Wednesday, September 24, 2008

blog #158 >> Book of the Week:
Accordion Sheet Music

Last night I was thinking, "Hmmm... I haven't posted anything about accordions in a long while." And I realized that it's about time. My accordion playing has been going very well lately. With practice, I can play any song I hear. So I'd say I'm doing pretty good. Well, all except that whole reading notes thing. I'm still very bad at reading notes. I just can't connect a dot, to a letter, to a note, to a sound. And I honestly haven't even practiced reading notes since sometime last month. I just have such better songs to be practicing than "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." But one thing's for certain, I will never run out of sheet music to practice with. My dad's accordion came to me with a whole collection of sheet music, most of which were his when he was a kid or my great-grandpa's. My great-grandpa came from Switzerland and played the accordion at the Swiss dance hall that they ran in Damascus. Anyhow, here's some of that swell sheet music.

(Palmer-Hughes Accordion Course Book 1 ©1952) The book that started it all. If you want to learn to play the accordion start with this book. Both my dad and my brother learned from this book. It's great. Not too hard, and not too easy, at least for me. I've actually completed this book and it has some great songs like "Vegetable's on Parade" and "Charlie the Chimp."


(Palmer-Hughes Accordion Course Book 2a ©1961) The book I'm in now. I just thought this little picture of the romantic accordion players was priceless.


(Schweízer Ländler Album ©1946) This one must have been my Great-grandpa's because it's all in German. He translated part of it though. But it's still too hard for me. If I could hear them, I think I could play them. I've just got to get back on the reading notes thing.


(Wacky Polka ©1944)


(Scandinavian Dance Album ©1935) From this we learn that both my aunt and my dad promise to practice slowly.


(Red Wing ©1928)


(Moon Winks ©1904)


T

1 comment:

domesticgoddess said...

I too learned to play the accordion from the Palmer Hughes book. I recently went to a cool store called The Button Box in Massachusetts (http://www.buttonbox.com/about-us.html), and picked up a copy of Mel Bay's Deluxe Accordion Method By Frank Zucco. It's excellent, it will help you with reading music, bellows control and the songs are much more interesting than the ones in Palmer Hughes.