How to Play the Melody of "Jambalaya" on the Accordion

Part of the Video Series How to Play the Accordion

Viewing videos requires the latest version of Adobe's Flash Player.
Get the latest Flash player.

Jambalaya is a classic Cajun song that's fun to play on the accordion. Learn how to play the keyboard (melody) part to Jambalaya on the accordion in this free online video music lesson for beginners.

Contact: www.spencerthegardener.com

Rating:
Views: 6,575
Comments: 0 (comment now)

Favorited: 0 | Add to Favorites

Tags: accordions
Bookmark at:

All Videos in the Series, How to Play the Accordion

Member Comments

Video Transcript

How to Play the Melody of "Jambalaya" on the Accordion
Now that you have been practicing Mary Had a Little Lamb like crazy, let’s learn a song that might be a little bit more exciting and can be closely associated with the accordion because it is a Cajun song called Jambalaya. I am going to show you the melody side at first, and in our next lesson, we will connect the bass side with it. Again, like Mary Had a Little Lamb, we start on the note E. This time we are going to use our thumb one. So have your hand ready, slightly curved arced like a spider over the keys with your index finger over G and your other fingers following. We are going to skip that. We are not going to use that right now. It goes like this. E, G, A, E, G, A, G, G, G, D. The next part starts here with the index finger on G. B, A, A, A, G, G, A, G, G, E. Let’s repeat that. E, G, A, E, G, A, G, G, G, D. G, G, B, A, G, G, E, E, D, C, and that is the whole melodic line of the first part of Jambalaya. Next we will add the bass part to Jambalaya so that we will have a complete song.

About the Expert

Expert: Brett Larsen earned a B.A. in music composition from UCSB in 1992 and currently works as a middle school music teacher. Read More