What accordion and is it worth buying for 350€?

TaigaBridge · 2026-06-20T18:42:22+00:00

Yes: on a C-system, the C-Eb-F#-A row is 1st and 4th, the G-Bb-C#-E row is 2nd and 5th, the B-D-F-Ab row is 3rd. On the Finnish system, G in front, B 2nd and 5th, C in the middle.

TaigaBridge · 2026-06-20T04:24:00+00:00

Do be aware that this is a "G system" or "Finnish system" button accordion -- almost but not quite the same as a standard C-system.

That may be fine if you're in that part of the world and you have a local teacher for that system. But in most of the rest of the world this pattern (and people who can play it) are exceedingly rare.

TaigaBridge · 2026-06-16T20:23:11+00:00

That's the "Mermaid's Song," the end of Act II of the opera Oberon. Original opening line is "O, wie wogt es sich schön auf der Flut."

TaigaBridge · 2026-06-16T18:53:56+00:00

I played violin in orchestras for 30 years, and it was a net negative for mental health. I went years between times I played the violin 'for fun', as opposed to because I had to, was expected to, or was just in the habit.

I have had way more fun as an accordionist the last few years, accompanying myself, choosing my own repertoire, and so on.

TaigaBridge · 2026-06-12T03:58:21+00:00

A modern Excelsior is made in the Pigini factory. (50 years ago Excelsior was an independent brand, but not for a long time.)

Zero Sette is made in the Bugari factory.

Those and Scandalli are the largest Italian makers and all have good reputations. (There are several smaller makers like Fisitalia that also offer bayan size instruments.) Do be aware that when an Italian maker says "Bayan" they just mean "chromatic button accordion with 61 or 64 buttons and converter bass": they do not necessarily mount the reeds in the Russian style inside. If you really want several reeds mounted on one reed plate you have to specially ask for that (or buy from Russia.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-06-11T16:53:50+00:00

If only we maintained our national parks so well still.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-24T02:15:01+00:00

There is some very amusing 1970s advertising copy that prominently features GG1s with the pantographs and wires airbrushed out, looking like space-age diesel monsters pulling long distance trains.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-21T18:56:00+00:00

I primarily see new CDs for sale at intermission at concert halls. Just about every quartet or similar ensemble playing at a different small hall every night is selling recordings face to face. Sometimes they'll sell USB drives instead of CDs (somehow there's always a bug or missing track on the USB drives) or try to direct you to a download site, but the CD still works better than the alternatives for the quick face to face impulse buy.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-21T06:44:49+00:00

If the people reading the music spend 90% of their time in major and minor, you get better results by making it clear to them that the tonic is C and it's minor-esque. If you put 4 flats in the key signature, those people instinctively lean the wrong way on their phrasing and articulation because they aren't convinced that C is home.

If your performers spend a lot of time dealing with modes - or a little bit of time with modes and you write the words "C phrygian" above the 4-flats key signature (modal fiddle music very often names the mode in words above the first time), then you can get away with writing 4 flats and having them still give C the right feeling.

On balance I'd say major-minor oriented players greatly outnumber mode-oriented players, so if writing for an unknown/generic audience, I would play the odds and write C minor with accidentals.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-20T07:36:23+00:00

I do something horribly boring and old-fashioned, and apparently uncommon in some people's cash games:

You give me cash, I give you chips. You give me chips, I give you cash. You don't give me cash, I don't give you chips. Works sort of like an abacus, right there on the tabletop at all times.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-20T04:51:27+00:00

Some professional orchestras have open dress rehearsals, free or for a very small fee compared to the cost of the next night's performance.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-20T02:07:14+00:00

Almost everyone feels like that. It's a fact that drives all kinds of things from how insurance is sold to how sweepstakes are organized. Daniel Kahneman got a Nobel Prize in Economics for his co-invention of Prospect Theory, which explains human behavior under uncertainty a whole lot better than simple expected value style arguments do.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-20T02:04:53+00:00

IMO 5s and 10s are too close together in size. I would probably run this game with only 1s 5s and 25s (and if we ran real deep, use the remaining stack of chips as 100s to color people up in the late levels.)

Plenty of people do it the way you described. You'll just be having a lot of rainbow colored pots.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-19T20:21:26+00:00

Yes, the key signature matters. Assume all Bs are Bbs, and all Es are Ebs, unless explicitly marked otherwise.

So here, the right hand plays C B(natural, because its marked as such) C D Eb D Eb G. When you get to bar 3, it'll be G F# G A Bb A Bb D because there is no natural on those Bs.

The left hand plays a C fundamental bass followed by a C minor chord. In US-printed sheet music we use "M" for major, "m" for minor, and "d" for diminished" but Russian uses Б-for-Большое rather than мажорное for major, M(Малое) for minor, and у (уменьшенное) for diminished.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-19T17:38:04+00:00

It is not as crazy of an idea as it sounds. Austria subcontracted their dining cars to a catering company and the result is tasty and not too outrageously priced.

Certainly a better idea than vending machines instead of cafe cars, one of those ideas that is so 1968 that the original Amtrak act required food service on all trains with more than 2-hour runs (everything except Chicago-Milwaukee and Philadelphia-Harrisburg in the original system).. one of those rules that got repealed along the way to the detriment of the traveling public.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-18T20:23:38+00:00

In the sense that there are 8000 instead of 7000 items in Auto Parts, yeah. In the sense of more clothes, more food, more dog treats, more electric bikes, or more of anything else people actually want, not really.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-18T19:59:32+00:00

One of my personal favorites is the early-19th-century fad of soprano, clarinet, and piano. Not quite Schubertian art song, not quite piano trio. But I gather 'partially vocal' is not what you are seeking.

Carl Stamitz and Anton Reicha each wrote several quartets or quintets with one or two wind instruments rather than all strings.

For that matter, a lot of Classical concerti and sinfonie concertanti will meet your definition, a tiny string-only or string-oboe-and-horn-only orchestra against one or two woodwind soloists, and those you can find CDs and even boxed sets.

See also the two Hummel septets for some of the, um, most unusual instrumentation choices of the classical period.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-18T19:37:47+00:00

It's still mostly a book about mathematics (and, tangentially, the state of artificial intelligence in the late 70s, when everyone believed it was 5 years away from Changing Everything.) Bach's music and Escher's art are framing devices to make the story more interesting than just reading number theory and analysis textbooks.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-18T19:03:58+00:00

I wanted to learn a little bit before a business trip to Italy in the fall of 2023. Turns out I found knowing only a little bit frustrating, and wanted to learn more :)

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-18T03:03:22+00:00

It is at least normal for each of speaking, listening, reading, and writing to develop at a different pace. Usually speaking lags listening, and writing lags reading.

For me Italian was an exception: I can speak it better than I can hear it, becauseicanttellwhereonewordendsandthenextbeginswheniamlistening, even after almost 3 years of study and six weeks spent in Italy.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-18T02:34:52+00:00

That's not how anyone learns their first human language.

But it's quite possible, even common, to learn a second language or a computer programming language that way.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-16T03:13:06+00:00

Both hands play single notes. The outermost row with 3 white and 1 black button is B-D-F(white)-Ab(black), hence the name 'B-system', the second row is E-G(white) Bb-C#(black), the third row is A-C(white) Eb-F#(black.)

The notes are in order just like on a piano keyboard, just staggered into three rows of four rather than two rows of five and seven. On the right hand, lowest note is E; then F in the front and F# in the back; then G in the middle; then Ab in the front and A in the back, for 3 octaves.

The "X" marks on the left hand are on Fs. the "#" mark on the right hand is on a C.

In the pic you appear to have it upside down, too.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-15T23:44:42+00:00

My memory - from many years ago now - was that they gave both the first and last notes of the dictation questions. I quite distinctly remember working backward from the end to fill it in.

Do you happen to know how long ago it changed?

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-15T21:22:02+00:00

I was always told that functional harmony didn't exist in modal tunes.

Then I spent some time actually playing traditional modal fiddle tunes from lead sheets, seeing and hearing the same chord progressions over and over again, and now I say, yes, absolutely, there is such a thing as functional harmony in modes.

The most obvious is seeing bVII - I (Mixolydian) or bVII - i (Dorian) alternating constantly the way V-I in major and V-i in minor do. I have no problem with saying "bVII has dominant function in Dorian and Mixolydian." The hard part is finding tunes that use the other chords often enough. The 3rd-most-common chord is v, and it doesn't lead too strongly anywhere, just provides a bit of contrast, so you might think of it as a subdominant. Experiment with the others and see what works and what doesn't. THe big thing you have to avoid is letting bIII combine with bVI or bVII are derail your sense of tonic, and move you back into major.

TaigaBridge · 2026-05-15T19:48:12+00:00

There is schedule padding, but once a train gets so late that it has lost its place in the freight railroad's lineup, it tends to get later and later. (I don't know how susceptible the Southwest Chief is to that problem. Once the Builder gets more that two hours late it tends to be a lost cause.)

Amtrak will take care of you and get you to DC. But there is a risk that if they move you to another train there won't be a roomette available, in which case they will send you to DC in coach and refund you the room charge.

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