Weekly Project #4: Chord Inversions And A Performance

This week's project is of a musical nature. And it has two parts, somewhat unrelated.





First, I'm signing up for an open mic performance (two songs) this coming Thursday evening. I'm performing these on my digital accordion. One of the songs is an instrumental, the other is a vocal. Secondly, I want to practice playing chord inversions on the accordion keyboard.

Let me explain. I have a digital accordion. It is a beast of an instrument. It is large, heavy, difficult to understand, and capable of a wide range of musical expression. I don't want to go into it's capabilities here, but I do want to learn to play it better. Sometimes I will make myself sign up for an open mic to propel my preparation and learning. I know I'm going to have to work and learn if I'm going to be performing in front of an audience.

I didn't want to make the whole week's project into just the performance so I have combined it with some exercises that are somewhat complimentary to the performance, and are skills I know I need to work on anyway, in this case chord inversions.

The crazy thing about an accordion is that it is played largely by feel. You just can't see the keyboard very well, which is played by the right hand, and not the left hand at all. So you really need to learn the keyboard by feel. This is very different to the piano where your hands are right in front of you. Most pianists just stare at their hands as they play, while accordionists generally are looking elsewhere. In order to get to know the keyboard better, I want to start by learning the C major triad inversions up and down the keyboard without looking.

Tuesday:
I've been working more on the performance songs than the chord inversions - but, understandably, they're more critical.  I set up a basic rhythm track for both of them to loop, gradually increasing the tempo. I'm going to try this as an experimental practice method to see if it increases my ability to learn and retain. I have no way of testing this that I know of so I'm just going to go with instinct as to it's effectiveness. Creating the rhythm track for the instrumental was more challenging since it is a free tempo song, meaning it doesn't have a set tempo. It slows and speeds up as I feel it. Still, I think practicing to a set tempo is good for me.

Friday:
Last night's performance was a bit disappointing for me. I decided to change one of the songs at the last minute. That was a mistake. I hadn't practiced it, and in front of people with no warm up, kind of mangled it. Lesson learned. The other song I had practiced, which was harder, went fine.

I'll spend the rest of my time on this project working on the chord inversions.