How to Play the Accordion with Both Hands

Video Transcript

AMANDA CLAIRE: All right. So, a lot of learning how to play a piano accordion is learning how to coordinate the left and right hand. So just like playing piano, you have generally melody with the right side, accompaniment with the left. I play in a band, sometimes, where some songs, I don't even play the left hand at all. I'll just play in melody over here, you know. So, you know, you don't have to play with the left and right hand simultaneously. If you do, you know, I'm actually just starting out, which is with some basic kind of a chord accompaniments that alternate between the root note of the chord, and either the major or the minor, whichever ones you choose. So for example, I'm going to play right now in C, right. So that means I'm going to play on these buttons here, this row. I know it's C because there's that little jam or that little--some accordions have A little dimple, or a little rhinestone. You can feel it and see it. So if I'm going to do the major, all I'm going to do is alternate between this button and this button. And if I'm playing in 4/4 time, I can just go maybe like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, or I could go--if I'm in 3/4 time, like a waltz, or a lot of the German music, you know, you want to go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, right. So if I'm playing in C, that's going to sound really good, you know. And then, if you just want to change chords with the song, you just move that same pattern to the next row, right. So a lot of songs are, you know, are played, you know, in the first, the fourth and the fifth chord structure. That's a very common structure. So if I'm playing in C, it'll go C to F, and then, to G, right. So one way to play that accompaniment would be C, okay, the F is going to be a fifth in the other direction, or you know, five whole notes down. So I'm just going to move here, and then, I'm going to move back up to the C and to the G. Okay, so that's in 3/4 time. Some people think that's a little hokey. You can do it in 4/4 time, or it's like--it's pretty simple. I mean, I'm really not playing all these buttons. I'm just only playing a few here, you know, C, F, G, back to C and, you know, the other buttons are here if I need them for songs in other keys but, generally, when you're playing a song, you're pretty much limited to just, maybe, just a few buttons in one small area.

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