Playing a melody over sustained bass

[LoganL]

I play a Hohner Bravo III 120 bass accordion. I’m curious if anyone has any thoughts about playing melodies over sustained bass in the left hand rather than a standard bass pattern.

I hear recordings of people doing this and it sounds gorgeous, but I feel like when I try to do this technique the bass overpowers the melody pretty often.

 

[StargazerTony]

I’ve tried this myself and have a couple of thoughts on it. 


1. It has a nice organ like sound. 
2. It takes lots of air and lots of bellows control. 
3. It gets musically boring after awhile. 
4. It’s nice to do for short segments. 
5. Not sure a player can really tell if one side is overpowering the other, even after recording and presumably listening to himself. One guy, who has lots of YouTube videos (you may have heard him because he has unedited 45 to one minute intros of microphone and chair movements, people talking, and straps loudly unsnapping) has a microphone directly pointed at his bass. It’s always overpowered and booming.  
5. It’s art. Do what you want.

 

[wirralaccordion]

Not sure what you mean here but if you play the melody for Last of the summer wine with just the C major chord as a kind of drone would that be what you mean? The sheet music shows only the C major chord for the entire melody.

 

[LoganL]

Tony understands what I mean. I’m talking about instead of playing a “boom-chuck” left hand pattern under a melody, simply planting the left hand chord down over several beats and playing the melody over that.

Perhaps I’ll try recording myself to hear how it sounds, I’m trying to implement it on a few different tunes right now.

 

[debra]

Whether the sustained bass sounds right or overpowers the treble side depends on 1) the registers used and 2) the bass/treble balance of the instrument in general. That balance is different for instance between Pigini (softer bass) and Bugari (louder bass) to name just two.

 

[StargazerTony]

Was wondering, are you able to select different bass registers?

 

[george garside]

There is sustained bass and sustained bass or to put it another way how long , or over how many treble notes or bars of music is a particular bass note or chord sustained for. Just holding a bass button down whilst playing a big 'chunk' of melody may work in a few tunes but is generally best avoided as harmony is at risk!

On the other hand sustaining/holding a bass note or chord for as long as it harmonises (?more or less) with the melody may well sound OK, This could be just 2 or 3 notes or a couple of bars worth of notes'

For those directed by the dots it should hopefully sound ok as the composer thereof will presumably have made sure of this. For those playing 'by ear' or for dotists wanting and happy to depart from the script experimentation is the name of the game, working on the principle that if it sounds right it is right -- but perhaps as well to ask a friend for a second opinion!. Such experimentation is of course how different ''arrangements'' of tunes come about and indeed in the worl of folk
/trad tunes it is normal to see the script ''traditional, arrangement Joe Bloggs'',

george

 

[debra]

This discussion brings back memories of my Turks Fruit arrangement (played at ) which is so full of sustained bass (base notes and chords) that bellows control becomes very difficult and on many accordions impossible because of either too much air consumption or too small bellows. I played this on a Bugari 505/ARS which is a 5 reed instrument, and as such has large bellows, and it has no convertor, base notes only going down to A, which reduces air consumption (compared to convertor instruments going down to E with their standard bass selected).
Volume and air consumption are more often a problem than the harmonisation because indeed the composer or arranger should have made sure that works.

 

[JeffJetton]

I play a Hohner Bravo III 120 bass accordion. I’m curious if anyone has any thoughts about playing melodies over sustained bass in the left hand rather than a standard bass pattern.

I hear recordings of people doing this and it sounds gorgeous, but I feel like when I try to do this technique the bass overpowers the melody pretty often.

I have a Bravo III 72-bass and I also find that sustained bass stomps all over the poor right-hand melody. Ive played some other accordions that are better-balanced for that sort of playing.

You can try the quieter bass-side register setting and then set the melody side to master. Thats about as big a volume difference youre able to do.

Well, I guess you could also remove the grill, like Karen Tweed usually does on her Pigini. Her LH still sometimes overpowers the RH a bit though, as seen/heard here:



(She still sounds pretty amazing though!)

 

[wirralaccordion]

Not sure what you mean here but if you play the melody for Last of the summer wine with just the C major chord as a kind of drone would that be what you mean? The sheet music shows only the C major chord for the entire melody.

Correction - I meant to say the C bass note, not the C major chord. Personally, I find that playing a melody over a bass chord doesn't sound right but playing a melody over a single bass note is perfectly OK and is often written in scores anyway.