A weird, hard-to-learn, new musical challenge? Sign me up!
Background: 2020 to present.
Ok. Here is my story. It is late 2021 and the Covid-19 Pandemic has been a part of our lives for a long while.
I've always been interested in learning oddball instruments, and accordion has stuck to me.
I've been playing the piano most of my life, and I plink out tolerable Jazz comping. But the piano it is difficult to bring anywhere. Piano accordions are a natural for a portable instrument. They are also a busking natural, and busking is on my bucket list. Really.
So, several years back (at least a decade) I inherited my fathers old accordion (Stradella) which is in relatively average repair. After fooling a bit, I realized that the frustration that I had was in the Stradella system (More on this later, but Stradella is based on the Circle-of-Fifths which presents common chord progressions rather easily but really plays only Major-Minor-Dom7-Dim chords. At that early phase, I wondered "why a piano keyboard on the right hand and then a very limited color of chords.
(I didn't know that you could make alternates - and really inversions are impossible)...enter the Free-bass accordion
About 4 years ago, I bought a mini Giuletti Free bass accordion. This was liberating in some ways: Left hand can play run and inversions are possible, and frustrating in others. No matter how hard I worked, some things seemed out-of-reach (walking bass patterns), 9th chords, big 10th spans which are possible and doable on the Piano but not on the Giuletti C system accordion that I had.
Since it is a mini accordion, it also runs out of range and I had to shuffle melodies from right to left hand sometimes. Very hard.
Then about a year ago I saw something cool on Reddit. A posting from George Secor...
? Who is this George Secor fellow
Then about a year ago I saw something cool on Reddit. A posting from George Secor...
1) Miracle temperament discoverer
2) Incredible Free-bass accordion musician, now deceased - I found that he had just passed away a few months earlier (sadly).
As a background, some of George's incredible performances on YouTube:
And an interview at NAA 2018
Explaining and playing a Moschino accordion (4 finger left hand system) which is different than Quint etc.
He goes on to talk about how he has these instruments for sale (Siwa & Figli) Italian accordions which seemed perfect.
The system seems perfect for complex Jazz chords but it is a bit hard to research. The following video attempts to explain this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x-7_BeMgXc
Ok, I'm sold.
I wondered if those George Secor accordions were still for sale. I contacted the Oklahoma Accordion club, and they contacted his heir and I found out some of these actual accordions are still available and are BRAND NEW!!! Ok. a new accordion system, does what
Ok. So 2020 had no travel, and I worked hard and deserved a new toy I think, so I agreed to buy this thing. Trouble is that cross-country travel would be necessary to get it. I definitely wanted to test it out before buying (the price was more than I was willing to gamble)
So I sent a down payment/reservation and waited. However, Covid-19 never let up and travel plans delayed and all, I just got impatient and the seller (again a real person that I found through accordion club contacts) agreed to send me the accordion to evaluate and pay on arrival.
So...much packing, shipping, evaluating...and take a look at what I bought...does it look familar?
Ok. I can't play it yet. What I've learned thus far...
The Moschino System
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