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[John C]

Bob,
This thread is going in a great direction and you have said that you stripped out the ornamentation and bass runs on your copy of L'inconnu de Limoise.

This is exactly what I need to start adding to my playing but without a road map (picture) I'm having a hard time.

Please, please would you, could you, put in some ornamentation and re list L'inconnu de Limoise.   Doesn't have to be trade secrets or anything but just a push in the right direction.

Many thanks

John

[Chris Ryall]

From another thread I know, but 'just the right speed' for here. Played in G (so uses an F 'accidental')

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYREiLefbG8

AK played very legato - but the left hand is exemplary. Sparse. Sensitive.

[nemethmik]

This is a great topic.  I have been struggling with the left hand as well.

I am a beginner, too and I am still struggling with the bass, too. My personal experience is that

A learner of the accordion should not skip the mandatory stages of learning without risking frustration.

(1) You should learn all the exercises and tunes from a good tutor book for beginners.
I've bought all books and DVDs and far the best for learning the D/G melodeon is Maggie Moore & Stan Bloor Maggie's Melodeon: it's a real tutor book for beginners with appropriate speed and tune selection. Do not miss any exercises and tunes!

(2) None of the tunes selected for the Tune of the Month are for beginners. 

(3) The worst teachers I ever met were the best musicians: they have exceptional skills and they just play their instruments and advices from these guys are useful only for established musicians. I prefer learning from a "good-enough" musician, who is an excellent teacher.

[Lester]

(2) None of the tunes selected for the Tune of the Month are for beginners. 

I 100% disagree with this assertion.

LDT said she would never be able to play Ashokan Farewell but she did/does and, at a guess, has learned stuff through the process of learning it. TonyM has been playing for 3 months http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYREiLefbG8 and Radicalaccordion for 1 month http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohWFlEtVd-k.

[Steve_freereeder]

I am a beginner, too and I am still struggling with the bass, too. My personal experience is that

A learner of the accordion should not skip the mandatory stages of learning without risking frustration.

(1) You should learn all the exercises and tunes from a good tutor book for beginners.
I've bought all books and DVDs and far the best for learning the D/G melodeon is Maggie Moore & Stan Bloor Maggie's Melodeon: it's a real tutor book for beginners with appropriate speed and tune selection. Do not miss any exercises and tunes!

(2) None of the tunes selected for the Tune of the Month are for beginners.  

(3) The worst teachers I ever met were the best musicians: they have exceptional skills and they just play their instruments and advices from these guys are useful only for established musicians. I prefer learning from a "good-enough" musician, who is an excellent teacher.

Sorry Miklos, but I also disagree with your assertions.
re (2): Speed the Plough (TOTM for October) was one of the first tunes I ever learnt and I was playing it pretty fluently within a couple of months of picking up the melodeon. It is also a tune which I teach to beginners.

As for (3): There are good and bad teachers in all subjects. I think you are being unfairly hard on 'the best musicians'. I currently learn with one of the finest melodeon and anglo concertina players around: Brian Peters, both in small group workshops and on a one-to-one basis. He is a superb teacher - I have learnt so much from him in the last few years, and I am privileged to be able to pass on some of his expertise and methodology to my own students. When I was younger and learning to be an orchestral clarinettist, I was fortunate enough to attend workshops and working rehearsals with tutor Jack Brymer (who sadly passed away a few years ago), principal clarinettist of the London Symphony Orchestra and one of the finest there has ever been. Again - a wonderful teacher, and I am still reaping the benefits of his tuition and inspiration.

Edited to add:
I'm glad you like Maggie Moore's and Stan's tutor book and DVD. I agree it is excellent.

[nemethmik]

re (2): Speed the Plough (TOTM for October) was one of the first tunes I ever learnt and I was playing it pretty fluently within a couple of months of picking up the melodeon. It is also a tune which I teach to beginners.

Steve, You must be joking! Speed the Plough played uptospeed is definitely not a beginner tune. How a tune with long 8th note sequences can be a beginner tune  . Speed the Plough is in the advanced section of Dave Mallinson's book ang he plays the tune on the CD at 96 beats per minute. Same tempo as our great Ollie's version here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t0vPUYbvOE
Not a beginner tune, sure.
Miki

[Theo]

(3) The worst teachers I ever met were the best musicians:

Can be true, but the converse is definitely not.  There are top players who are also sensitive, patient, and inspiring teachers.   Steve has already mentioned one.  I'll also cite Andy Cutting.  I had the great good fortune of a week of summer school workshops with him when I was only about 6 months into playing, and I'm still conscious of what I learned from him then.  He has been out of the workshop scene for a while, but I'm delighted to see he is teaching at Mendlesham in March.

[nemethmik]

I'll also cite Andy Cutting

Both of You, Theo and Steve, are excelent musicians and I am sure that you have exeptional music skills. Steve was an established classical orchestra musician. Both of you are (professional) music teachers today. You opinion does not count in this debate. My daughter is like you two. I was talking about everyday guys like me.
 

[Theo]

I'll also cite Andy Cutting

Both of You, Theo and Steve, are excelent musicians and I am sure that you have exeptional music skills. Steve was an established classical orchestra musician. Both of you are (professional) music teachers today. You opinion does not count in this debate. My daughter is like you two. I was talking about everyday guys like me.
 

You are wrong about me Miklos.   I started to play melodeon in 1995 at the age of 45.  Before that I had never played any instrument.  I am not a professional music teacher, and only occasionally am I a professional musician, in that I get payed to play in a band some weekends.    When I first met Andy Cutting in 1995 I was finding that learning the melodeon was a very hard work.   His teaching was excellent, even for a complete beginner like me, an inspiration actually.  The learning process did not get easier after that but I had a much clearer idea about what I could achieve, so I was much better motivated to make the necessary effort.

I agree that some top musicians are not good teachers, (but I will not name names here),  but some are excellent teachers, and Andy Cutting is one of the best.

[Steve_freereeder]

Steve, You must be joking! Speed the Plough played uptospeed is definitely not a beginner tune. How a tune with long 8th note sequences can be a beginner tune  . Speed the Plough is in the advanced section of Dave Mallinson's book ang he plays the tune on the CD at 96 beats per minute. Same tempo as our great Ollie's version here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t0vPUYbvOE
Not a beginner tune, sure.

I assure you Miklos, I am not joking. In the version you give, Ollie plays Speed the Plough perhaps a little bit faster than I would, but not much. Whatever Dave Mallinson might say in his book, the tune is definitely one which relative beginners can attempt with success, playing up and down the G-row on a D/G instrument, and I think plenty of English-style players on this forum would back me up.  As with any tune, you can choose to make it as complex as you want, with cross-row fingering and fancy chords - but that is not what I am talking about here. "Long 8th note sequences" ? - you just waggle the bellows in and out, and Bob's your uncle. For just about all of the tune you can keep your right hand in one position on the keyboard. 

Both of You, Theo and Steve, are excelent musicians and I am sure that you have exeptional music skills. Steve was an established classical orchestra musician. Both of you are (professional) music teachers today. You opinion does not count in this debate. My daughter is like you two. I was talking about everyday guys like me.

As with Theo, you are wrong about me too. I am a professional geologist, not a music teacher, but I do teach melodeon and concertina at various workshops, and I play regularly in a couple of ceilidh bands for which we get paid.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt because of possible misunderstanding due to our different home languages, but please don't tell me my 'opinion does not count in this debate'. It does, and I will continue to add my contribution to this debate as I see fit, because in this instance it is based on personal, practical experience of dating back to when I started playing the melodeon in the early 1980s.

[Owen Woods]

I would add that I would consider Speed The Plough to be a good beginner's tune. It involves just four buttons, on one row, in the lower octave. Bits of it would be tricky to a complete beginner, but certainly doable.

[ladydetemps]

Speed the plough is a beginnerish tune if you start very slowly (only non nursary rhyme ive learnt mainly by ear). Been learning melodeon since march 09. Its all about time even the advanced tunes i will get eventually if i reapeat it slowly for long enough. My problem is that I want perfection every time.

[nemethmik]

"Long 8th note sequences" ? - you just waggle the bellows in and out

This belows waggling at 96 bpm is definitely a challenge for a beginner.

I will continue to add my contribution

Sure, you are one of my favorite contributor in this forum. It's always a pleasure to read your posts and I learn a lot.
I have a list of my favorite users here and use the "Show the last posts of this person." tool to read postings.
One of your comments abot G/C vs D/G playing was the best posting of the year 2009 for me.
Miki

[Lester]

"Long 8th note sequences" ? - you just waggle the bellows in and out

This bellows waggling at 96 bpm is definitely a challenge for a beginner.

Who says it mist be at "96 bpm" play it at a speed that you are happy playing at, the more you play it the more at ease you will be and the speed will increase. Then all you have to learn is when to stop getting faster 

[Ellie]

"Long 8th note sequences" ? - you just waggle the bellows in and out

This belows waggling at 96 bpm is definitely a challenge for a beginner.

Yes, but you never, ever start off playing it at that speed! It wasn't my first tune, but since I've been playing, when friends ask me about the box, it's invariably the tune I choose to teach them, and it's rare that someone can't stumble through it (albeit very slowly) after about half an hour   And Princess Royal was one of my very early tunes as well!

And thanks also to Bob for posting his earlier examples of LIDL - I've been finding it useful as well, so thankyou!

Edit: What is this bpm malarkey anyway? I jsut play tunes at the speed at which they sound best to me 

[nemethmik]

What is this bpm malarkey anyway? I jsut play tunes at the speed at which they sound best to me 

Dave Mallinson plays Speed the Plough at a speed of 96 beats per minute (bpm) on his CD accompanyig his (well-respected, I suppose) tutor book "The D/G Melodeon Absolute  Beginners". This tune is in the advanced section of the book. It was not me who invented the idea that Speed the Plough is not a beginner tune. When I tried to play Speed the Plough along with the Mallinson CD after three months of learning the melodeon, I found that Speed the Plough is not a beginners tune.
When you give lessons, do you use any published methods (instructional/tuition book) like Dave Mallinson's or Maggie Moore's?
Miki

[juker]

I think that I can see the point that Miki is trying to make here. Yes, a beginner can work slowly through Speed the Plough and Princess Royal for weeks and make a reasonable fist of it with a lot of effort (speaking for myself here, obviously some beginners are much quicker learners than me!) but there are much easier tunes to learn which enable a beginner to play the melody and then work on the basses and establish some control over that aspect of playing. Speed the Plough does indeed only use a few buttons but there is a fair bit of bellows work which I found quite a challenge, let alone getting the basses happening. Since I have been participating in TOTM (and loving it I might add) I find I am only able to learn the one tune in a month whereas before I was tackling more, easier tunes. I have indeed learned a lot but I am not convinced that it is the easiest way for a beginner to learn. Having said that, I do love TOTM and having a goal has certainly got something to be said for it in terms of forcing the requisite amount of practise. There may well be a chorus of people keen to let me know that they played Princess Royal at speed in a couple of keys within two weeks of first laying hands on a melodeon, but for many of us beginners it is a much slower process.

I learned 'Leaving Lismore' within half an hour just by watching Graeme McKay's video on youtube. Wish I had a teacher like that here!

[Chris Ryall]

Dave Mallinson plays Speed the Plough at a speed of 96 beats per minute (bpm) on his CD accompanyig his (well-respected, I suppose) tutor book "The D/G Melodeon Absolute  Beginners". This tune is in the advanced section of the book. It was not me who invented the idea that Speed the Plough is not a beginner tune. When I tried to play Speed the Plough along with the Mallinson CD after three months of learning the melodeon, I found that Speed the Plough is not a beginners tune.  When you give lessons, do you use any published methods (instructional/tuition book) like Dave Mallinson's or Maggie Moore's?Miki

Dearest Dickie.  

But StP is not bad. eg instead of pushing that long G for the first 3 bars of the B music - stick your pinkie on G-pull (outer row).

The reason it's such a cracker for experiment is that the tune holds a single note (so a no brainer)and  you are completely free to focus on left end ideas. Try a chunky Em..D..C bass run for example.  But nearly everything works - cross chords - a little bass end tune - whatever. Chris

[Gandy]

Is there not a bit of cross purposes here given the possible variations in the tune?  I don't know Dave Mallinson's book but if he's teaching Speed the Plough as a reel then that's quite a difficult tune in my opinion - well I find it difficult, although I don't like it enough to persist.  Difficult to get all the runs fluent and I'm sure it uses more than four buttons.   That's quite different to the version commonly played in England.

[michik]

For me, playing slowly (but right) helped very much with the left/right coordination

Playing "stupid" patterns like these below work for me very well:

Code: [Select]

3/8 rythm
Treble: g g g g g g a a a a a a
Bass:   G   g G   g A   a A    a

3/4 rythm
Treble: g-- g g-- g a-- a a-- a
Bass:   G g g G g g A a a A a  a

Treble: g g-- g g-- a a-- a a--
Bass:   G g g G g g A a a A a  a

Also mix the various patterns and try to play the bass in different varaints

like

Code: [Select]

1.....2.....3.....

Um    ta    ta
Um    taaah-taaaah
Um    ta    taaaah
Um    taaah-ta
Uuuum-ta    taaaah
Uuuum-taaah-taaaah
 and so on

More advanced:

Code: [Select]


3/4 rythm
Treble: gbdgbd gbdgbd aceace aceace
Bass:   G g g  G g g  A a a  A a a

Play the chords ascending (gbd/ace) or descending (dbg/eca) or use differnt buttons or even chords

If the oom-pah-pah stuff works well you will start to break out from this pattern more or less automatically
because you get a more agile left hand