My page on Soundcloud

[Matt Butcher]

Heres a link:
Edited to add YouTube link: http://m.youtube.com/#/user/Vrsdistribution?&desktop_uri=/user/Vrsdistribution

I have posted this here, not because the playing is so great, but because I reckon that if I can expose my weaknesses in public, it might encourage others to post their recordings. I like sharing recordings because each player has their individuality.

The second reason is that I am not confident when playing on recordings or (even worse) in front of an audience, I lose a high % of my competence. The idea is that I put these out in the world and gradually it doesnt seem like such a big deal.

On there are a few actual accordion recordings, some organetto playing, some called Selly Oak where a bunch of us of widely varying abilities get together and play mostly European tunes, some random stuff... I will update from time to time.

What I am really saying is, I would love to hear people posting what they are doing.

 

[Glenn]

Really appreciated Matt and very well played.
I love "Oblivion". Was that played in two takes or is your left hand free-bass control at that level?
You've inspired me to go find that music and try it myself.

 

[Matt Butcher]

Thank you for the encouragement!

Ha, no, I wish I was as good as you suggest, but Oblivion is a duet... with the son of a friend, he recorded it for his school exams (not this version, the one on Soundcloud was earlier on in the process). I played the melody line, he did the hard work. He's a lot better than me but at the time we recorded this he hadn't bothered to learn all the notes - teenagers eh...

Thanks again.

 

[smdc66]

the selly oak stuff is classic {}

 

[Matt Butcher]

You like it? Cool, thank you, much appreciated. One of the nice things about it, apart from just playing some good tunes, is bringing together a real random mix of people, literally aged 8 to 80 and of very different abilities. I do the bass accordion for it, suits me as not too many notes to think of. We have some more recordings to post including some new tunes, there is probably a limit to how many different versions of Hava Nagilah we need to keep. The woman behind all that, bringing it together, doing arrangements etc., is lurking as a member on this forum too, perhaps she will make an appearance soon...

 

[smdc66]

. The woman behind all that, bringing it together, doing arrangements etc., is lurking as a member on this forum too, perhaps she will make an appearance soon...

that will be nice .....come out of the shadows , its fun out here........... {} {}

 

[Matt Butcher]

I uploaded some more files to Soundcloud, rough and ready as always. Four are from the Selly Oak get togethers: Shir Hachatuna is a wedding dance from Israel, Dafino Oro is a circle dance from Macedonia, Finn Jenta is from Norway, Finnish Polka is from, erm, Sweden I think. I put on a later version of Oblivion - it's going OK, a little bit careful, then I make a massive cockup which might at least be good for a laugh. Link as above, all the best, Matt.

 

[jarvo]

Finnish Polka.....this has a rooooshian music feel to it......very nice..... :tup:


BTW why do you not "enable" the download button ?

That way we can get some virtual jamming going on ....

Mind you I am thinking of packing it in.......listening to the recordings and posts here ...I may have embarrassed me self with the sh**e I have been posting......it just does not stick....ah well........Cheers

 

[mjh]

I like it how youre all over the place with the songs, really varied repertoire. Must be great fun playing with such a group. Listened to roughly half of it in one go, good stuff. Dafino Oro is my favourite, theres nothing quite like Eastern European folk if you ask me. And they even teach you the secrets of playing it: ! Does the Made Up European tag mean theyre your original compositions? If so, thats pretty impressive. By the way, the Finnish Polka has some uncanny similarities to Ievan polkka.. Jarvo, you should hear me playing

 

[Matt Butcher]

THanks both, much appreciated. Jarvo don't put your playing down, you've not been doing it long and you get a lot of mileage out of the instrument. By the way you may have noticed that I myself only play three or four different notes on a lot of these recordings...
I'll let you know when I've enabled downloading, can't wait to see what happens next!

Mjh, yes it's a lot of fun, it can get a bit obsessive at times, but that's music for you. Thank you for listening well beyond the call of duty! Just remember ,I try to find ways to get other people to do the hard work. Dafino Oro is magic. The funny thing is if youre Western it starts off being so hard to play the odd time signatures then suddenly it seems normal. Eleven beats in a bar does make counting in at the start a bit lengthy, only joking. The "Made Up European" ones are mine, I bought two cheap old melodeons and tried to come with a simple framework that I could use to play and improvise on. But in the end I sold the melodeons instead. And thank you for identifying the tune, I didn't think it could really be called "Finnish Polka"... More soon,, whether you like it or not, Matt.

 

[Matt Butcher]

BTW why do you not enable the download button ?

......Cheers

Downloads enabled mate... Anything could happen! No guarantees of strict tempo. As for Dafino Oro, all together now, 1231234123412312341234. Matt.

 

[Soulsaver]

Heres a link:

I have posted this here, not because the playing is so great, but because I reckon that if I can expose my weaknesses in public, it might encourage others to post their recordings. I like sharing recordings because each player has their individuality.

The second reason is that I am not confident when playing on recordings or (even worse) in front of an audience, I lose a high % of my competence. The idea is that I put these out in the world and gradually it doesnt seem like such a big deal.

On there are a few actual accordion recordings, some organetto playing, some called Selly Oak where a bunch of us of widely varying abilities get together and play mostly European tunes, some random stuff... I will update from time to time.

What I am really saying is, I would love to hear people posting what they are doing.

Thats quite inspiring - I have a similar plan although it just involve(d) recording my playing. It seems to produce an added pressure and acclimatising to it is a step on the way to feeling more comfortable in front of an audience, I thought. Now, with your lead, I could add the pressure of publication, too.

 

[Soulsaver]

Then I have to add an 'however' and that is I seem to experience random outages on Soundcloud - yeterday it worked today it doesn't. I suspect its to do with Chrome which seems to have these random quirks -equally it could be Soundcloud but it aint working for me. You cant have to sign up to hear it, I've heard Jarvo's (think) and your stuff before. The play pause button changes but the cursor thing doesnt start down the wave.

 

[Matt Butcher]

Yeah go for it, it's kind of liberating to post something that's not as good as I'd like it to be, and let people listen to it. Especially if you feel like there's something there to justify the recording, e.g. you played a certain section nicely or whatever. (I'm talking about myself now, I expect yours would be great anyway.)

I must admit I have had to be patient with Soundcloud lately and coax the tracks into playing. They do play in the end but it takes a bit of prodding. I put it down to my I Pad One being a bit creaky, but you're having problems with Chrome as well. So...

 

[mjh]

Maybe you could try changing from flash playback to html5 playback on the soundcloud settings page, its there somewhere. You have to signup for it though. You could first try googling some kind of a soundcloud html5 test page to see if it changes anything. I think this might serve as one. If that does not help with the playback issue, then I just dont know. Might be the browser just like you figured. I used to get the same problem as you when I was using the site with flash and firefox, I think reloading the page or somesuch helped. No problems with html5 so far.

 

[Soulsaver]

Thanks Guys - I can usually find solutions - reload pages, shut down other tabs, try Firefox, try Explorer... but usually you just come back later.... and it still doesn't work. I'll have to try a few things instead of being bored with its foibles.

 

[TW]

Thank heavens Soulsaver, another who uses 'with' and not the awful 'of' in conjunction with 'bored'.

 

[Soulsaver]

Thank heavens Soulsaver, another who uses with and not the awful of in conjunction with bored.

In view of your comment I felt obliged to correct the spelling of instaed...
And margin of error; and snooker commentators who have never heard of a transitive verb - Hes hit that perfect...

 

[TW]

Being from North Yorks I tend towards Scandinavian spelling .......
'He's hit that perfect...'...six?

 

[Matt Butcher]

After the debate on grammar, here's an update:

Posted this week: Minuet in G, by... Petri Makkonen, the Wizard of Kuopio, a genius and a gentleman with a very dry sense of humour. He did a very good book called "Chips from the Old Masters' Workshop" for learners with some straight imitations of famous classical composers and some slightly funny ones... I played it on the V-Accordion as a kind of Smethwick version of a baroque church organ or maybe a bit like the "Francesco Zappa" album. There's a small car crash in my recording but no one got seriously hurt. Believe it or not I can play it fine when not recording, but that was my best take out of, erm, 168.

Also posted some diatonic stuff over the last week - two Italian 6/8 marches / songs (more about them soon after some very interesting info from David) and my badly played first outing on a BCC#. Coming soon, Polka del Pescatore and, finally, Da Slockit Light.