Ambitious to learn Vivaldi’s Winter

[edy]

My latest endeavour is to learn Vivaldi’s Winter on a piano accordion. I’ve seen some amazing renditions on YouTube. I downloaded the sheet music (see attached) from musicscore and have been practicing how to play it on my piano. It’s not that difficult, a lot of repetition and some bits are really fast but I think I could eventually manage to learn it on the piano at least.

However, I am not sure how to start translating it to accordion. I’ve been figuring out the chord structure and progression (by the way the main “chorus” everyone recognizes follows the circle of fifths).

I’ve seen it played on a button accordion and I assume most are using free bass, as I believe they are just keying in the exact notes for the left hand. I think the piano accordion shouldn’t be an issue on the right hand, but what do I do about my bass? Most of the piece should work with just a single bass note although I am wondering about using chords as I am figuring out what the notes are at any given time and therefore what chords are underlying it. Any advice would be helpful.

 

[debra]

A very ambitious idea indeed. The Winter is a very difficult piece. I could never play that. You could try to find a few fellow accordionists and try it together. Helmut Quakernack made an arrangement for accordion ensemble...
I made some arrangements for accordion ensemble, first the Autumn which is the least difficult, then the Spring which is a bit more difficult. Winter and Summer are even more difficult. I'm not sure I will ever try them...

 

[saundersbp]

I’ve seen it played on a button accordion and I assume most are using free bass, as I believe they are just keying in the exact notes for the left hand. I think the piano accordion shouldn’t be an issue on the right hand, but what do I do about my bass?

Very ambitious indeed! I wouldn't personally attempt it on a standard accordion even if I could get the speed and articulation necessary. The bass part on that score seems to rely on octaves going up and down a lot for the effect and without this you might end up with a very hard to play parody of the piece. If you want to play something from the same period that works on standard bass I'd suggest Sinfonia from Cantata 29 Bach. Equally hard for RH but not for LH and really works on accordion.

 

[saundersbp]

PS this is the Bach for stradella bass. Excuse all the mistakes, I am a relative beginner. I went to practice in a local church before the weather got too cold and recorded a first attempt all the way through on my phone. I'm now learning to play it better!

 

[Ffingers]

A very ambitious idea indeed. The Winter is a very difficult piece. I could never play that. You could try to find a few fellow accordionists and try it together. Helmut Quakernack made an arrangement for accordion ensemble...
I made some arrangements for accordion ensemble, first the Autumn which is the least difficult, then the Spring which is a bit more difficult. Winter and Summer are even more difficult. I'm not sure I will ever try them...

Here's a guy who makes quite a good fist of it





(I think that he's been practicing!)

 

[debra]

Here's a guy who makes quite a good fist of it

...

There is no way I would even attempt this. I'm not nearly good enough in general, but certainly not good enough on the melody bass.
I can make recordings that sound reasonable, but that's by doing multi-track recording where I use the right hand (almost) exclusively.

 

[edy]

I agree it’s going to need quite a bit of modification to try to adapt it to a piano accordion with a Stradella bass. However, I believe if I can get the right chord harmonies it may not be too bad especially if the right hand does the majority of the work playing it. Also this piece has a tempo and rhythm to it that is quite in the forefront of the listening experience and if that can carry through on accordion it may be enough to make up for the short-comings of not having every note available. In any case I will let you know how it goes! First I need to memorize and master this on piano and until then I won’t attempt any version on the accordion.

 

[Siegmund]

If I were making a Stradella arrangement, I'd start by looking at the Russian CBA arrangement as well as the piano or orchestra version, to get an idea what had been done before.

As it happens, most of the 1st and 3rd movements would translate very easily from freebass to Stradella bass - the big problem is the 2nd movement, where he has melody in the right hand, and then plays a single note with one finger and an arpeggio with the other three in the left hand.

 

[Mullanphy]

PS this is the Bach for stradella bass. Excuse all the mistakes, I am a relative beginner. I went to practice in a local church before the weather got too cold and recorded a first attempt all the way through on my phone. I'm now learning to play it better!

If you are a beginner or only related to one, I guess I shouldn't even try! (joking, but, holy moly, that is excellent)

 

[JerryPH]

If I were making a Stradella arrangement, I'd start by looking at the Russian CBA arrangement as well as the piano or orchestra version, to get an idea what had been done before.

As it happens, most of the 1st and 3rd movements would translate very easily from freebass to Stradella bass - the big problem is the 2nd movement, where he has melody in the right hand, and then plays a single note with one finger and an arpeggio with the other three in the left hand.

So if it really cannot be done and the melody is carried over to the left hand, chord the left hand (or not), and have the right hand pull off the arpeggios to carry the melody through. This is something that even professional accordionists do when playing certain songs where its either not physically possible or they cannot pull off on the left hand for whatever reason.

 

[saundersbp]

@Mullanphy that's very kind of you, I'm enjoying the learning journey!

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

I’ve (just about) mastered this recently. Well ‘mastered’ might be a stretch but I can get though it reasonably well.
All the videos I've seen of it being played on accordion (button or piano) involve a lot a bellows shake. I play an Roland FR4x and bellows shake is hard work on a good day so I've sort of got around that by either playing it as written or for some parts, playing the chords as fast arpeggios. Since I am on a 4x, adding a string overlay to the right hand also helps a lot. The only part I am not happy with right now is the long stint at the end where you are coming down the scale. Typically played with lots of shake I find that on the 4x, the volume drops quite a lot when played with bellows shake so for now I am just holding the chords and repeating the bass note as 1/4 notes. Also I still cannot do a shake AND play notes on the left hand at the same time so the best I can do is shake and hold the note for the duration of the chord so it looses something if I play it that way.

For the music I am using a piano score I found that is pretty easy (easy is relative I guess) to transfer to accordion. I play the right hand pretty much 'as is' except where I arpregiate some chords . For the left hand I play either single bass notes or, for example at the start, I hold the chord and play the bass notes on the 1/4 note.
The music I had was wrong for the final long run down the scale but I found another piece that was at least correct so I sort of merged the two pieces.
Since I have a BK7m backing module hooked up to the accordion, I sometime put a track on (disco works well!) and play to that. The backing tracks help hide my mistakes as well LOL!

It's probably taken me three months to get reasonable at it so it's not for the faint of heart but it's a fun piece to play.

I've been meaning to do a video of it so I might try to put something together.

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

I've attached a pdf that I put together from the two piece I use and added some notes in places on chords and/or single notes I am using. It's not great but may work as a starting point.

 

[Walker]

Fair play to you all! I would have done a minimalist re-write... Vivaldi's Frosty Morning.

 

[davidplaysaccordion]

Winter (Disco version), mistakes and flubs and all....
From the sheet music I posted earlier.

 

[Walker]

Winter in Ibiza! Very innovative - well done.