Playing the Accordion in A Major

Series Summary

Music has always been a part of all of us as human beings. This being the case we have devised ways to write it, read it and of course play it. We have developed terms for every musical scenario that might occur and ways to teach all of this as well. Things like minor and major, 7th chords, intervals and chords are all great examples of the way we like to organize things as a species. Improvisation is a great example of the speed at which our brains work. Very popular among jazz players, improvisation is a great tool to test your knowledge of the instrument as well as let go of some of the rules.

In this great video series our expert Ryan Larson, a great accordion player, shows us not only how to play in the key of A and all the notes in that key but also how to instantly better our improvisational skills. You will learn all the facets of the instrument as well as techniques for how to play both sides of it. You are only able to improvise with as much as you know so make sure the next time you're jamming with your friends you wow them with how well you know your instrument, whatever it might be!

Video Transcript

"So now we're taking a look at the accordion in A major, and we're going to show you the A major scale on the right hand. We're going to show you the chords that are associated with A major on your left hand. Five simple, easy chords, easy to find, they're all right next to each other. We're going to show you how to find them to the left hand. It's a lot of buttons but it is really easily organized once you understand how to approach it. Then you also notice you have these buttons over here, they just really swap the sound as you probably already figured out. (plays), making it different. (plays) And then your right hand.(plays) So just some nice different sounds that you can get (plays). And you'll see notated on music if they want a specific sound it will have the symbol that's on the key that you're pushing and it will say "organ" or "bandonian", whatever the sound you need, and you can see the different sounds here. All that is not as crucial as the information we are going to go over with the scales and how we show you to approach the scale and how to play within it and then at the end we're going to take a blues and show you how to read through a blues piece on written music so you can read right hand and left hand and take these simple basic ideas and apply them to your own cool adventures on the accordion."