This is not your grandmother's accordion!

(This top part was written while I was waiting. Day two of practicing is at the end).

What an amazing instrument. A couple days ago I linked the Blue Danube played by Vitali Dimitriev on a chromatic button accordion. I was so impressed with that one I decided to look up some more as I was working the other night. I listened to a collection of 50 videos of other virtuosi. Nearly all of them I found were Russians (on this instrument) initially.

Amazing players on superbly built accordions. Just wow. It's not just their hands flying, but using the bellows for dynamics and for playing legato or staccato. I'm awed essentially.  That collect of videos is here (though I was listening, not watching - unless I got sucked in and just had to take a peak while I was working.

Here is the collection. There are some piano accordion in there too: 

But melodeon can be pretty darn amazing too. Here's a collection of some people playing - starting with the first one which was filmed at 1 am after the player had many pints!

What I like about much of what is played on melodeon is that you just feel joy for so much of it... or longing... or melancholy. I cannot explain it, but seeing young people (well any age) playing with such fun makes me happy. It's just more expressive as... a people instrument, I guess I feel... the common man/woman instrument.

OK, I feel more secure about my decision now. (More on this another day but I just did an enneagram the other day... my research into all of this now makes so much more sense!)
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Day two of practicing. Today I went to the GC French Method book. I had a couple of "huh, what does that mean?" moments while trying to understand the notation for the box, but I figured it out. Having the digital CD with it helped in hearing what they meant.

So, I did lessons 1 and 2 pretty easily. Then I want to lesson 3. That one gave me more trouble, so I took it very slowly. That is what I recorded. To break it up, I also started practicing lesson 4- again, very slowly.

In the book it recommends "turning off" the 3rds in the base, but my box won't allow me to do that, so it doesn't sound exactly like the recording, but it's close enough. Slowly, slowly, slowly...