accordion....life lessons

I made an offer to write on a topic chosen by anyone who joined my blog.   Abe Belhassen chose "what learning and playing accordion have taught me about life."

Okay.  So when I began accordion, I sat in a klezmer accordion class with  (the great) Allen Berne (sic).   He had all us former pianists just play a ditty on the treble keyboard, no moving the bellows.   Low and behold, no sound.   Well to make the obvious point telling, the bellows is one part of what accordion playing is all about.   You've got two machines with reeds and controllers for air, connected to a bellows which provides the breath.

So starting with the bellows, you need to squeeze them (as in squeezebox.)   That's a lot of love!   Start playing the accordion with love and you'll do fine.   And what does the accordion do when you squeeze?   It breathes.   It don't take a yoga fan to know how central to life is the breath.   So playing the accordion is like loving a central element of life.

Now hidden away in the bass and treble machines are metal reeds.   Yes metal.   Yes, kinda base metal.   As in twang.  And they would twang if you struck them.   But the beauty here is that you don't strike the reeds, your bellows breathes (loving breathe) through them.  And (depending on the care and materials in the reeds) they can make some beautiful sounds....akin to a pipe organ. 

Now what's left?   controlling or providing purpose to the breath.  Which reeds are gonna sound.   Well the engineer in me loves the arrangement of cams, levers, rods, pads, that open and close holes that allow loving breath to vibrate the reeds.  In some cases one little button opens up three reeds in multiple registers (octaves.)   The method here is perfect 19th century engineering....many many many pieces of simple material (wood, metal, leather, wax) integrated into a Rube Goldberg array to allow the whole to work in concert.   So control of your life and emotions (sometimes constructive) and providing a purpose may seem simple, but is often complicated.   You need to be well integrated to make it work.  Without purpose no sound.

Modern accordions have actions (keys, rods, cams, pads, valves) that operate much more quickly, smoothly, and quietly than old ones.   We don't have to work so hard as a musician to control the instruments.   But as a loose generalization, older accordions had better reeds with finer tones.   What does that say?

Back to the lungs, or bellows.  For us pianists the bellows are a challenge.   We tend to put them on autopilot, with lots of gasps and gaps in the wrong places.   We don't know how to really express through belows force, velocity, and acceleration.  So (as yoga tells us) we need to pay continued attention to the breath.

There is kinetic movement involved in playing all musical instruments.  The accordion requires small precise motions from the fingers and big broad movements of the left arm that sweep the music out of the instrument.   I believe the most effective people are those who can execute both the big picture and little details as well.   Most of us lean towards one or the other.   Few can do them both.   Accordion analogy????

As a musical instrument, the accordion has strengths and weaknesses.   The strength is that it can sustain a long note or chord, and even vary the volume within that note.   The weakness is that there is almost no attack to the way the sound emerges.   Thus you have a lush sound....which is why you hear accordions in commercials to evoke nostalgia.  But without attack there is a certain monotony in the sound (shared by organs) due to the lack of attack.   I believe that one of the best combinations is an accordion with a mandolin.   Accordion has sustain without attack, mandolin has attack and struggles for sustain.   Is there a life lesson there?

Well Abe, this is for you.   I'm not sure I hit too hard on the life lessons, but I think they are at least strongly implied from the above.   Thanks for getting me to think about this stuff.