Wednesday, February 26, 2003

One of the songs we played at Tina's birthday dance last night was Once Upon a December, from Anastasia, and I woke up with that in my head today. Good waltz, and I think it might be fun to try on the accordion. I also want to do the B minor Chopin waltz I've been learning on piano, but I'm missing one note at the very top, so I have to decide between fudging a few important bits or transposing the whole thing or something. I haven't managed to do any piano for the last several days so I've been accordioning instead, though I can't play for very long before my left arm gets tired from pumping the bellows. I'm glad it's a small accordion at least. Gary said it was one of the most compact ones he'd ever seen. The keys are tiny so it's got a huge range for its size -- from the low G of a fiddle to the E above high C -- and it's got three sets of reeds. The default set is two reeds (musette reeds, I think Gary called them) and you can also switch an octave reed on or off, though not all of those work. I might be able to fix those on my own, having watched Gary do the others. And it's got a 36-button bass. It would be nice to have a diminished chord for the Chopin (not to mention a French 6th) but oh well. Majors and minors will be enough for most things. I wonder what other tunes will be good beginning-accordion tunes? I'll probably just start going through the Peter Barnes Couple-Dance book. I should get myself copies of the little waltz books, too. Those would be good.

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