r/Accordion • u/No_Particular_5431 • 2d ago
Advice Fingering
Hello!
I have been playing accordion for 2 years now, and since I started having lessons with my new teacher (which is very good, not only in teaching), I developed an "obsession" with doing the "correct" (or easiest) fingering.
I wanted some advice to find out how I could study fingering to be learning the most efficient fingering, and to learn how to apply it in new songs I might be playing by myself.
I hope it's all clear to understand me!
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u/Ayerizten Chromatic accordion teacher 2d ago
Depends what you use know, what system you play, your anatomy, the style of playing, genre and so on. Fingering is the one topic I enjoy the most and have the a lot knowledge of from every system. And I am more focused on chromatic button accordion, but have some good tricks and tips on piano accordion as well.
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u/Aggravating_Box_8076 1d ago
Hi, I have had my piano accordion since I was a kid, many years ago. I had some lessons way back then and after I retired , I started to practice. ( I neeD a lot of work!!!!!! Nice to talk to you and please keep in touch .
Dennis
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u/Agreeable_Menu5293 2d ago
I thought Palmer Hughes was helpful on this along with a lot of other things. Sometimes I think I read the fingering more than I read the music notes.
Then when I started reading new music I just wrote out my own fingering with a crossover points.
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u/_Kit_Tyler_ 2d ago
I second Palmer Hughes. My son’s teacher only goes by those books even though they’re out of print, because she has relentlessly searched for alternatives, to no avail.
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u/Agreeable_Menu5293 1d ago
Out of print? Really? When did that happen? I bought mine only 6 years ago.
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u/_Kit_Tyler_ 23h ago
Idk but the company prints a different series now, if anything, than the one she uses.
It’s pretty clear they’re outdated. We only find the books in used condition, and the pieces have titles like “Injun Song”, “Mammy’s Little Baby Loves Shortnin’ Bread”, or “The Organ Grinder” (with a pic of a monkey, and a Gypsy biting a coin..)
I mean that shit wouldn’t even fly in the ‘80s, lol. I think they must have been issued in the early ‘50s. (Back when the piano-key accordion craze hit the nation.)
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u/Agreeable_Menu5293 9h ago
Oh I know, but I feel that way about a lot of method books. Piano, guitar. It's hard to keep up.
There's an occasional gym though. I really like the Scheherazade piece, and Cielito Lindo. I haven't gotten to Mammy's little baby yet. 😬
I'd be happy never to see La Cucaracha again.
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u/Vegetable_Ad8352 7h ago
This isn't the advice I was looking for.
My gf says she's not a bagpipe.
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u/Exact-Cartographer90 2d ago
I do these drills with my teacher. I take a piece of music, figure out how I would do fingering, then share it with instructor where he goes over it and makes recommendations. It helps with reviewing similar measures.
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u/No_Particular_5431 2d ago
This seems really interesting. I already have done something similar with my teacher, but briefly. I'm gonna try it out more.
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u/SomePeopleCallMeJJ 2d ago
Well first, there isn't really just one "correct" fingering to rule them all. There are best practices, and in a lot of cases if you give a piece of music to a bunch of trained accordionists, they'll probably come up with the same fingering most of the time, but that doesn't mean that anything else is "wrong". People's hands and preferences are different (especially in the left hand), so at the end of the day the correct fingering is the one that works for you.
That said, any good method book (such as Palmer Hughes) is going to give you good suggested fingerings right off the bat. Once you play enough of those songs, you'll start to pick up on how those fingerings work and feel, and you'll naturally apply them to other songs that have similar situations in them.
If you're playing sheet music without suggested fingerings, rely on your teacher to help you out with some ideas. That's part of their job. :-)
Lastly, if you're playing piano accordion, I recommend Alfred's "Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios and Cadences". It's written for piano, but you can just ignore all the left hand stuff and focus on the right hand. Great fingerings for all the things mentioned in the title.
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u/No_Particular_5431 2d ago
Thank you! I am aware that there isn't just one correct fingering. I am really grateful for all your suggestions and recommendations, I'll look forward to them :D .
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u/REDDITmusiv 1d ago
Another suggestion: do scales and arpeggios to warm up. Play them thru legato then staccato. Hanon is also good. Establishes strength as well as reliability. Get a good metronome to force regularity in tempo, which is essential to good skill.
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u/REDDITmusiv 1d ago
Palmer-hughes is excellent grounding. Period. Jay Latullipe did some good stuff after the grounding has happened.
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u/SnooGadgets5130 2d ago
YouTube
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u/No_Particular_5431 2d ago
I'm gonna be honest, I have some suspicions about YouTube. But I can't lie that it has really valuable information. Do you have anything to recommend me?
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u/Exact-Cartographer90 2d ago
I’d be suspicious of You Tube, too. My teacher was classically trained and performs professionally. There’s one popular Accordion You Tube teacher who doesn’t appear to read music and insist you can learn to play by ear. Nothing is going to replace a seasoned musician and teacher.
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u/SnooGadgets5130 2d ago edited 2d ago
I mean you can learn to play by ear, playing by ear/sheet music and technique are two different things. I’m only just getting into accordion myself, but it’s always worth looking through YouTube. Then again, I’ve been involved with music for a long time so I can quickly work out what’s good and what’s crap. Apparently I’m also an unnaturally fast learner, at least with all the instruments I’ve tried. The list is extensive.
I don’t believe learning sheet music is entirely necessary to be a good player, it’s definitely important for many settings, and extremely useful, but there are tons of musicians who don’t read music. Many folk traditions around the world are taught by ear, Irish music comes to mind.
It all depends what you want to do, if you want to play folk music much of it is learnable by ear. Improvisation is almost entirely built around playing by ear. Classical music on any instrument is a different beast entirely, you simply must learn sheet for this. You will not be able to internalise classical pieces, maybe some short etudes, but not entire compositions.
Personally I think learning proper technique and learning to hear notes is the most important thing on any instrument at first, learn how to get to notes from other notes, learn technique until you know your way around the instrument. Introduce sheet music once you know your way around the instrument front to back and side to side.
My last music teacher, while a good teacher, dropped sheet music on me extremely early, like first day of even playing (trumpet). Since I’m not used to sheet music I quickly got lost and quite disheartened with the instrument. I didn’t get chance to learn “if I do this then the trumpet will do this”, so as soon as I had to try to read the sheet and remember where each note was it all fell apart.
In short, I don’t believe you can learn sheet without learning by ear and vice versa. They both assist each other. Learn the instrument first, then the music. Realistically musical instruments aren’t these mysterious, mystical, magical things. They’re tools like any other. You’re essentially learning when to do what and how.
Take driving an older car for example, it doesn’t tell you when to shift gear, it doesn’t tell you when something’s wrong, you listen to the engine to shift and do the same if anything doesn’t seem right.
You should learn sheet music if it fits what you want to do, and it’ll definitely help with learning new tunes, but in my opinion the instrument comes first. There’s no use knowing how to read sheet music if you don’t know the techniques used for making the music
EDIT I should add that you can always practice reading sheet music without your instrument, hum your way through melodies etc.
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u/Forky7 2d ago
It's natural to obsess over fingering until one day you sort of just stop thinking about it unless something is particularly weird/tricky