While we wait for George's tutor to appear, Damien Connolly's
Irish Accordion Tutor is available, for the moment only directly from him (a website is apparently under construction).
The simplest thing for anyone interested would be to contact Damien by email (at damienj NOSPACEHERE connolly ATSIGN hot NOSPACEHERE mail DOT com). The price for the book and DVD is US$45 and there may be an additional charge for postage. He is in Fairfield, Connecticut. You would need to send him a check in US$ drawn on a US bank or an international money order for the total. (In case anyone is worried about sending off their hard-earned cash to an unknown individual, I have known Damien for a couple of years and he is as straight as a die.)
Edited to add website now up:
http://www.damienconnolly.com/tutor.htmlA bit more detail about the tutor: I've viewed the DVD and it's very well done. Each of the 29 tunes in the book is demonstrated slowly (first and second parts separately) using the fingering indicated in the book. The camera angle is such that you can see exactly what he is doing. He also demonstrates all the ornaments he explains in the introductory part of the book. Basses for 6 tunes are demonstrated separately.
The book is spiral bound - opens flat or on a table or music stand - with a thick plastic protective cover.
The notation is very well thought out. As I said earlier, tunes are given in both conventional notation and a variant of ABC that Damien calls "BoxTab". (This is not tablature in the usual sense since it is the note names that are indicated, not the button numbers.) In both systems coloured highlighting is used to indicate bellows direction and certain specific ornaments. In addition there are red symbols - an arrow to indicate a finger slide (a technique that Damien uses copiously and to great effect) and an X to signal an unexpected shift. Fingering is indicated for each note, including graces.
All in all a very well thought-out project, based on the teaching system Damien has been developing over the past few years. It is home produced (printed in his basement, apparently!) and I have spotted a small number of typos in the text and one error in the bellows direction indicated in one of the tunes (Damien tells me he is aware of another one).
I'm not a B/C player but when I started C#/D I bought a few of the teaching aids for that system to get a few tips. I consider this new tutor by Damien Connolly to be far more thorough and useful than any I have seen so far. In a completely different league, in fact. Highly recommended.
By the way, if you're already a confirmed devotee of the three-finger method, Damien's book will present you with interesting challenges. He uses all four fingers to great effect, with the little finger doing service not only for grace notes but melody too. It certainly works for him - he's a wonderful player with a fluent, richly ornamented and very personal style.
Steve