How to Use the Hand Strap on an Accordion

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: All right. Last two aspects of kind of the anatomy of an accordion is there will be a strap that your hand kind of slips in and this is how you're able to actually compress the bellows and squeeze the bellows and pull it out without--and able to use those fingers at the same time. And these straps can often be--have a way to tighten them through a little kind of dial like this. And I've got other accordions here and every single one of them has a little tightening dial there to kind of tighten that strap on your hand. I'll set this one down and you can see this one. Again, it's the same thing. Here are our closure straps; here's our strap tightening dial; here's our hand strap. This one doesn't have as many bass buttons as that one did but--bellows, keyboard, bass keyboard. This one doesn't have any bass reed bank selector switches but it does have two piano bank selector switches, so basically the same. Here, the straps again, they go over your shoulders, kinda like a reverse backpack. I'll show you how that's done. So that's basic anatomy. There's one last thing I want to show you though and I'll show that to you in the next clip."