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Moving Clouds chords

brna

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Hello to all. This is my first post. I am a self-taught amateur accordionist who comes from the land of waltzes and polkas on the southern side of the Alps. I started learning accordion (bayan) three years ago. I have no formal musical training, so I am short on music theory.
I have quite a bit of trouble understanding Irish harmonies. I am attaching the first 32 bars of my arrangement of Moving Clouds. I also uploaded slow tempo mp3 (compressed to zip, couldn't upload mp3).
I doubt I'm doing it right. The A7 chord sounds strange to me. I'm also missing the D chord to bring me back to G. I don't understand the tonal mode. I will be grateful for any advice that would clarify the problem.moving-clouds-a.png
 

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Welcome Brna!!! My advice is to experiment and find the chords that sound good to you. Maybe just experiment with the A7 part, find a chord(s) that sound good (Maybe C or Am?) then try different chords going back to G, maybe even a ii, V, I? Anyway, I can't say what chords will sound good to you. But for me, less is more. It may seem like cheating to reduce the written chords, but sometimes it's necessary. I almost always make my own lead sheets for songs I like, with chords I like, seems like personal choice is the way to go.
 
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I doubt I'm doing it right. The A7 chord sounds strange to me. I'm also missing the D chord to bring me back to G. I don't understand the tonal mode. I will be grateful for any advice that would clarify the problem.

To echo Tom's advice, there really is no "right" here. It's all about what sounds correct and good to you. While some of the chord choices can be based on music theory, keep in mind that the music came before the theory. The theory is just a scaffolding people later made up to explain and conceptualize what sounded good. (And I say this a big-time theory nerd.)

But yes, it's fairly common to prepare the listener for the arrival of the I chord (G major in this case) by preceeding it with a chord that's a fifth higher, aka the V chord (D major in this case) or the V7 chord (D7). So putting a D or D7 in measure 4, or at least during the last two beats of measure 4, and in measure 8 would make a lot of sense and probably sound good.

The choice of whether to use D or D7 just depends on how much "tension" you want to add. How much spicy mustard you want to put on the chord. :-) Both chords will lead the ear to the G chord. The D7 will lead the ear with a bit more urgency though.

Notice that, if you do put D or D7 after your A7 chords, then the A7 chord is a chord a fifth higher than the D. In other words, its relationship to the D chord is the same as the relationship between the D and the G chord. It prepares the ear for the arrival of the D/D7, which in turn prepares the ear for the arrival of the G chord. This is a fairly common trick, and I think it sounds nice here.
 
Hello to all. This is my first post. I am a self-taught amateur accordionist who comes from the land of waltzes and polkas on the southern side of the Alps.

Oh, and I just noticed that this is your first post. Welcome to the forum!!!

Slovenia is a beautiful country. My wife and I spent a few days there on a trip several years ago and just loved it. We wished we had scheduled more time there in fact. Really underrated as a vacation destination, IMHO.
 
Salut, and welcome,

Your instincts are good--the chords you're trying don't sound "right" to you, because this is not how accordion bass harmony is done in traditional Irish accordion. (Here I am talking about "traditional" Irish accordion. If you don't care about sounding traditional, you can of course please yourself and do whatever works for you---jazz inversions, 12-tone serialism, the sky's the limit!)

Irish tunes are largely modal music. Modal scales pre-date Western music's major and minor scales. You could say modal scales are "both" major and minor. Or you could say they are "neither." Due to this, the pre-set chordal buttons on Piano accordions or chromatic B or C system accordions often don't "sound right" with Irish tunes. This is the case even for tunes that do fit a largely major mode such as "Moving Clouds."

The accordion seen as the most traditional in Irish music is the bisonoric or diatonic button accordion--these instruments have only single-note basses and a major chord. These boxes often come with a slider or switch enabling the player to remove the third from the chord. The reason for this is not only that those boxes are too small to allow more chords. It is also because dominant seventh, diminished, augmented, and jazz chords do not "fit" or "sound right" if you are playing traditionally. This is to a large degree derived from the drones and chords used by the Irish pipers. They do not play dominant seventh, diminished, or augmented chords.

Unisonoric accordions like piano or chromatic button accordion can be fantastic for Irish music. But in the same vein as the pipers and the diatonic box players, players of piano accordions or chromatic accordions who wish to fit the traditional Irish style, use their single-note bass buttons a lot. They use single-note drones, or combine two single notes for what fiddlers call a "double stop"--an octave or a fifth. They stay away from the chordal buttons with the exception of using the major chord in the instances when it fits. When it doesn't fit, one might use a single bass note or a "double stop" made up of a root note and its fifth. Again--you can do other chords. But that oompah stradella sound is not really the traditional Irish sound.

Often in Irish traditional music a box player does not play chords or basses at all. The rule of thumb is to go light or even go silent if there is already a rhythm instrument present. Here is a recording of traditional Irish piano accordion playing tunes which include "Moving Clouds." Basses are not absent because these lads can't play. They are virtuosos. You don't hear basses because it is considered intrusive in the Irish traditional style:



Of course, players do use basses at times, particularly at a big dance. Here is a piano accordion player doing "Moving Clouds" with some basses and chords. But I believe the only chord you hear in this instance is the major chord, and he's using it only when it fits. The rest of the time it's just a quiet single-note bass here and there, or perhaps a double-stop made up of a tonic and fifth single note buttons.




Here is the brilliant Scottish piano accordion player Phil Cunningham doing "Moving Clouds." No accordion bass audible. Because there is already drums and piano there. Note the piano accompaniment is backgrounded, not foregrounded, and you are not hearing seventh, diminished, augmented, or jazz chords from the piano. That is how you want to do you accordion basses if you do them--quiet, backgrounded, and simple:

 
Here is a charming and informative little talk by a Scandinavian musician who learned Irish traditional music on piano accordion. He plays other instruments including jazz piano, but he doesn't play jazz piano basses when doing Irish traditional music on accordion. He's given a lot of thought to the Irish traditional style, and does it beautifully on PA. There's a little humor at the start where he gives "Four Reasons Not to" choose PA for Irish music, which we all will ignore, of course. :) Note that he also emphasizes that Irish traditional music is a melodic style, and he has chosen to respect that in his accordion approach. He also discuss ornamentation and bass use.

His approach to basses is similar to what I was getting across above. His discussion of basses starts at about 7:48



He plays the "Star of Munster" here, letting his other instruments do the rhythm and harmony (quietly):

 
Oh, thank you very much, Ouija. I really appreciate all the comprehensive answers. Impressive!

I watched Phil Cunningham's performance with interest and will watch it again.
The speech of young Anders Lilebo is also very interesting.

I'll think about playing less to make it just right.
As Exupery would say, art is in subtraction, less is more.

exupery.jpg
 
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