I wanted to bring your attention to two blogs of interest to the accordéon-centric. The first (nepotism alert) is that of my daughter, Brigid. Quite the photographer, she is responsible for many of the photos on this site, and undertook to document the most recent performance of my trio, Le Bon Truc. These photos are posted on her blog, Brigid and the World. The photos of her trip to Costa Rica are also amazing.
The second blog is Loafing Aboard. Doc is a denizen of mel.net, and recently spent the summer in Ghent conducting a sort of dream-turned-real accordéon bacchanal. His most recent post is a beautiful essay about that trip.
Here’s a tune I learned from storyteller Catherine Piron-Paira and her husband Sylvain Piron, both of Saverne, Alsace. Catherine played it on psaltery, thus I tend to call it “Catherine’s Psaltery.” I feature this tune on my new CD, but with added clarinets and recorders, and with vastly improved sound quality. I recorded this to include in the melodeon.net Theme of the Month for July 2013, French Tunes.
I’m not sure why my pants figure so heavily in this video. I apologize.
The Dino Baffetti Tex-Mex II/34 arrived on Thursday! Very exciting! I had intended to do an internal examination of the box, a laOwen Woods or Daddy Long Les, but I found I couldn’t bear to take a screw driver to it, not even to remove the grill. I’m made of less stern stuff than that, it seems.
Instead, I’ve been playing the heck out of it. Here are some first thoughts:
Big one! Playing a three row is different from playing two or two-and-a-half row or even two-row-plus-accidentals. Possibly this is obvious. The three row quint box can do different things that I don’t yet know how to do. New frontiers!
The two row repertoire works just fine on this one. Even if it is obvious that playing up-and-down the rows is not what it was built to do, everything I’ve been learning for the last 15 years is essentially transferable!
At melodeon.net there is a recurring discussion about stepped keyboards vs. flat keyboards. Playing a flat keyboard for the first time in years has made no difference to me.
Even though this is an F/Bb/Eb box (which is exactly what I was after) I’m choosing to name it as G/C/F and recognize that it’s a transposing instrument. All of the sheet music and tab is for G/C/F, so this seems simplest.
It sounds AMAZING. Essentially, as one colleague mentioned, it’s a clone of a Hohner Corona, done to a absurdly high level of quality. The sound is so very sweet. And the touch is effortless. I do have fond feelings for Hohner accordions, but this is a cut above.
I love it.
It is a little silly that with five rows of box to my name, I still don’t have a D row. What sort of psychological block am I dealing with? Is it PTSD from the Minneapolis Irish sessions?
Here are three videos with the Baffetti. The first is a hanter dro written by Sylvain Piron.
The second is another hanter dro, traditional, that I learned from Steve Gruverman.
The third is a Breton March, traditional, that I learned from the playing of Daniel Thonon.
A contributor over on mel.net posted the below video of Frédéric Paris playing “A Bord, Mon Bel Enfant” at a workshop in 2012. It’s rare to see Paris playing accordéon on YouTube. Rare, and wonderful.
A branle is a medieval dance, still done in many areas of France and Germany. It’s pronounced “brawl,” and is the etymological foremother of the modern word for a chaotic outbreak of fisticuffs — which should tell you something about the dance. This branle is found on the album Du Piment Dans Le Kugelhopf – Musiques d’Alsace À Danser by the fabulous Alsatian duo, Au Gre des Vents. This is my second attempt at recording it. At first I played it as a 5/4 waltz, but Gilles, of Au Gre Des Vent, emailed me and pointed out that there’s one bar in there that is in 6/4. Tricksy tune! Hopefully, I got it right this time! This was recorded for the Theme of the Month over on Mel.net.
Special thanks to Flora, the Boston Terrier, and her invaluable support.
Here’s a waltz in 5/4 (count 1, 2, 1, 2, 3 …) for the melodeon.net theme of the month. It’s a very basic tune found on Patrick Bouffard’s Rabaterie recording. Of course, when he plays it, it’s not basic at all.
In the United States, the fourth thursday of November is Thanksgiving. I love this holiday and love having the opportunity to express my gratitude for the extraordinary blessings in my life, many of which center on the accordéon, its music, and its masters.
Speaking of masters, first on the list would have be my wife, who has been generally and genuinely supporting of my accordéon efforts during the course of our marriage. Just as one example, she did NOT send back the Castagnari Nik when it arrived in the post last February, when I was at work. Instead, she sent a picture on my phone, and called me up so I could hear how it sounded.
Thanks to the friends of this blog — whether they know it or not — who have been willing to discuss issues with me as I developed posts. Some have actually written stuff that I’ve published here. Thank you, Andy of Vermont, Chris Ryall, Geoff Wooff, Owen Woods, Steve Mansfield, Chuck Boody, et many al. Tom McDonald — despite being a non-accordéonist — has been a real help just on the blogging and inspiration front.
Thanks to melodeon.net! Not enough to be said about that friendly, squeeze congregation’s influence on my quality of life! Just today, a quorum from that parish helped talk me off the ledge over a reed that seemed to be going sour.
Thanks to everyone involved in the collective effort to bring the “La Bourrée” tune book out, a huge important task! The folks at concertina.net really stepped up for this one.
Thanks to my kids — Max, Brigid, Emma, Julia, and Sarah — who somehow think that it’s cool that their old man plays obscure accordéon music. They continue showing up to my gigs.
Thanks to Amy and Rob, at the Water St. Cafe, in Gardiner, who have given me a place to play regularly in the past few months, so that I could get my chops into shape.
Thanks to everyone who reads this blog. Having just crossed the 40,000 hits line, I have no idea, really, who you all are (the occasional comment would go a long way!) … and I monetize the blog in only a very minor way … but this blog was started because I wanted to talk about accordéons with people who wanted to listen to me talk about accordéons. Thank you.
This waltz, played by Marc Perrone on one of his early recordings, has been a standard since the mid-70s. I recorded it for the mel.net Theme of the Month, which, for August 2012, is waltzes.
UPDATE: Originally, I said the tune was written by Perrone. It wasn’t.
Last week, I had a minor celebration as the hits ticker crossed over the 25K line. For a blog like this one, covering an instrument and music genre that could both be described as obscure, that’s pretty danged good. The title of the blog – a French-ish word that doesn’t actually exist – came from an album I put out in 2003. I created this blog just as a space to explore my fascination and to find others interested in doing the same. It worked!
Some facts that you might find interesting:
My first post, in January 2011, was a tribute to Bernard Loffett.
Easily the most exciting thing I’ve done with the blog is interview Frédéric Paris himself. Fan boi? Moi?
I’ve been averaging about 70 hits a day, though there are spikes when a new piece goes up. There are always a few bots hitting the page, though. At one point, a bot on a friend’s blog took aim at mine and my page a few hundred times over a week. I have no idea why anyone would do that.
The top referring site, by far, is melodeon.net, followed by concertina.net. Many of the pieces that I’ve written here, have started out as a conversation on one of those boards.
“Frédéric Paris” is the number one search term that leads here. “Lõõtspill” is number ten.
Through this whole process, Andy from Vermont, has been a great ally, support, and resource. Thank you, Andy!
This blogging stuff has been a blast, and has inspired me to play more then ever. I appreciate the readers, and will endeavor to continue giving satisfaction. I’m hoping to do an interview with Sylvain Piron, and, fingers crossed, Jean Blanchard. I missed an opportunity when I recently had my Saltarelle worked on and forgot to ask the fettler to take pictures, so I’m hoping to take a pilgrimage to The Button Box and talk extensively with the folks there.
Over on concertina.net, Kautilya did some research and noticed that the Lique Auvergnate & du Massif Central — the organization that originally published the Recueil — continues in existance! I followed up on this and discovered that one of their “branches” is La Bourrée de Paris. This research was done in the context of a conversation about copyright and permissions, etc. I have sent a note to the president of La Bourrée, letting him know what I’m doing. In other news, folks at concertina.net and melodeon.net have embraced my plea for help and have begun work on putting together some sort of “free to the public” on-line tune book thingamajig.
L'Accordeonaire 