take accordion lessons

I have not been practicing as much as I should. Stupid depression took over a fair amount of October and I have only recently gotten back into the swing of things. I can adequately play 8 of the bass notes now in conjunction with the keyboard. This pleases me. I am going to North Carolina over Christmas to visit my mom and my goal is to be able to play a decent amount of Christmas songs before that time so I can play them in the middle of the woods on her mountain. I need to kick into gear.

So, I have stuck on lesson 6 for awhile because I really wanted to get myself very comfortable with using both the bass keys and the keyboard at the same time. Practice after practice I just felt clumsy and like I really had to concentrate to make each hand work independently from each other. I went to see A Hawk and a Hacksaw last weekend (which was beyond amazing) and it really boosted my commitment to conquering this instrument. For right now I am excited that I feel I finally made some progress.

So…

Apparently these lessons move very slowly. I was able to get through to lesson 6 this weekend easily due to just a very small background in piano lessons. Right now I have to practice my C bass, C major chord, G bass, and G major chords in combination with using the keyboard. I feel clumsy. I can’t get my figures to move with ease along the bass buttons. Practice Practice Practice this week.

So, the online lesson was going through how to read notes and getting used to pumping the bellows while you play the keyboard. I was supposed to play along to three blind mice. I did that and then learned how to play Hoppipola by Sigur Ros also for fun. Hooray. The instrument is so awkward to me. It is going to take me awhile to get my coordination down. It is hard enough just to get my groove with the bellows, it is going to be so much more difficult once I start using the bass notes. Oh well, piece by piece. I will be doing lesson two on Saturday. I decided to do two of the online lessons a week leaving the rest of the week for practice. Hopefully I will get better as I go along.

Now that I purchased the accordion I get to start lessons. I am taking an online course. I will mark this complete when I have finished all 50 lessons.

tmbg inspires me

...than an actual lesson, but it was still fun to have the chance to pick up an accordion and find out how to hold it and what the different buttons do. I’m not sure I’ll be taking this up though.

I love the accordion. I’m a klutz and completely unmusical so I’m sure I’ll be awful at it but I want to try. This Sunday is “Day of the Accordion” at the Seattle Center. There will be free lessons! I can’t wait.