How to Play Accordion Bass Notes

Video Transcript

Let’s talk about the bass side of the accordion now. As you can tell from where I am sitting, it is impossible for me to see what my left hand is doing over here, which further complicates this instrument. So what manufacturers have done over the years is they have put a little guideline in the form of a rhinestone, and one of these buttons right smack in the middle so that you can actually feel it as if you were reading braille. You can feel that texture under your fingers. If you take your finger, you can cheat when you are a beginner and kind of peer over the edge and find that rhinestone with your middle finger. That is a single bass note and it happens to be C. You can check that by comparing that C with the C that you learned about on the keyboard earlier. If played at the same time, they should sound the same. Now if you keep your middle finger on that single bass note and take your index finger and put it on the note right next to it up towards the sky this way, not back towards your palm, and not forward towards the billows, but up towards the sky in that line, you will have the note G under your index finger. Again you can compare by finding a G, count up five from the C on the treble, play them simultaneously, and they should sound the same. G, middle finger C. One more note to learn on the bass side of this lesson. Keeping your middle finger and index finger right where they were, rhinestone under the middle finger, index finger up towards the sky, put your fourth finger down on the button right below the middle finger. That is F. You can compare that with the F you learned about on the keyboard side. Now you have C, G, F and C. In music, this is the beginning of many of folk song. It is a progression that gets used over and over again, and you can see the bass side of the accordion is tailored made for these sorts of progression. In our next lesson, we will learn about the chords of the bass side.

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