Anyone play the accordion?

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Tom

Tom

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When we arrived for our last ukulele band Christmas party, we were serenaded by one of the band members playing the accordion. Few, if any, band members knew this lady even played this instrument. I'm trying to get our Music Director to have her play the accordion on one or more of our ukulele numbers.

I got talking with this lady at this week's ukulele practice and, being curious, I started looking at various accordion sites online. Looking at the bass/counter-bass/chord key layout on this site told me I'll never try to play this instrument  :-[
 
    Can remember in '48 the family listening to the Horace Heidt Amateur Hour - it was the American Idol in those day before TV. The winner that year was Dick Contino on the Accordion. He was an 18 year old just out of high school in Fresno.

He is still going strong after a long career in Las Vegas and world tours. At 83 I understand he just had a hip replaced and hopes to be back on stage by July. His signature song is Lady of Spain.

Am glad a trumpet only has three buttons to push, and the other hand is only used to hold the horn . . .  :)

 
Aye Bob, way too many buttons for me. But, for someone who can play, I think an accordion can provide a lot of pleasing entertainment to an audience.
 
Many, many years ago, I played the accordion.  From age 6 to 16 when other things became more interesting.  Played in several accordion bands and even one small combo.  I don't think I could lift one today.
 
I already suggested the concertina, but that's not what she's looking for. Best I could tell, this would be the accordion equivalent of a 3/4 size guitar.
 
I seem to recall there being smaller accordions with less than the 120 button bass but it's been over 50 years :)
 
Ned said:
I seem to recall there being smaller accordions with less than the 120 button bass but it's been over 50 years :)
Click to expand...

Yes there are accordions with fewer than the 120 button bass ... used to have one.  I still have the full size one in the basement ... need to get it out again.  I have some music that says in the margin I'm supposed to be able to play that song by sometime in 1950 ... probably could then, not so sure about now though!  ???    ;D

Howard
 
Howard, it might be time to dig the accordion out. I've been amazed at some of the "unused" instruments dug out of a basement, attic, or storage bay of an RV by forum members. When the members started playing again, the resulting music was amazing.
 
Hi guys,
I play the accordion and my wife plays the Uke. We take them camping sometimes. The bass buttons are not quite as hard as they seem as they are layed out in the circle of fifths, so actually it all comes together pretty nice.

Steve
 
As a kid, I was always attracted to the accordion. Then in 1959 as a 17 year old, living on my own in rooming houses that didn't offer an opportunity for a larger instrument, I bought my first accordion, a Hohner with rather continental wet tuning, and attacked it headon with classical lessons practicing four to five hours on a typical day; completing the entire 10 grade curriculum in less than three years!  :)  In all modesty, I was really hot!! and received offers to join instrument groups.

Then I listened to a recording of Iona Reed, who won the Word Accordion Championship in 1962. I found her "music" and her instrument absolutely irritating! And after considering, "Is that all there is!??", gave my accordion away to some unfortunate who actually wanted to play one but couldn't afford one. And that was the end of my accordion playing days.;) I still find the sound of accordion "music" irritating to this day.

Not that I gave up music. In the ensuing 5 years, I got married, bought a house, and then bought my first organ. Organ studies can be more fun than you could imagine. The first three months were occupied by intense feet-only playing the pedals, hands-off exercises! Not all that much fun at the time, but in retrospect, ever so grateful for being forced to do that.  :)
 
Interesting and amusing story Stan. I can't imagine any accordion looking or sounding like that beautiful organ you have.
 
Hello fellow RVers!  I just stumbled across this thread.  I play accordion.  I play both piano and button box accordion.  My husband and I have a musical duo called "The Mudbugs".  He is a singer/sonwriter and plays guitar.  We play country, blues, zydeco, and cajun.  We are heading to Havasu the end of Nov 2014.  Would be fun to run into some other musicians.  {[:::::]}  Candy
 
Thanks for the warm welcome Tom  :D.......  Really appreciating this friendly RV Forum community.  We have a lot to learn and it's so nice to have access to this supportive group.
 
I left my accordion in the back seat of my car and parked on the street in New Orleans.

When I came back there were two of them.  And a banjo!
(Apparently the tub bass wouldn't fit through the window)

;)

As a collector of musician jokes I couldn't help myself.

How long will the Mudbugs be in Havasue?
 
Hi Ho:  Tom, the bass keys are not that difficult to figure out.  The one with the indentation is C.  The notes in the bass row just follow the key signatures for sharps going up and flats for going down.  So going up is C, G, D, A, E etc.  and down is F, Bflat, Eflat, Aflat, etc.  The counterbass row is exactly the same thing in the same order shifted by a third, so across from C is E.  When you run out of key signatures, just start over.  The rest of the keys are just chords for the notes in the bass row in this order:  Major, Minor, Seventh, and Diminished.  So if you want to play a C followed by C major, it's just the indent key and the one next to it.  C7 is two rows over etc.

Well, that took more words than I thought, but you can see that the arrangement is pretty straight forward and even 120 keys are not that intimidating.  If you have it figured out, try a simple scale starting with C, D (two keys up), E (across from C in the counterbass row), F (one key down from C), G (one key up), A (across from F), B (across from G), and back to C.

Now the  hard part is to play songs with single notes all over the place.  That takes a little practice.  I bet there are no requests for Accordian bass Lesson 2.

Dirk

 
Dirk, that sounds way too complicated for my simple mind  ???
 
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