewhere a little while back.
Twiddling around, not necessarily playing a tune can be incredibly useful. An intelligent twiddling about...

I.e.  Take a tune you know well and rather than head down and bash on with it, take a sideways look.
Can the basses mimic a phrase in the tune?
I push the notes for this phrase, what happens of I play it on the pull.... how does that affect the bass/chords?
Simply play about as in 'mess about!' rather than going through a tune whilst looking at the dots.
I sometimes do it after practicing a tune for a while and need a break but don't want to put the box down.
Often nothing happens, sometimes "Ah right...." and a lightbulb goes on!
Cheers
Q
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Thrupenny Bit

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

Chris Rayner

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I’m a complete musical tart.  Starting over sixty years ago with mouth organ and ukulele, having been abandoned as a hopeless case in my infancy by piano and violin teachers.  I was sent off to practice the piano to a frozen empty classroom at school.  I found the intricacies of the instrument’s mechanism intriguing and spent more time dismantling and reassembling it than I ever did playing it.  The mouthorgan was a substitute fir whistling, and probably more tuneful. 

The ukulele was a tryout for guitar, which, once acquired and played with some facility was joined by five-string banjo.  For the next fifty years I was a more or less occasional guitarist; music taking a back seat to family, earning a living etc.  Then I managed to afford a small sailing boat with sufficient space for overnight stays.  While a guitar is fine around a campfire it is a frightful encumbrance below decks.  So I sought a suitable alternative and settled on a melodeon.  The free reed seems to have become associated with seafaring, although I wonder how much of that has been amplified by Hollywood and similar.  At any rate, I ended up with a D/G Lily which I soon found too limited for my tastes, which had been formed on the entirely chromatic guitar.  So I swapped it for a 2 1/2 row D/G which allowed some reversals and accidentals.  Still finding this limiting I acquired a G/C/Acc Benny with twelve basses.

I’ve no doubt that if I had acquired the Benny thirty or forty years ago I’d’ve got to grips with it, but despite my best efforts I found it very heavy going.  I just couldn’t find my way into playing much outside G and C.  So where to go next?  I could have acquired a set of various two and three row diatonic instruments, but didn’t fancy the financial and physical transport and storage consequences.

So I thought I’d give the C system chromatic button accordion a crack.  I bought a 96 bass five row Hohner.  The chap I bought it off agreed to take it back for £70 less what I’d paid him for it if I didn’t get on with it.  Six months later I part exchanged it for a 120 bass Paolo Soprani.  I’m now a little over a year in to the CBA and have bought a Castagnari K3 four row 60 bass instrument to enable mobile music making (120 bass instruments are fearfully massive).  With Covid19 my melodeon activities are rather curtailed.  No Morris and no sessions.  Can’t get on with Zoom sessions.  But I’m putting in an hour or more of practice with the CBA and am beginning to be sufficiently familiar to be able to busk tunes and even sight read simple music.  It also enables me to investigate areas of music which are less easily accessible to diatonic instruments.  E.g. simple classical pieces, blues and jazz, French and German cabaret and the Great American Songbook.

As I said, I’m a musical tart.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2020, 07:01:53 PM by Chris Rayner »
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Thrupenny Bit

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Chris, I think many of us are musical tarts to a greater or lesser extent.
I went from a chord only guitarist to English concertina, learnt how to play by ear but eventually wanted a 'thicker' sound and got to grips with melodeon.
I have enjoyed every step of the way, but wish I'd jumped to melodeon years before.
But..... I've enjoyed the journey and enjoy learning and enjoy playing.

Whatever your journey or wherever you are along that journey 'enjoy' is the key word.
At times if I'm bogged down in a tune, can't get to grips with it, fingers going AWOL then I stop.
Forget the tune and just enjoy playing what I know.
The new tune won't mind and I regain the enjoyment factor.
Something George said earlier, it is so important to just enjoy it all.
Q
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Thrupenny Bit

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

Chris Ryall

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I’d say that some play “an instrument”, or “tunes”. Some play music. 


eg Frédéric Paris is superb on accordion, and also performs on clarinet, whistle, D pipes, on occasion hurdy-gurdy.

My kid’s mum, stopping over at Embraud on a saturday night, was therefore surprised to see him on electric guitar! But tarte has very different connotation in France 😉
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Gena Crisman

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Intermediate, where I think I am now
I can sight read simple tunes without tabs. I know a couple different basslines. I can fiddle with an accent note or play in thirds here and there. I'm playing some Delicq tunes and Andy Cutting tunes at tempo, working on expressiveness.

***
What comes next? I feel that being able to sightread and that I am developing a more intuitive relationship with the keyboard has been a long, long time coming, but will be rewarding.

My approach has been to try and find examples of tunes I want to be able to play, and by extension, things I want to be able to do. Sometimes I've had to file them away for later, and swing back around to them. But I always try to be aware of what my 'next meal' is supposed to be, but also that if I take a go at it and it doesn't seem to be progressing, that I should have something else to try instead.

I have tended to transcribe and to some extent copy arrangements of the tunes that have captivated me, and tried to figure out what is I like about them and what makes it 'tick', as a performance. I think that, learning to be able to play, and then later going back to, these pieces has sort of been the punctuation marks in my learning experience.

This thread from apparently a couple of years ago may be informative also: http://forum.melodeon.net/index.php?topic=22714.0 especially because that's a little window for me to look at what I was doing 2 years ago and think about how things have (and haven't) changed for me in that period;

Since then:
  • Explored playing in 'other' keys, eg C and A
  • I started writing tunes, typically exploring modes and less common scales.
  • Decided to stick with learning to play the incredibly challenging 'The Liberty Bell' (that took a long time)
  • Helped co-lead a steady speed session (which ended when membership dried up)
  • Kept up with playing for dance and continued as a morris side's Band Leader
  • Started improvising/picking out chord tones on a Melodica (well, a Suzuki Melodion technically) at a Ukulele Singaround - mostly successfully
  • Actually attended some workshops
  • Started exploring and employing right hand chords - something I guess I've wanted to know about for a long time.
  • Built up some tools to help create more nuanced, or at least more varied, performances
I still kind of suck at employing other bass patterns throughout a tune. That's probably what I'm going to be working on now that I've completed my previous goal of nailing down some recordings of tunes I'd been working on.

So, I'd suggest 'pick something' and take a good ol stab at it. It could be more advanced playing in thirds, it could be more ornaments (that's something else I don't do much of), it could be a tune by a player you admire.
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Dick Rees

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***
What comes next? I feel that being able to sightread and that I am developing a more intuitive relationship with the keyboard has been a long, long time coming, but will be rewarding.

Conscious listening, ear (interval) training.
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Blake

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I'm thoroughly enjoying reading through your responses! Thanks so much. Inspiring and validating, as well as informative. I will read more closely through them all.
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Chris Ryall

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Ear training is really good, 9.30 every day on the val d’Isère course! You have to name both intervals and arpegio’d chords.  About 30 each morning. And …it actually works. I’m usually conscious of what interval I’m on, relative to present chord.

No reason not to start this quite early in a “journey” as it repays many time over.

Another big step is learning to play tunes in upper octave, the fingering differs
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Thrupenny Bit

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Blake, I think we all go through times when we are dissatisfied with where we are.
I think the general consensus is that we are ascending a set of steps rather than a steady incline.
Steps have vertical faces and plateaus.
I think the vertical faces are the best, where several things click into places and we get a huge feeling of improvement and the accompanying pleasure and wellbeing because we gave achieved something.
The plateaus are the things we have to bear, where we feel like nothing is happening, we are not improving and can lead to us feeling dissatisfied with ourselves.
Here we have to just dig in and keep going.

May your vertical faces be often and your plateaus be short 🙂
Q
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Thrupenny Bit

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

Chris Rayner

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But tarte has very different connotation in France 😉

 A friend of mine with a very varied and successful career in the pharmaceutical industry claims to have been introduced at an international meeting by a French colleague describing him as “as you English say he has had his finger in a lot of tarts.”

Knowing the friend I suspect a little embroidery on the reality here.
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Elderly amateur musician hoping to stave off dementia by learning to play the melodeon.  Main instrument a Tommy, also D/G and G/C pokerworks,  a single row 2 stop Hohner, and a new addition to the free reedery, a rather splendid Paolo Soprani four voice 120 bass c-system chromatic button accordion.  Very shiny, very loud, and about the same size and weight as a small car.  Now I’ve traded me Benny with (ahem) a cash adjustment, to a three voice 60 bass Castagnari K3.

george garside

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Another big step is learning to play tunes in upper octave, the fingering differs

Absolutely!  I can never understand why  melodeon players don't practice playing scales as so doing is standard learning practice for other instruments.  I recommend playing scales the whole length of the keyboard  both on the row and across the rows until it can be done at speed without conscious thought as it makes the playing of 'new to you' tunes much easier both ' by ear' and 'from the dots'
george
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Tone Dumb Greg

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I  agree with Chris. Learning tunes by ear has to be my biggest weakness (amongst many).
I wish I had put a lot more effort into developing the listening skills he is working successfully on.
I would put it on the same level of importance  that I put on reading music. They both give you access to making music.

The other skill you don't mention is playing with others. The best fun in the world you can have with other people...apart from you know what.
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ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin. Ambrose Bierce

Chris Ryall

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yes yes YES to playing with others. Love it! 

But the key skill in doing that well is surely… listening 😉
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malcolmbebb

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But the key skill in doing that well is surely… listening 😉

Hear hear!
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