A silent melodeon

I don't like being heard while I horribly work my way through anything right now. It sounds horrible to me. It has to sound mind numbing horrible to anyone else. I find that I don't play out at home if anyone else is around. I'm more tentative. and where and when I can play is also limited.

It's a bigger problem at work. I would use break at work to practice for 10 minutes, but not if I can be heard anywhere. I thought today I might be able to, but our front area is on 16th Street in DC - cars, pedestrians and windows on our building everywhere so I couldn't hide. The back area has picnic tables, but again, people! There are nursery centers that use the play area and even if they were inside, they have windows and could see me and, people park in the back to come inside too.

My office has a door, but no room is sound proof enough. I would drive my colleagues nuts or invite comments and the snickers behind my back. Who wouldn't? It's awful!

Sure, you can say, "get over it"! It's not going to happen. I don't want to be heard by strangers and colleagues for sure. Home it's fine if my husband hears it (he's being unbelievably supportive) and my son just goes to his room to block me out. This is only OK if someone's not watching a movie or my son isn't doing some learning for homeschooling.  I can't really go to another room or another level because besides this one room, all other rooms are adjacent, over, or under one of my mother-in-law rooms. I don't want to invite criticism or interest or questions from her either. I just want a space to feel safe and quiet, without needing to disappear and that is the large family room which is over the garage and not near anything else.

When my son was taking piano, we bought a Yamaha Clavinova. That piano is digital, but plays and feels like a piano - weighted keys, etc. My son could put on earphones, or tun the volume way down low when he was practicing.  It was great and the piano is not nearly as annoying to listen to as the accordion while practicing. Believe me! 

So I looked to see if there was such thing as a digital accordion. Getting a silent or near silent melodeon would allow me to increase practice time by a lot - maybe double. And right now, anything to get me past this horrid early beginner stage sounds fantastic!

Creating an instrument that can do this, in theory, sounds simple enough, but you still want it to play like a real accordion. Meaning, all parts moving and feeling relatively the same as if air were passing through the reeds. You would want to be able to control the volume by bellow movement, etc. If it doesn't have these features, it makes it harder to move back and forth from the digital to the traditional melodeon and I want to be able to do that. It's why we bought the Yamaha Clavinova 15 years ago. It plays like a piano in all respects - unlike an electronic keyboard. 

So, is there something like this? Yes. There are basically two options - the Roland FR-18 and the Streb e-melodeon.  There is sort of other options, but that involves building something myself - not going to happen. And there is the option of getting a box with no reeds (I guess just for practicing fingerings with bellow movement to get it coordinated well?), but without any sound at all, it wouldn't help me realize I'm doing something wrong with notes.

Just as I was thinking about all of this, a Roland FR-18 came available for a very reasonable price.

It's advantage is that it's midi, so you can wear headphones and be silent and it has a lot of voices. It's affordable-ish even new and you can then play in any key which has advantages to having more music easily available. But other than that, I cannot get jazzed by it. It's big, heavy, and you need an amp to play out if/when you want to play without headphones. But the worst for me, is that it sounds like the accordion you think of when you think of bad accordion music. It has other sounds too, but again... reminds me of just bad music. (my personal opinion, of course) The Roland piano accordion is what Weird Al Yankovic plays. Need I say more?

Here's a sample. The kid is actually playing great, but it's the type of sound I just don't like:

Here is a demo of the instrument with many voices from Roland:

And on top of that, I've heard it's not very easy to go back and forth with this and a traditional melodeon and being able to do that is precisely what I want to do.

Then there is the Streb. This looks like a melodeon and is called an e-melodeon. It is also midi, but there is a built in amp and loud speakers in the body of the machine, so, it's easier to take and play like a traditional melodeon. And it too can be played in any key. It has fun sounds too.

Just listen to these:

Sounds like a melodeon. Which I love that sound.

And here is Helena playing her Streb. Again, sounds like a melodeon:

Clive has several great videos:

Clive does some interesting things with it too - strings! (and organ, etc... I didn't attach them all.)

I love it. Like love it and it is affordable as far as melodeons go. The only downside? They are handmade and there is a year wait to get one. I put myself in the queue. Not to replace the traditional melodeon, but to supplement it!

Oh but if I could just sound good! Today was an ok day of practice. I practiced about 90-100 minutes this evening at home... but everything is just horrible - though I feel and sense progress. I'm just not some late blooming prodigy.