C-Blues on the Accordion

1/21/2023

Blues artist Lead Belly - photo from Library of Congress

The accordion is a great blues instrument, and searching on youTube can lead to some amazing performances that show this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W72qEgXKBpo

Dallas Vietty
Recently, I watched Dallas Vietty's great Jan 10, 2023 livestream (livestreams are available as a link on Dallas' site www.risingreed.com) where he also has some Moschino resources, and great stuff for learners.   

He explains great stuff on the feel of playing that is useful:

•  attacking on air so notes sound immediately
•  staccato feel of notes rather than full legato playing
• less pressing (mashing) of buttons

Aside: Mini Moschino
These notes are me thinking about what is in the livestream and how to adapt it to the 6 row mini Moschino that I'm playing.

Here is my summary of notes of the Jan 10 live stream

In summary:
1) C Blues in this example- Chords are all Dom7 chords in blues.  Major 3rd and Minor 7th (shown as X7 here), with some flavor in the turn around.  Basic 12 Bar Blues  shown in table  -note these are not shown as all Dom 7 which is really the blues sound

2) On Mini-Moschino (6 row system) some chords need minor 7th to change places.

3) 12 beat syncopated rhythmic feel - On accordion, a typically pulsing 12 count (imagine 123 123 123 123 where the last 123 is beat 4 then we'd have a count 1234567890ET - where 0ET is ten, eleven, twelve

The 12 beat pulsing feel is  Medium, Short Short Where short is staccato, almost rhythmic instrument imitation

One bar (in 4/4 time but in a 12 beat count so there is syncopated rhythmic feel (notice 6,7 and T and 1 are close and accent the 1 and 3 beat - which is how feels like 4:4 with syncopation

1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    0    E    T   -- repeat    
M              S          S    M                S          S   -- repeat

On Mini-Moschino, chords can be fingered as shown

4) bass arppeggio - left hand can play 1-3-5-6-7-6-5-3-1...while right hand pulses chord.  This is sort of Louis Prima like system

5) Right hand - Melody on blues scale
    Root -m3 - 4- b5 - 5 - b7
inC: C - Eb - F - F# - G - Bb

Minor 3rd (or Minor 5th) are blue notes

6) Alt blues scale
in Key of C, scale down a 3rd also works (as it is close to Am)

7) Licks - these are vocabulary of blues playing
Turn around Lick (flavor mentioned before)
 go C-Eb-F-Gb-G
note that this is 1 b3 4 b5 5

another lick is trill with 3rd below the current note

8) Harmonic sequence on turn-around (flavor)
Turn around harmony can go 
C-Em-F7 F#dim C/G(or G7)