La Spagnola

This waltz titled "La Spagnola" (Maid of Spain) is an Italian song composed by Vincenzo di Chiara. It was made popular in the version sung by Gigliola Cinquetti.

To play this on a small 32 bass accordion I had to transpose the tune into G from the original key of A, otherwise it would run out of bass chords. Here's my arrangement. If anyone feels this is a violation of their copyright, then just let me know and I will remove it.








My version played on a Galotta 32 bass accordion.

And here it's sung by the charming Gigliola Cinquetti.

Saddle the Pony

This is a traditional Irish tune, I picked it up from the Gallowglass Ceilidh band's excellent CD and figured out an arrangement.

It fits nicely onto the range of small accordions such as 48 or 32 bass and as it's in G it makes a nice counterpoint to other Irish jigs, many of which are in the key of D.

Over the Waves

That little red accordion I play was once owned by my uncle who sadly passed away in 2003. I inherited his accordions, and that was when I started learning to play.



My uncle Melvern Cousins was a remarkable man. A printer by trade, he had wide interests and taught himself many skills including cycling, photography, music, astronomy, sailing and archery. You see him here racing in a hill-climb in England during the 1960s. This tune was one of his favourites and he used to play it on this accordion. I hope you enjoy my interpretation.

Circle of Fifths 2

What the circle of fifths shows us is the harmonic relationship between notes. This is something that is not obvious when looking at the piano keyboard, as that arranges the notes in linear order.

Notes that are close together on the piano keyboard are in fact harmonically far apart. Try playing C and C# together - it will sound dissonant and unpleasant. These two notes are far apart on the circle of fifths, and they'll rarely be heard together in music.

But play C and G together and it will sound sweet. G is a fifth higher than C, it is the closest note to C harmonically, and they are neighbours on the circle of fifths.



The reasons for this can be analysed mathematically, in fact G is 1.5 times the frequency of C. So three cycles of G will fit into the same time as 2 cycles of C. But when playing music there's not much time to think this way, we just need a feeling for what sounds good.

Look at the circle of fifths and you'll see that G is one place clockwise from C. Now, go one place anticlockwise and you'll find F. In other words, C is the fifth note of the scale of F.

Say we are playing a tune in the scale of C. The two notes most closely related to the home key are G and F. And you'll find that the chords C, G and F are the ones that will pop up most often when trying to harmonise an accompaniment with a tune in C. The most commonly needed chords are the two nearest neighbours on the circle of fifths.

Circle of Fifths 1

How to Harmonise Chords

This was, and still is, the greatest mystery in music for me.

So, you have a tune, and you want to fit chords to it. How to proceed?

As with most things in life, you can get a certain way by guessing, but it helps to know what you're doing. And to know what you're doing, you need to understand the circle of fifths. Here it is, in all its symmetrical beauty.

Each chord leads to the following one, in an anticlockwise direction.

Try it. G7 makes you wish for C. C7 makes you wish for F. And so on. There is a progression here, each chord leads you to the next. More tomorrow......

Irish Music Resource

This is a great site for finding traditional Irish tunes, jigs, reels and the like. Most tunes can be found in sheet music format, and some have chord symbols.

http://www.thesession.org/

God is in the house

I came across this video on YouTube a while back. I've been trying to learn this piece for a while and at it's still progressing, it'll take a while before I have it sorted. Keith Anderson plays it impeccably, it really is a perfect example of how the accordion should be played.

Enjoy.

Repeated Notes

When I first started learning to read music it seemed easy if the same note was repeated, it's easier to hit the same note again with the same finger than it is to search for a new note on the keyboard.

But when trying to play faster pieces, then repeated notes create special problems. It's difficult to hit the same note repeatedly with the same finger and to make it sound fluent, the speed will be limited and there will be a big gap between the notes.

A good habit is to play repeated notes faster by changing fingers. For instance, at 0:19 in this video the note D is repeated 3 times in a row. Trying to play it with the thumb 3 times in a row made it sound jerky, so instead I play it using fingering 1,2,1. At 0:20 you can see the note A is also repeated 3 times, I play it with 5,4,5.

It's one of those cases where sometimes you have to go a bit backwards in order to go forwards, at first this fingering felt awkward, but after a bit of practice it really makes things easier and helps with speeding the piece up.

How to Practice

I don't often practice in a very efficient way. Often I play my favourite tunes, repeating the same old mistakes, that's not really practice, it's having fun - that's OK, but I don't fool myself that it's a way to make any progress.

It's much better to go over the difficult parts, playing it slowly and precisely, to get into the habit of playing it right. But it's not always easy to have this discipline.

One thing that's really helped me to improve is recording my practice and making these videos. Many faults are obvious on the recordings that I don't even notice while playing, and it's a good exercise to try to get a good "take".



I made this recording tonight, it took about 5 tries to get one I was satisfied with, and even then it has one wrong note. I got another take with no wrong notes but somehow the life was missing from the piece. I tried it again but but then I was getting tired and it got worse, so I published this one.

See what you think. Perhaps you'll notice the wrong note, perhaps not. I know it's there so one day I'll do it again, but for now I hope you enjoy it.

Musette waltz

Musette waltz

This is a little piece I wrote myself. I've often spent time "noodling" and picking out bits of tunes, but I thought it'd be a good exercise to try to write a piece and finish it off properly.

I'd be very happy to hear ideas from other musicians about how it can be improved.



Here's the score. There's a lot of software available for publishing music but I think there's something pleasing about writing a score by hand.

Street Music

Today I went busking on the street. It's the first time I've ever done it.

It's not easy to find a good spot, it needs to be some place where there are plenty of people walking past, but not directly in front of someone's house or business. Many of the best spots are already taken.

I found a good spot near the river in Nijmegen where the cruise boats come and go.

It was a nice experience, at first I was nervous but the main thing is to relax and smile.

Several people stopped and chatted to me, and quite a few kind people put money in my hat. Best of all, two people danced in the street :-)

Any kind of performance is great practice, because when mistakes happen (and I make a lot) you can't just stop, you have to find a way to cover the mistakes, carry on and keep the piece going.

Chords and Keys

Vamping with Stradella

The accordion is a great instrument for learning how music works. I played piano for 30 years but never really got to grips with chords and harmonies, it just wasn't clear which chords fitted with which key, and why.

A few years of playing accordion has taught me a lot, the reason is the cunningly simple Stradella Bass System. At first sight it looks anything but simple....

The reason this arrangement is so powerful is that it is a relative system. The buttons are arranged in rows, each one representing a key.



Take the row in the middle for "C". The first two rows play a single note, in this case the root note C. Below it are chords for C major, C minor and C7.

Move one row to the right and you find the chords for G. Move one row to the left and you find F.

G is the fifth note of the scale of C, and C is the fifth note of the scale of F. So each row is one fifth higher than the previous one.

The beauty of this system is that the chords you will need for a particular key are all close together. Typically for playing in C, the most common harmony will use C, G and F. These are the 1st, 5th and 4th notes of the scale. You'll see that these buttons are all next to each other.

Play the same tune in the key of G and you'll need chords G, D and C. These are also next to each other in the same pattern, just shifted to the right.

The chords are in harmonic order rather than ascending order as on a piano keyboard. So to transpose a tune into a different key, you use the same fingering but with a different starting position. Clever eh?