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How do I learn french tunes for accordion?

Jaime_Dergut

Jaime_Dergut

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Hello dear accordion community,

today, I would like to discuss a learning topic with you all. Recently, I found a video on Youtube with this young lady from France, playing a tune that I believe is French.



I really like this. I believe it captures the very essence of the accordion, and I heard somewhere that France has produced a lot of wonderful music like this.

Mostly, what I know about French songs is some well know mussettess, but there has to be more, especially today, I hope.

I would appreciate the guidance of the community here. Maybe a book or a youtube channel that teaches more French oriented songs?

Any feedback is welcome. :)

Thanks for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Jaime, the accordionist.

PS: I might buy one of those C Chromatic button accordions. Preferably, dry tuned.
 
Hi Jaime,

My biggest advice to you first is to listen. That is find a channel you like. The young lady you posted, for example plays lots of French music. Listen intently to the music to understand in your own way the nuances of the style.

Now, here’s the thing. You are young, you have the time and the brain flexibility to learn to play by ear. You have the choice at this point in your life to learn either by ear or music. If you learn to learn by ear now, you will be a much better accordionist than if you learn by music. Maybe you already are, I don’t know but you mentioned books. Don’t do it!!!!!! I’m telling you, I am old so I might as well die but you are still young. Find some song that you like. I recommend either Valse de Amelie or La Vie en Rose. Doesn’t matter, could be Pont de Avignon. Learn it by copying someone playing it on YouTube. It’s your only hope. Otherwise you’re doomed. Trust me on this, I know these things. It’s the ONE thing you can do at your age to be a good accordionist. Good luck!
 
Last edited:
While ear-learning is definitely an important, even essential part of musicianship, so is note-reading, especially for two-hands instruments. It's certainly possible to develop your ear to learn the basic melody line of a song like "Boheme," but arranging bass accompaniment or harmony notes for your melody hand, while a very cool skill to have, is absolutely something you can aspire to for later, while using sheet music like the vast majority of accordionists.

The Aznavour "Boheme" is actually a vocal song, but its 3/4 waltz-ish time makes it a beautiful and haunting instrumental. IMHO it is particularly wonderful on three-reed instruments.

If I understand correctly, you're not asking about musette music--that usually is obtainable in its own accordion books or lead sheet collections. For something like "Boheme," you're looking for sheet music collections of popular French SONGS, but with written music for instruments. You'll probably have the best luck with piano books because the melody part is easily transferrable to accordion, and you can adapt the bass cleff.

The best strategy is to use creative key-word combinations at Amazon, the 'bay, or just Google, to search for collections of French songs to your taste and style. My French sheet music interest runs more to musette, but I havec a couple of song books, including this one:

 
For fun and happiness, here is the instrumental of "Boheme" that was a Cupid's arrow for me with this melody--This one is on bandoneon. There is a piano version the first couple of minutes, the heart-melting solo bando starts around 2:40. It's a fairly simple arreglo for estudio--One actually could arrange your accordion basses from this without too much pain. There are many wonderful pieces on this gentleman's YT channel that are excellent for accordion, BTW:


 
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Amazon used to be better about including a shot of the table of contents for different music books but that seems to be included less and less these days. Here is a link to an ebay listing for an older, rather grimy edition of the songbook I linked above. It includes photo showing a contents list.

Some of the contents include some classic French songs that originally are vocal numbers, but that you often hear in instrumental versions, especially on accordion. They can be arranged easy or more busy, but either way are great to have in one's accordion repertoire. A few of the "biggies" that are included in this collection would be the following. I had to learn them years ago for a gig and learned them off individual sheets at that time, but they're in this book, a new version of which I linked in ny earlier post above.

Sous le Ciel de Paris (Under Paris Skies)
Padam, Padam
Pigalle
C'est Si Bon
La Petite Valse

www.ebay.com

Leeds' 40 French French Hits of Our Times Piano (Vocal) Book 7 English & French | eBay

In very good condition for its age!
www.ebay.com
 

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Another source of the type of French music you are asking about would be collections of instrumental music for the songs made famous by Edith Piaf. The book linked below was a venerable Schirmer folio of piano arrangements for 10 songs, now available in this Hal Leonard reprint. Again, these pieces became famous as vocal music but you often hear them as instrumentals, particularly on accordion. There are instrumental CD collections of this type of stuff on accordion. They are great for one's accordion repertoire.

I've located a link to a listing that shows the table of contents with the song titles--most of these songs are French classics including as accordion instrumentals. You can probly type any of these titles onto Youtube along with the word "accordion" and see people playing it. There are plenty of editions listed on "the auction site" at different prices and condition levels, but this was the only listing I could find that shows the song titles:


Edith Piaf Song Collection Hal Leonard Online

Buy the official Hal Leonard Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook, 'Edith Piaf Song Collection' (Sheet Music)
www.halleonard.com www.halleonard.com
 
Here is an instrumental accordion recording of Piaf songs. Emil Prud'homme is also a musette player but here he's playing the Piaf classics. I first stumbled on it in LP form as shown below. There is also a CD version, and on that he is playing songs sung by Piaf and songs written by Charles Trenet. Prud'homme is one of my favorite French accordionistss--an old-school style a bit wet on the musette, but wonderful. There are also a number of other, more modern-sounding acccordion anthologies of French songs in as Paris cafe style on PA and CBA.

This LP listing at the auction site includes a photo of the rear side listing the song titles:

www.ebay.com

EMILE PRUD'HOMME: accordion a la piaf EPIC 12" LP 33 RPM | eBay

Format: 12" LP (33 RPM). Label: EPIC 18051. Housed in an 8,000 square foot warehouse that currently holds over 2 million records, Craig and his talented, dedicated staff serve music lovers in more than 60 countries.
www.ebay.com


Here is the CD of Prud'homme playing Piaf and Trenet favorites, also including photos of the track listings:

www.ebay.com

CD- Émile Prud'homme- Joue Edith Piaf & Trenet- 2001 SSM 5032342000- France 5099750323427 | eBay

2001 SSM 5032342000- France.
www.ebay.com
 
Don Quatrocchi site has La Boheme along with many French tunes.
Also Squeezebox Music Circle, Vancouver Accordion Club have every genre of music you could wish for.
Both free to download
 
Tom said:
Hi Jaime,

My biggest advice to you first is to listen. That is find a channel you like. The young lady you posted, for example plays lots of French music. Listen intently to the music to understand in your own way the nuances of the style.

Now, here’s the thing. You are young, you have the time and the brain flexibility to learn to play by ear. You have the choice at this point in your life to learn either by ear or music. If you learn to learn by ear now, you will be a much better accordionist than if you learn by music. Maybe you already are, I don’t know but you mentioned books. Don’t do it!!!!!! I’m telling you, I am old so I might as well die but you are still young. Find some song that you like. I recommend either Valse de Amelie or La Vie en Rose. Doesn’t matter, could be Pont de Avignon. Learn it by copying someone playing it on YouTube. It’s your only hope. Otherwise you’re doomed. Trust me on this, I know these things. It’s the ONE thing you can do at your age to be a good accordionist. Good luck!
Click to expand...

I originally learned by ear through the accordion lessons provided by the online academy of irish music, and I am amazed at how easy is for me to learn from others and mimicking their styles.

By listening to other people, I am learning more. That's the one advice I got once from a teacher... "Never stop immitating"

Thanks a lot for your insight, Tom. I really appreciate it.
 
OuijaBoard said:
While ear-learning is definitely an important, even essential part of musicianship, so is note-reading, especially for two-hands instruments. It's certainly possible to develop your ear to learn the basic melody line of a song like "Boheme," but arranging bass accompaniment or harmony notes for your melody hand, while a very cool skill to have, is absolutely something you can aspire to for later, while using sheet music like the vast majority of accordionists.

The Aznavour "Boheme" is actually a vocal song, but its 3/4 waltz-ish time makes it a beautiful and haunting instrumental. IMHO it is particularly wonderful on three-reed instruments.

If I understand correctly, you're not asking about musette music--that usually is obtainable in its own accordion books or lead sheet collections. For something like "Boheme," you're looking for sheet music collections of popular French SONGS, but with written music for instruments. You'll probably have the best luck with piano books because the melody part is easily transferrable to accordion, and you can adapt the bass cleff.

The best strategy is to use creative key-word combinations at Amazon, the 'bay, or just Google, to search for collections of French songs to your taste and style. My French sheet music interest runs more to musette, but I havec a couple of song books, including this one:

Click to expand...


Yes, not mussette but French songs in general that also shares that particularity of Boheme.

Will check that strategy while searching on the internet. I had a feeling that learning songs written on the piano could also be transferred to the accordion.

Thanks. This has been a great insight and I appreciate your comment.
 
I picked up this book last year off amazon - haven't really used it yet - I was concentrating more on German/polka stuff. I pick up books that I'm interested on amazon when they have it on a deal, even if I'm not going to use it immediately. Maybe someone more familiar with the book can comment if it's worth your while. But I will echo the sentiments of others - ear training is very important of course, but please learn to read the notes and some basic music theory - it will enhance your ear training as well.

**Edit** - forgot to put the link!!! :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

 
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I find it quite annoying that all of these books of French, Italian, whatever songs have so much overlap. In each of the books I can find a song or two that is not in any of the many books I've foolishly already bought. I love the Bibliothèque Musique in the Forum at Les Halles in Paris. They have hundreds of books and sheet music arranged for accordion. I can find the songs I want and use my Genius Scan phone app to copy the pages I want. Or I can check them out to have some fun playing through them at home. I wish there were something like this in Baltimore, or Maryland, or anywhere within 200 miles of me.
 
I went down a French rabbit hole recently, learned lots of french folk tunes but they don't have that parisian quality I think you're after.

I don't know any good sources but I do know this tune in particular is very on point and I feel the ornamentation has that very particular frenchness to it



I also like the name a lot haha, need to learn it! And would love to track down the full LP sometime - I found it from Brass Monkey's version of Happy Hours which is another name for it.

Interestingly I believe it stems from a genre mostly known as Bal-musette, if you search that you'll likely find lots of examples. As far as me ingesting of wikipedia can gather it's a genre that started with pipes (french musettes) and eventually got replaced by the squeezebox and probably is the origin of the name of the reed setting on modern squeezeboxes! Probably not new news to all but was to me!
 
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