{"id":1459,"date":"2021-09-21T16:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T20:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2023-11-07T19:14:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T00:14:42","slug":"a-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/a-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally a start!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

September 21, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s been a long time coming!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been trying to find some path back to playing Free Bass, but as with everything else, life and work are just always first in the way of my fun time\u2026 but I’ve snuck in a few minutes and made a few strong choices that have resulted in my playing with it a little and enjoying the process!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a touch over 3 weeks ago that I placed my Hohner Morino VI N in the hands of a professional accordion repairer (Andersons Accordion Repair and Sales out of Burlington Ontario, Canada). There really isn’t much wrong with my Morino, just that is seeps a lot of air more than I am comfortable with and it bothered me a lot when playing. I tried to explain this to the lady who last worked on my accordion, but she either refused to see the issue or just didn’t want to take it all apart again to repair her poor workmanship. That ‘s ok, I was not going to place it in her hands anymore after that anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so the Morino sat there again for near another year, but this time I am getting a touch more serious about wanting it addressed, enough that I drove 625km each way just to drop it off with someone who really knows what they are doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime as I am waiting, I was just kind of futzing with the little Hohner FB36 Free Bass and finally sat down and literally started Free Bass from scratch. Well\u2026 it wasn’t 100% from scratch, but it was easily 99%. I knew the layout, but my fingers did not, and no, I could not play anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just started out playing a small scale in C on the left hand, but thought “why not learn something musical? The effort would be about the same, no?”\u2026 and so I pulled out a book from Clementi, a piano book of his 6 most famous Sonatina works:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, where to start? Well #1 seemed logical, though it is a multi-page and 3-part piece. It is also just easy enough to not discourage me\u2026 oh but wait, I keep fooling myself that I have the same skills as 40+ years ago\u2026 nope!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok, not only 1 page at a time, but one NOTE at a time and many times over! At the end of the first hour or two, this is as far as I got:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Addendum Sept 11<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My mom and I zipped down to Burlington to pickup the accordion, did a fast visit at my dad’s cemetery and zipped back to Montreal in RECORD time! On the way there we did a quick stop in Kingston to pickup an accordion for Keith as a favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting the accordion back symbolizes that I can now take the next steps to start moving back to playing a little more regularly. I am stoked to get started and after a full day at work, I spend the rest of Sunday Sept 12 on the RCM website and in the syllabus doing a preliminary map of what is going to be my direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, I wanted to show this\u2026 Keith threw in an absolutely beautiful wide wrist strap that perfectly matches my super-wide shoulder straps!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I will admit that the little time that I spent with the Hohner FB36 did contribute something small to the process and the last 5 days I’ve been playing on the Morino a little, perhaps 20-30 min in the morning and 30 min in the evening except the 17th, where I only played 30 minutes in the morning. The focus has been the C scale, chords (solid\/broken triads) and the first page on Clementi’s Sonatina #1. As in the beginning of the movie “Dune” so truthfully states, “Beginnings are a difficult time”. All the skill I had decades ago is understandably gone, and it is understandably a bit of an up-hill battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest hurdle, though, is not just lack of skill, it is lack of youth. Older fingers, older, slower brain. It doesn’t take 2 times longer to reach any tiny goal, it takes 3-4 times longer. Now, my hope is that once I build back some<\/strong> kind of skill base, that I will be able to start to make progress a little faster, but I am not placing any bets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I think I just managed to scare myself\u2026 ha-ha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addendum: Sept 21<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This day there was a small but happy break-through. About 2 weeks of grinding on the C-scale gets me to the level of about 80bpm consistently and without error over a 3 octave range, repeated over and over non-stop, and so I started on the G-scale. Now it starts on the 2nd row, where the C-scale starts on the 1st so the pattern is different, but to my joy and surprise, in about 30 minutes I am close to the consistency of the C-scale! Tomorrow I will continue firming them both up and adding chords and triads to “G”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addendum: Sept 28<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Not much to add. A few more days of futzing brings me to the C-scale at a consistent 100bpm, the G-scale to a nice comfortable 80bpm and the A-minor scale was just<\/strong> introduced. It’s at 0bpm\u2026 haha!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what am I shooting for? in terms of speed for the scales? I’m just not sure\u2026 I’d really want to touch 150bpm on all scales, but that seems like such a lofty goal at this time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s it for now… later!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Finally a start to a little Free Bass… here is hat story! … Continue readingFinally a start!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":4,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-bass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/syner-g.no-ip.biz\/mymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}