Learning Duet From Accordion Tutors And Scores

[Don Taylor]

Lukasz made the following tantalising assertion on another thread:

 

"One underestimated aspect of (large enough) Duets, especially isomorphic layout like Hayden or Chromatiphone, is that once you know basics, you dont't need concertina-specific inspirational or teaching material, you can just take accordion sheets (or accordion youtube tutorials if you're a beginner) and play them in a very straightforward manner. "

 

Please tell me more! What kind of accordion and what Youtube tutorials and accordion scores fit well with an Elise.

 

Maybe the Elise is not big enough for this kind of treatment?

 

Don.

[Geoff Wooff]

The problem with the Elise is that although it is said that one can play tunes in C,G,D and A there is not enough range for most tunes to be able to play a piece in the key that one might wish. But it is usually possible to shift key to centralise the range around the notes one does have. So, the Elise becomes a Taster for the Hayden keyboard...

 

I don't have any Accordion scores at the moment but as far as I recall they are somewhat like those one sees in song books.... which give the melody in staff notation and the chord names wriiten above... like Fake Books. I have two small paperbacks called Jazz Standards.... they advertise their usefullness on the front cover " melody Line,Chords and Lyrics for Keyboard,Guitar and Vocal."

 

So you learn your chord shapes , take a song book and give it a try...

 

I'll ask my friend who plays the Chromatic Accordéon and take a look at his library of sheet music.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Geoff Wooff

[JimLucas]

So you learn your chord shapes , take a song book and give it a try...

• Ah, but first you have to "learn your chord shapes". Until you do, the accordion sheets won't be all that helpful. And as far as I know, the accordion sheets won't teach you what those shapes are.
• What's more, it may not be possible to match the "shape" of every accordion chord on your duet (especially on the Elise), and when the shape -- or maybe even just the octave -- isn't the same, the sound of the full piece won't necessarily be as pleasing as the accordion original.

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

A bit of a foreword: I have used one concertina specific book: the "Absolute beginners concertina" by Mick Bramich (back when I was still learning Anglo) and apart from learning three simple tunes that I liked from it I haven't learnt much about music from such approach. After I have switched to Hayden, it became apparent, that Anglo tutors (and probably English as well) aren't the best way to learn anything about Duet playing. At the begining I have tried to use some guitar arrangements, but it is hard to find ones with actual melody line. So I have switched to accordion materials. And I don't claim, that one can play with EXACTLY same results as on accordion, merely that they are better suited for duet learning than using Anglo or English concertina-specific materials. One more thing to be noted: prior to trying Anglo, I had very limited musical training, I knew only common (elementary school) basics about how staff notation looks and works. And please bear in mind, that I'm talking about early learning here, not performing as a professional musician after 20+ years of experience some of you have.

 

@Jim: learning chord shapes on a Hayden took me exactly one evening and about a week of practice to be able to play oompah rhytms with both hands with any triad. After about a month I have been able to play chordal-only accompaniments to modern camp-fire songs, but we all now, that chords-only accompaniment is dull and doesn't work to well. All necessary information on how chords look on a Hayden can be googled in one images search. That is the power of isomorphic layout. It took me another year to develop enough hands separation, to be able to play those rhytms with melody, but I have played a lot of parallel octaves or simplified drone or root notes accompaniment until then. Also, with Hayden, you do not need any kind of tutor to introduce notes one-by-one as beginner Anglo tutors do - Hayden layout is so plain and simple, that you can play scales with the same intuitivity as on an Anglo, but throughout entire range and any scale available. The concept of a key on a Hayden is much less important than on an Anglo, you can always transpose with a flip of a wrist. Even with tunes not in one of Elise's keys, you can learn fingering on "virtual" buttons outside of your keyboard and then just move up or down one button. I had one powerfull tool on the beginning though: my MIDI concertina driver shows you pressed buttons in real time, so it is easier to map the physical position of buttons.

 

I agree, that with Elise you have to choose your sheets carefully and usually you can play only parts of material and limit your LH "chords" to two or even single notes with lowest range but it is more than enough to learn many things that can be then used within the range of Elise. I did use some sheets for Yann Tiersen, Agnes Obel, some polish Biesiada genre sheets (many of those are written for smallest accordions available and confined fully within a single key), some klezmer sheets (those are usually outside a playable range of Elise due to nature of the klezmer scale and heavy use of accidentals) and some film music, found generally around the net. There is a tutor called "Szkoła na akordeon" by Witold Kulpowicz, it's the most popular accordion learning book in Poland, but I don't like the general idea of playing a lot of music that I don't like or simple but arbitrary excercises. I did most of those sheets in full on my MIDI concertina, but stll far from full speed, so I have no recordings. But those lessons have trained me in different skills like: general feeling of accompaniment; comfort with playing chords; different common fingering runs and bits on the right hand; some bellows techniques; increased my hand separation, and so on.

 

As for YT tutorials, I did mostly Beirut covers from this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYvYCs-MXGU My version (still not entirely happy with it) can be heard here:

Many times I have just listened to accordion covers of some piano or guitar originals to hear what can be done on a bellows instrument and then worked with them as a reference in further simplifying them for my MIDI or Elise.

 

Accordion sheets I found are generally in one of three forms: full twin staff notation, fake sheets or sheets with basso continuo. Apart from simple playing those, using them for learning anything have forced me to learn quite a lot of music theory, so with increasing experience I have been able to arrange some songs based on guitar tabulatures for solo parts and combine those with different techniques specific to bellows driven instrumets and duets and finally to build up my own arrangements based on chord notation only.

 

I think that this approach have gave me more knowledge about music in general than sticking to available concertina tutors. One thing that stands out the most, is that I don't think about a concerina in terms of it's trad/folk provenance and traditional concertina repertoire as I did in the begining (using my anglo mostly for irish and shanty tunes), but use it to at least try to play anything that catches my ear. This lead to some interesting findings, like one that concertina is a great instrument for playing brass section parts of choruses or solos in some modern folk-rock, especially in duet with a guitar. Or that some piano music can have a great feeling on a concertina (e.g. Agnes Obel).

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

@ Don: As an example, here you have one of the first songs I have learned on the Elise http://chomikuj.pl/pm35533/r*c3*b3*c5*bcne/nuty+na+akordeon/NUTY+NA+AKORDEON/Nuty+-+Komu+dzwoni*c4*85*2c+temu+dzwoni*c4*85+-+akordeon,1123203807.pdf It is a song by Stanisław Grzesiuk, one of the most famous composer of polish tradition of street bands of 1930-40s. You can hear the original here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMxiCu4EXWk , a most popular modern rendition by Szwagierkolaska band here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC0LBQZIrZ4 (unfortunately this very nice fiddle solo has some notes unavailable on Elise…) and a nice rendition on a small accordion here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX839mjqag0

 

And this song is a natural way to learn to play fast runs with RH, as it speeds up towards the end. I have used this song and my own arrangement of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLajfxPLZeQ to train stamina for arpeggios in my RH.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Łukasz Martynowicz

[Don Taylor]

Lukasz

 

Thanks for this info, I will take a look at your recommendations over the next few days.

 

I have been working from the tutor that came with the Elise, presumably you also have a copy of it so I wondered about your opinion of it. I like it so far, but the tunes in it are not very inspiring.

 

Don.

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

Yes, I have it, but when I bought Elise I had about 8 months worth of Hayden playing under my belt, so I just took a glance on it and put it on the shelf. It has all the flaws I have pointed out earlier: it introduces notes one by one, has scales explained only after 28 pages of simple tunes and I was really disapointed, that Wim didn't stressed the geometric nature of Hayden layout at all and didn't show a single chord shape diagram or a scale "hexagon" in the entire tutor. For me it is more of a "translation" of universal anglo/english/duet tutor than a Hayden specific material, and is really very, very basic. And it is focused on melody playing, while Hayden stands out the most in chordal playing and ease of accompaniment.

 

And to be honest I don't really know what is the target group of this tutuor: people who just want their concertina/music adventure started and have no preferences will probably go for an Anglo, as it is the most iconic concertina type and is probably the only concertina type that needs extensive note-by-note introduction to its entire range as only 16 buttons out of 30 are in logical arrangement. People who want to try Hayden probably do have some musical training and have read a lot about this particular system. But this tutor is for folks that have chosen a random instrument for their first contact with music and it happened to be a Hayden concertina. Not a very likely scenario if you ask me...

[Alan Day]

Just out of interest there was some talk of a possible Melodion International many years ago,again showing the various styles of playing the instrument.

How I saw it it would include Irish,English ,East Anglian,French (Marc Perone immediately springs to mind),French Canadian,Eastern European Etc

I think it may work, but I would need major help on that one.

Al

[Anglo-Irishman]

Lukasz,

My approach to the concertina is much like yours, in that I play music that takes my fancy, from any country, any generation or any genre, such as classical, pop or folk. So I understand your posting. In all but a very few cases, this music was not created with the concertina in mind, and there are no readily available arrangements of it for any of the concertina systems. So I have to arrange everything myself. Having listened to and performed music for a very long time now, I can usually make a pretty good stab at arranging a simple tune for the Anglo or, even better, for the Crane. But I still need a bit of help from musicians who are better at arranging than I am.

 

And in these cases, I usually turn to song books - the kind with words, melody and chord symbols, not unlike the accordion literature you mention. Many kinds of music (even church hymns) are available in this form for the benefit of the ubiquitous guitarist. From these sources, I can refresh my memory of the received version of the melody, and benefit from the author's ideas on chord structure.

 

This does mean that I have to learn my right-hand scales on the Crane, and also learn what "shape" a given chord has in a given octave. However, I regard those as basic lessons when learning a duet. But it also means that I don't have to start from scratch when arranging a new tune that I've recently heard and liked for the Crane.

 

So I would say that melody/chord-symbol fake sheets and song-books are more an aid to arranging for the duet than actually learning to play it. But I would also say that melody-chord notation is more useful for creating concertina arrangements than a fully written-out arrangement in standard notation for a completely different instrument, such as the piano or guitar.

 

The chord symbols only cover one aspect of arrangement, of course: the basic harmonies. The next decision you have to make is whether to play the indicated chord as a block chord, an oom-pah or an arpeggio, and whether to use it as a triad, or only one or two notes from it. Here, an existing arrangement for piano or classical guitar in standard notation might be more helpful.

 

Cheers,

John

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

 

So I would say that melody/chord-symbol fake sheets and song-books are more an aid to arranging for the duet than actually learning to play it. But I would also say that melody-chord notation is more useful for creating concertina arrangements than a fully written-out arrangement in standard notation for a completely different instrument, such as the piano or guitar.

 

 

Maybe I have a different understanding of what should be called "learning to play". Beginner tutors like Mike Bramich's, which are based on a principle of showing what button to press and when to reverse the bellows are more like a recipe than an actual knowledge of the instrument. This is especially true to Hayden layout, as "what to press" takes one evening and the rule of using always the same finger for any given note does not apply.

 

IMHO fake sheets, whether in songbooks, accordion materials, TOTMs etc. are all an aid for learning to play, as they provide playable material which pushes us forward. And to push your limit, you need a score best suited for your instrument, which in case of a duet should have two separate parts for each hand, which is not that common in concertina materials, as both Anglos and Englishes aren't explicitly designed for such style. Harmonic style on an Anglo is considered an advanced way to play it, while on a Hayden duet it is something very, very basic - exactly like on an accordion. What is clearly missed in such approach is the ability to play two melodic lines on a duet, which is a difficult thing to master and ideally should be taught with a lot of material of increasing dificulty, but unfortunatelly such tutor is unavailable.

 

Other than that I agree with you completely, especially on relative usefullness of different forms of written music. Accordion sheets are a bit "enchanced" versions of fake sheets (especially those with basso continuo), while piano arrangements are usually cluttered with tons of unplayable notes and rich chords. Guitar notation is either very basic (chords only) or need an extensive translation from a tabulature, which in fact requires you to firstly learn how string instruments are built. But a side effect of all that transcribing that needs to be done is that you learn different aspects of being a musician in much more depth, than by simply following a dedicated tutor focused on playing tunes.

[Wolf Molkentin]

When I learn a tune from ABC notation I'm working with the fake or lead sheet not just regarding the melody but as well the harmony / chording, which includes parts of a bass line through indicating mainly the third or fifth of the given chord (f.i.: C - G/B - Am - Em/G). Apart from possible spreading of the chord (and of course omitting the tone of the melody) one might regard that as indicating inversions where required. IMO spreading a given chord can be developed straightforward from here then, and will of course settle with advancing experience... I prefer this very much to a score with two systems (if not playing a Beethoven sonata on the piano or something like this), and believe this would apply to playing a Duet concertina as well.

[Anglo-Irishman]

 

But a side effect of all that transcribing that needs to be done is that you learn different aspects of being a musician in much more depth, than by simply following a dedicated tutor focused on playing tunes.

 

Lukasz,

 

I totally agree!

 

I play several instruments, and each of them helps to teach me how to play the others.

 

Cheers,

John