Saturday, December 10, 2011

My accordion-playing friend told me something deep a few days ago....While playing in his band, he doesn't press the lefthand buttons, just the keyboard. I was surprised. Then he explained that the buttons on the left are either bassnotes or chords. And, in his band, there's a guitarist playing the chords and a bassist playing bass notes, so he doesn't have to press those buttons. This has helped me understand the accordion.

1 comment:

The Pancake Master said...

If your accordion-playing friend is Jeremy, he once divulged that secret to me, too, and it is actually very bad for an accordion to only play the keyboard notes. It puts a lot of strain on the bellows and such, as the air is being squeezed out through a smaller space. You can play bass without the keys, but keys without the bass is a bad idea. Well, that's what the old guy that owns the (only?) accordion shop in town told me, anyway.