Starting on Händel's Pifa (from the "Messiah")

[dak]

After having played this on violin as the conclusion of 2nd Day of Christmas mass, I tried spinning it on accordion and think it fits the instrument well, even if it deserves a better player. Still work in progress. Not a whole lot of places to change bellows direction!

 

[debra]

I can already hear it's going to be wonderful!
You might try what it sounds like if you play the bass one octave higher. It may still sound low enough and will use less air.
It's quite a challenge to have the sound of the long bass notes not changing in volume as you open the bellows further and play treble notes...

 

[dak]

I can already hear it's going to be wonderful!
You might try what it sounds like if you play the bass one octave higher. It may still sound low enough and will use less air.
It's quite a challenge to have the sound of the long bass notes not changing in volume as you open the bellows further and play treble notes...

The air usage of my instrument is actually comparatively modest: if I don't fumble and plan strategically, this should work pretty well. I did try an octave higher but then the drones tend to interfere with the melody more. Actually adding the octave reed in the bass octave works pretty well, and the break between bass octave and transitory reeds is situated perfectly for this piece such that the drones get the octave reinforcement while the runs are essentially clearcut. Of course this is counterproductive for the air usage but makes surprisingly little difference there.

Using LMMM 2 octaves up in the treble gives an actually astonishingly nice rendition but the reeds at those pitches require more pressure and that then causes the bass reeds to consume too much air. In the normal pitch regions, this instrument responds to a breath. In this recording I was using L in déclassement; from the player position M has a nicer sound quality (L sounds rather muffled to the player but makes it reasonably well to recordings).

TLDR; registration is not yet finalized.

 

[debra]

The air usage of my instrument is actually comparatively modest: if I don't fumble and plan strategically, this should work pretty well. I did try an octave higher but then the drones tend to interfere with the melody more. Actually adding the octave reed in the bass octave works pretty well, and the break between bass octave and transitory reeds is situated perfectly for this piece such that the drones get the octave reinforcement while the runs are essentially clearcut. Of course this is counterproductive for the air usage but makes surprisingly little difference there.

Using LMMM 2 octaves up in the treble gives an actually astonishingly nice rendition but the reeds at those pitches require more pressure and that then causes the bass reeds to consume too much air. In the normal pitch regions, this instrument responds to a breath. In this recording I was using L in déclassement; from the player position M has a nicer sound quality (L sounds rather muffled to the player but makes it reasonably well to recordings).

TLDR; registration is not yet finalized.

I fully understand that register choice for the right sound versus for the right air consumption is difficult. I made an arrangement long ago of the two songs from the moving "Turks Fruit" (Turkish Delight) and the air consumption was such that I could only play this using a 5 voice accordion without convertor. The 5 voices were needed to ensure the bellows were large enough and with the accordion with only standard bass the air consumption on the bass side was lower than on a similar accordion with convertor.

 

[dak]

I fully understand that register choice for the right sound versus for the right air consumption is difficult. I made an arrangement long ago of the two songs from the moving "Turks Fruit" (Turkish Delight) and the air consumption was such that I could only play this using a 5 voice accordion without convertor. The 5 voices were needed to ensure the bellows were large enough and with the accordion with only standard bass the air consumption on the bass side was lower than on a similar accordion with convertor.

My accordion has 4 voices on 62 notes, distributed across 6 reed blocks all in the same plane with normal sized reed plates. As a side effect of the resulting large instrument height (not even width), the bellows cross section is rather large. And the reed response is rather good. It has a free bass, but it can be configured to play very lightly (in the extreme, you get 1 bass reed coupling into 1 chord reed at selectable pitch). And that gives the most transparent renditions. Make no mistake: it can also be configured to guzzle air like crazy, but when you do that the reed response in the standard bass is gradual and organic so that at low pressures fewer reeds are responding than at large pressure. Someone did a very sensible job setting up that instrument, and modeling it with the on/off/global-volume-control mindset that digital accordions are designed with just doesn't match how it actually deals with dynamics and air.

So in a nutshell: I think I was able to do your "Turks Fruit" arrangement justice. The rendition most likely does not match your intent since I worked it out from the score without heeding either your own variant nor the original (or the specified registration) all too much, but rather mapped the notes to something that sounded good on my instrument to me. And I got along with the air, I think…

My rendition:


Your own rendition:

 

[debra]

Riight! You need the large bellows and careful attention to air consumption to pull this off. I first played it on a Bugari 285/ARC PA and later on a Bugari 505/ARS CBA (essentially the same, but with buttons) and that one I used for the YouTube recording (and not the accordion I'm holding in the picture on YouTube which is only 4 voice and has convertor).
You managed quite well with the large bellows to find where the only place are you can change bellows direction.
That Turks Fruit song is actually the only song I have played solo on an accordion in a concert setting in the past 15 years or so. (The only other songs I have played solo are Bach's first cello concerto, mov. 1, on the bass accordion, and Bach's prelude in C minor BWV 999, on the piano.)