First of all I would like to say thanks to the nice people here on this forum. There are other web forums out there where flame wars erupt constantly – making it an uncomfortable atmosphere for new comers.
I have been playing the B/C box for 2 years and am doing pretty well on it but something is holding me back when it comes to speed on reels.
Specifically, I want to be able to play reels at 117 – but I can’t get much above 100 –
What do you think? Is this just normal? Does speed just come with hours of practice? Are there some exersizes or drills I could work on, other than just playing the same tunes over and over again and building them up 1 bpm at a time?
Question #1 for my fellow free reeders: compared to the B/C box, does the C#/D box have advantages in terms of allowing faster playing?
Question #2: is it easier to get more speed on the PA or chromatic button (continental) systems?
Isn’t that one of those glib sayings that become a kind of mantra by dint of constant repetition, as a result of which people start to believe them and trot them out without really thinking about them?
Certainly if you can’t play a tune slowly and have it sound really good, it will sound like a dog’s breakfast when you try to speed it up. But if you just keep playing slow for hours and months and years… well that’s all you’ll be able to do. No fairy is going to wave a wand and make you able to play fast - you have to practise playing fast. Oder?
At any rate practice is the word. Lots of it. Joe Derrane tells students they must practise an hour a day at least. Two hours a day if they are serious about improving.
Question for you Ted. Have you really worked on your fingering patterns with a view to making them rock-solid and dependable? Can you rely on your fingers to hit the buttons you want when you want? You can’t have speed without reliability…
Do you use the r-h 4th finger a lot, BTW?
As for the question of whether C#/D is faster than B/C - well it might be in certain keys, but if it were, the corollary is bound to be that it would be slower in others. They are the same instrument after all, just played in keys starting on different degrees of the root key (read ceemonstre’s long post above).
I wouldn’t suggest picking one or the other because you think you might be able to play faster. Someone who can play really fast can do so on either system. Oder?
PS: Q#2: you can run a lot faster carrying a diatonic box than a PA or continental chromatic
Thanks for your replies –
good points – I do slow things down and make sure my fingering is making sense and is consistent – but yes – I think that would probably be the root of my problem – I wish there were someone in the Twin Cities on B/C who I could take lessons from – any one know of a B/C box teacher here in Minneapolis/St. Paul?
re: fingers 4 and 5 I do tend to poke those guys out their for notes up on the higher side of the keyboard-- is that bad? For example, the beginning of the B section of Star of Munster – d ee aa b ageg – the a’s and b’s would be up on the pinky? is that bad?
Doesn’t Paddy O’Brien (the younger) live in your neck of the woods? I believe he teaches.
Well the accordion world is divided into two camps: those that don’t use their pinky - and those who can’t understand why anybody wouldn’t.
I think it makes sense to use it for the highest notes in a phrase - that is if you aren’t going any higher afterwards. But for everything else (and even for that) dump it and learn how to scoot around using 3 fingers.
If you’re playing both the high a and the high b with the pinky - jumping from one button to a higher one and back all with the pinky - that really sounds like a recipe for slowness to me. Try that phrase without the 4th finger at all and see if it helps.
Here’s a question, then. Are there any instructional materials out there with fully fingered / annotated transcriptions? Apart from the few C#/D transcriptions Henrik Norbeck had on his site?
This was a frustration for me when I first started on B/C - without a teacher, and no other players around. Being of an analytical bent, I really wanted some explicit fingering models I could study and absorb. Like most approaches I found, the Peter Browne and John Williams vids were pretty cavalier about explaining fingerings, and it’s difficult to pick them up just by observation. Keyboard methods always supply suggested fingerings, and the conceptual demands of box fingering are not terribly different.
Of course, over the years I’ve developed my own fingering patterns, for better or worse - mostly 3 finger, with occasional pinkie. But sometimes I wonder: should I slide/cross/hop here? Not to slavishly imitate others, but it’s always interesting to know how others do things, and learn from that. Especially since I’m still pretty much a duffer on the box.
Thanks for the tips –
practicing right now I see what you mean about pinky stabbing being a slower downer – working on moving away from that – where the melody permits fingers 1 - 4 (pinky) to play a phrase it doesn’t slow me down but on repeated eight notes I can see how poking with the weak finger slows you down –
Good! Now try something a bit more radical. I had a crack at the second part of Star of Munster after supper and for the phrase
eaab a
I would suggest playing the e on the outer row (pull) which means that you can do all those notes on the pull, and I would use the first finger on the e, second finger on the a and third on the b.
so use fingers 1223 2
But hitting the same button twice with different fingers is another good speed tip. Assuming you don’t want to grace the second a, you could hit the second a with finger 1.
1213 2
Try that and see how you like it.
If you watch the Peter Browne video that MTG mentioned, you’ll notice two things: 1) he plays as fast as is humanly possible and 2) he doesn’t use the 4th finger. Playing passages at the top of the range, his whole hand is down by his knee.
One thing that works for me on concertina is to isolate phrases I get bogged down on. Play very small sections of those phrases, even 2 or 3 notes, over and over. Sometimes slow and clear, sometimes a medium speed, sometimes as fast as possible. It helps. Eventually.
Another idea is to think not of pressing the buttons on a fast phrase (especially for grace notes), but merely touching the buttons, or even just grazing them. On a nice box, you really hardly need to press the buttons, and if you do miss a grace note by not pressing the button firmly enough, no biggie. You’ll learn quickly to feel the minimum pressure needed.
Another thing you can do is get certain notes by rocking your hand instead of moving your fingers. This is a little tricky to explain, but I think you know what I mean. It’s especially useful when jumping to and from a single note that’s a good interval away from the notes around it. I think some players do this subconsciously.
i would chime in with the other voices here about fingering to add that it is paramount, crucial, imperative, for you to as soon as humanly possible to a) seriously research to find which teacher(s) are gifted and expert at explaining fingering in a way that is organized, logical and plug-inable to fingering any tune (many are simply not adept at this); and b) invest whatever you have to invest in terms of time, effort, and expense to get a lesson or lessons with such person. i have no clue whether the billy/sean mccomiskey class at the catskills includes valuable fingering material, i’m guessing damien connolly’s does but again, no clue. but this is imperative because many wonderful players or even wonderful teachers simply do not have the conceptual equipment to articulate this in a systemized, transferable way. having it in a default checklist in your head can put your playing evolution ahead by years. you learn it, practice it slowly till it becomes second nature, and you’re good to go. i found concertina fingering self-evident compared to b/c fingering.
i have wasted years figuring this out on my own due to being put in a so-called “master” class at clancy week for three years and being too clueless to grasp (and then move on once i grokeed it) that the instructor either could not or would not explain fingering and that this was the wrong class for me. non-irish adult learners pretend to themselves that the irish learn this stuff on their own or somehow magically from osmosis, and it is not true. those kids who become whizzes on box so young are being taught systematically by teachers who use written music (i mean, to help describe technique or ornaments, not for learning the melody of the tune) and technical explanations. i know this for a fact.
another, more general note about developing speed on b/c: i also had to figure out for myself that there are keys that are awkward on different box tuning scales. sure, a virtuoso can play in any key, but there is a reason most b/c recordings are in a minorish, eminorish, c majorish, g majorish, g minorish. you will hear very little d majorish, a majorish, d minorish on b/c records because though one needs to be able to play these keys since so much seshing is in them, they are not optimal for the b/c layout. the c#/d players also avoid many keys. so give yourself a break if you are hitting the wall with an awkward key. take “jug of punch,” usually a d minor tune. i can play this nicely on b/c at about 100, but there is a reason john williams recorded it in e minor on his self-titled cd. the younger paddy o’brien regularly transposes to more b/c friendly keys and so does everybody else…so…
I dunno. I haven’t tried increasing my words per minute since grade 10 typing class*, but somehow between here and there I turned into a blazing-fast typist.
*In which my friend Mark’s father, the high school ‘business’ teacher, played 45s for the class to practice to; gradually upping the tempo as the semester progressed.
Yes, I learned to type to disco and AC/DC’s Bank in Black.
I’m surprised to learn that D minor isn’t B/C friendly. It corresponds to E minor on C#/D which as far as I am concerned is God’s gift to press-and-draw box players.
(To find out what D minor is like on C#/D, try some tunes in C minor on B/C… You’ll discover what press-and-draw really means!)
On the question of finding a teacher who will show you a complete fingering system… I suppose it is a good idea. I’m happy I haven’t worked that way though, probably because having played the music for 30+ years I would have been far too impatient to work on a small number of a tunes at a time for which a teacher had provided me with fingering.
Also, I am sure that the fact that we all have different sized and shaped palms and fingers is going to make a difference to the fingering styles we eventually settle into. So my tendency would be to say, OK so this is how Billy McDamien does this, let’s try it and see if it suits me this particular moment in my development. (If it’s not the best thing for me now, I’ll remember it and try it again a bit later.)
What really helped me were some general ideas of how to approach fingering and a few specific things to work on that I got early on from a good player. And work on them I did, very intensively, for several years - in fact I am still working on them. This suited me because since I had to work on putting these principles into practice, the style I have ended up with feels like my own learning and insights, even if the seeds were planted by someone else (the blessings of Joe Cooley be upon him).
I know quite late… but I would second the recommendation for Paddy O’Brien if you can get him to teach you. He is a wonderful player and also, on the few occasions I have had to meet him, seems to be a very nice guy.
Before I switched to Anglo, I played B/C for a couple of years. Finding the best way to finger the tune is key. Living near Baltimore, I had the good fortune to take a lot of lessons from Billy McComiskey… I don’t know any box player who has considered fingering as closely as he has. Unfortunately, he has never developed any sort of tutoring materials that could be used at a distance. Ultimately though the key is that there should be very little reaching for notes; the notes should fall naturally under your fingers 19 times out of 20, and you should pretty much never slide. If you ever get a chance to watch Billy play, you will be amazed at how little effort it seems to take him to play regardless of how fast he is playing.
Not only is Paddy O’Brien a brilliant musician, he’s an outstandingly nice guy! I’ve had the distinct pleasure of sharing a couple of evenings talking with him when Chulrua has swung through my area. If you can, I would definitely recommend looking him up. His email is somewhere on the Chulrua website (http://www.chulrua.com) as is his phone number.
I’ve heard a number of people who’ve studied with Billy McComiskey say you should never (or in Liam’s case “pretty much never”) slide. But another top box player told me not to worry - Billy does use sliding. Having just had a good look at this clip in full-screen mode, I reckon he does a fair bit of sliding from inner to outer row.
