Switching to CBA

[george garside]

I would agree that most people with a classical background take better to a unisoric rather than so called 'diatonic' box, be it continental or piano or for that matter English or duet concertina.

If someone potentially new to the box asks my advice I generally suggest on the lines of

those with substantial piano keyboard experience a piano box

those without any keyboard experience a continental

those who have thought it through and preferably stuck their toe in the water so to speak, a diatonic.

This is of course very much a generalisation and the starting point for a sometimes lengthy series of discussions!



george

 

[Deleted member 48]

Generally speaking, when considering what type of music instrument to study or play, it is best to turn off the emotion button or switch, for a short period during the reflexions.
Reflexions about ergonomy, how many tasks each finger has to perform and how exactly, in order to produce the sounds, and how the medium "music instrument" works between the mind of the musician and the sounds produced.

It's an instrument. After weighing pros and contras of each instrument, one can turn attention to the esthetics and emotional aspects of the music instrument.

After weighing all options, turn the emo switch back on and let the Muses back into your music.
And reduce the ratio or turn the ratio button/switch off.

 

[Anyanka]

Intuitive isn't "emotional" though. Intuitive thinking can be based on experience, knowledge etc but bypasses the conscious thinking processes, is therefore usually faster and for some people (creatives particularly) more reliable. For people like us, the conscious thought processes can introduce distractions, minor considerations, fretful thinking, etc. I've regretted some conscious decisions, but none that had solid "gut" feeling behind them. So there.

 

[donn]

A lot of notions can be perceived as rational when they're really based on intuition. I think the arguments for and against piano vs. chromatic button generally fall in this category. If you spend the money and time to switch to CBA only for the sake of some proven benefit, you'd better make sure that benefit was really proven, as most of the assertions here have not been (the one that really stands up as clearly factual is the shorter span between notes.)

On the other hand, if we're honest enough with ourselves to admit that we choose partly for less practical reasons, that can be the beginning of a great thing. I think that's really the only way the work involved could ever be acceptable.

 

[george garside]

We may call our accordions 'instruments' but in reality they are just complicated 'machines' that need to be operated .i.e they don't do anything by themselves! The choice between piano and continental box should simply be down to which machine the individual feels most easily able to operate - full stop!

And I agree absolutely with Anyanka about solid gut feeling. So there from me s well!

george

 

[Nuuksu]

I was PA player 8 years and then switched to B-system CBA. My accordion teacher was PA player but one day he told me that I should switch to CBA because professionals play CBA. Was that true is not topic for this thread but I think that there are actually more CBA players in the world than PA players - russian, finnish. french, sweden, norwegean, balkan countries alone make quite big part of players. There are quite much on asian countries but not very much information from there. In Netherlands were quite much CBA players and Rudolf Hauer was also very loved player I don't know was he slovak or czech.

My teacher passed away when I was in 4th grade. I started to play CBA after my accordion studies in childrens music school. When I started I made huge mistake, when I tried to follow on PA theory. Most of us know that scales are very popular in PA theory and they work there very well due to keyboard layout. But due to CBA layout scales are quite easy but very useless in real tunes because most of them need different hand position and rotation than scale position is even runs. If You go with CBA start out with tunes, try scales too but don't set them to main priority. I wasted 3 years with scales and my playng did not improved, but after I throwed away scales and started to prioritize tunes then even simple folk tunes made huge improvement.

Main reason why I switched was playng style, I liked dutch players - Toos and Johnny very much but their playng style is very hard to copy on PA. If You listen accordion music at some point you can tell for more complex tunes that was it played on PA or CBA - glissandos, big chords and chord voicings are usually little different.

 

[Deleted member 48]

There are quite much on asian countries but not very much information from there.

There is some information in English available online:
pages 43-46: an article on the development of accordion in China, by an accordion teacher of the Beijing Conservatory
http://www.modernaccordionperspectives.com/Publications_files/MODERNACCORDIONPERSPECTIVES.pdf

page 44 is very informative on the 1993-2012 period, China copied the best practices from the Russian accordion teachers giving masterclasses in China, and adapted the results to Chinese accordion education.

International students exchange programs facilitating this process of comparing international didactics and educational methods.
In the past decades European countries had similar experiences of integrating best practices in accordion education and training.