I don't like high notes and they don't like me

I have started taking a 15 minute break mid-day when I'm at work and during that time I piddle around on the Liliput with tunes I know in my head. Which means, I am trying to play new tunes and it's a mess. Today in those fifteen minutes I was playing the melody only for Home on the Range and Three Blind Mice. I found most of the notes, but haven't added in bass yet. So, at work it will be just trying to find melodies and get used to the back/forth of bellows and placement of notes for each tune.

At home I have the burl Hohner and I'm trying to practice from the book. Today I did lessons 4, 5, and 6 fairly well. It's slow. It's not perfect, but I'm picking up speed. Then I added in 7, 8, and 9 which are exercises. 9 is giving me a lot of troubles because I'm looking at fingering instead of the notes. I do not want to get in the habit of looking at the fingering. I want to see the note and know what to do. Or is that even a bad idea? Like, a middle C is push. An octave higher the C is a pull. This is in the key of C on a GC melodeon. I'm almost afraid to look at the book to see that it's all different in the key of G.

Yes, of course it's opposite. Middle C is pull and the octave above is push. Yes, that is going to be brain overload for me! This is how I'm beginning to feel!

I want to read the music on a staff because that is what is already the most comfortable for me, and it will make it easier to take other music to play. I also wonder if it will make playing cross row easier too? Possibly? I am probably full of it, but if I know it's a C and where the Cs are and in what direction of the bellows, perhaps more fluid play without tons of back and forth of the bellows will happen. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure it all out!

So, the last exercise I tried was 10. And that was an actual piece of music! I can do the first line (which repeats) somewhat OK, but then the rest of the tune escapes me as I can't get it in my ear because the phrasing feels like it's landing in the wrong rhythm or something. I kept plunking it on the piano to see if I could get it in my head better.

So about the title of this post - high notes... Yesterday and today the method book is introducing and working with the rest of the C row - the higher end. I have to give the bellows much more forced air to play the upper notes. This is true on both the melodeons I have. To get the higher notes loud enough to play and hear, the bass notes get too loud. As a novice, I do not want to be playing loud. If I could, I would play with them mostly silenced so only I could hear my playing. For me it's all like worst combination - high and squeaky treble voice - hate it. Lots of mistakes - hate it. And I have to play loud, announcing my horribleness to everyone in the house - hate it.

One good thing, is that playing the basses is getting easier. Of course, they make it easier by always having it be the same rhythm and same note and chord each time, but that's actually smart, because it's teaching me to separate my hands - to have them do things independently without adding in more complications (yet) while I learn where all the notes are in the right hand. 

I did practice for almost an hour today (53 minutes according to my handy dandy time keeper I just started), but my brain is just fried for the day. I was doing a lot of creative think paired with tedious work for my job today. It's funny, I like what I do, and lesson planning is fun/fulfilling, but it's a lot of detail to keep hold of in my head and it tires me after hours of it.

But, this is the good part... when I was driving home at 7 pm, I was thinking, "I just want to get home and practice a little bit." I knew, I felt/sensed that stepping away from the computer, the work, the homeschooling, etc would clear my head. I cannot think about anything else while I'm practicing. It uses my whole brain. Nothing else I do can do that for me - nothing that I enjoy, anyway.

With that said, I'm just too wiped out/tired to record anything today. Most important thing is that I practice, and that I did. So, I'm calling it good. No one needs or wants to hear another horrible day of a beginner playing anyhow!

Day 5 - and I definitely hear and feel improvement

Today I went back to the diatonic GC Method Book. I hadn't looked at it for 2 days while I was working on Twinkle and Twinkle variation. I went back to lesson 4 which is the one I was working, but didn't even record 3 days agom  because it gave me a LOT of trouble - especially with switching basses. Now, it's still a mess, but I can play it slowly and now I'm working on speeding it up (which means adding in mistakes!) That is improvement.

I then went to Lesson 5 which introduces a new "problem". The half step landing between buttons.

So far it has gone like this. Underline meaning PULL the bellows. Without underline means PUSH the bellows to get a note. So, for one key it is C on push and D on pull. So, the keys are:

C/D, E/F, G/A - See, back and forth. BUT... then it changes. 
C/D, E/F, G/A, B/C, D/E, F/G

See that: 
C/D, E/F, G/A, B/C, D/E, F/G

Now, when I look at the staff, I can't just go back and forth with the bellows to play CDEFGABC. In the middle of that is a half step between buttons. I now have to turn off my brain about push, pull, push pull to go up the scale and work harder on recognizing Push/Push or Pull/pull. Exercise 4 had me do Pull/Pull before with an A to an F, but they aren't notes next to each other, so it's less troublesome (though troublesome enough!)

Then it had me do lesson 6 which is a repeat of Lesson 2 except in a higher octave. I messed up at the very end because I ran out of bellow room/air.

On each exercise, I recorded it exactly one time instead of take after take after take to try to get something resembling what it should be. That in itself is an improvement.

Going forward I won't show everything I do as even I'll get bored with that, but for the first week I will. Then, it will probably be once a week. Who knows. Maybe not. I'm still figuring it out.

Everything has arrived and trying it out!

First, Friday afternoon the melodeon in GC method book arrived. Yay!!!

Saturday early afternoon the two melodeon's arrived, but I am currently waiting to open the box because I was advised to let them slowly warm up before opening it to prevent condensation from forming. Amazingly,  I have patience. Why? Because I have so many other things on my plate. Today is my one and only day off in a week and well, it's always kind of full!

But I am a bit amazed at myself for this lust/need to learn. For over a month now I have been researching and looking and asking questions. The last two days while working, I've had different mixed lists of accordion/melodeon players youtube videos playing in the background. Like right now while writing this. I'm listening to a mix of "accordeon diatonique". I have never had this passion or need of just "I have to do this". Of course, I've never felt so much prolonged stress before either.

I hope it's like I remember of a high school acquaintance. Here's her story. There was a girl in middle school, a year behind me, who played the French Horn. She hated it and was pretty awful at it. She really wanted to switch to flute. The band teacher wouldn't allow it because he was desperate for horn players and was drowning in flute players. She kept pressuring him. Finally he relented. Within one semester - 4 months, she went from last flute player to the best flute player of about 15 flutists. She just had a passion and, therefore, put out more effort. In 10th grade she made all-state for flute. She was going nowhere on the horn... the passion wasn't there.

Now, I'm not saying I'm going to be a super star. But if I keep this passion, I should get to "passing" ability more quickly.

I'm also excited because it's a hobby that can fit in with my life - no mess so no clean-up. This so uber appealing to me right now.

Now to figure out how to record things!
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That above was written before unpacking them and trying it out.

First, Scott did a great job of packing these! And the Liliput case and Liliput are so tiny! (unpacked Liliput not shown)

And then, it's practicing. playandlearn on melnet posted just a week or so before I was to receive the GC Melodeon some tutorials/exercises for learning some basics to learn a piece called Valse Triste. He made 4 videos for a beginner. Well you can't get more beginner than day 1 of ever holding the instrument!

As I figured, learning to separate my two hands was/is going to be hardest thign to first figure out as fingers like to do the same at the same time with the same fingers. I could get this exercise about 75% of the time right for fingers on the right buttons (after an hour or so of building up to that). However, my fingers want to both do the same thing - either both hands legato or both hands staccato. And, of course, I'm just figuring out the bellows of how much air for the phrase I'm trying to play, etc. It's a lot of things to concentrate on at the same time.

All in all it went as expected.  Here is after an hour of practicing the first video lesson. I'm not done with that video yet as I am still working on being consistent and with separating those hands as if they were controlled by two brains instead of one.

As per usual Melissa - I don't dress up for such things. This is Melissa, at the end of a day, sans makeup, just as I am... raw footage on a crappy IPad Air 1 camera. But hey, it works.  Tomorrow I'll probably look a bit better as Sundays are the "big work day" but I'm also likely to be more frazzled.

Enjoy and cringe and laugh with me. Now, if you have some tips for me... be nice, but I'll listen!

First attempt at Recording... Oops!

Second attempt. I was distracted by the camera... semi-oops!

Third attempt. I tried hard to concentrate on what I was doing... but putting it all together - even in such a simple oompa-pa-pa and two notes on the other... not so simple! I tried to zone out to not really 'see' the camera.

It can only get better from here! Here is what these exercises are building up to (someday).

And thank you Sean for the method book and Scott for the button box!