Saturday, May 15, 2010

Mad accordion skillz

I haz them.

Well, not really, but I haz accordion, at least.

Yes indeed, a new accordion was purchased today! When I saw it before, I'd thought it was pretty ugly, not to mention crappy quality. But once it was mine, it was suddenly absolutely beautiful. I wonder if that's what it's like when you have babies. All babies are uuuugly, but if it's yours you're apparently supposed to think it's really cute.

Ha! I bet not.

Since it's a pretty bad accordion, if I do say so myself (and I do), upon arriving home it was discovered that it has a broken reed (or stuck or fallen off or something. Anyway, that reed is f***ed up), and it makes this weird kind of... well, farting/stuttering noise when it plays this certain note. The shop was called and an appointment has been set up for tomorrow, so let's see when I can get it back.

Please enjoy a short video I made. It's called I love my accordion but after a few hours I made next to no progress and I think it's pretty hard but not as hard as I'd thought it might be, so I'm going to keep at it and hopefully I can play something really cool in not too much time.





Mother: After You're done fooling around** with your accordion, you should try to learn some actual songs.
Me: I am!! I'm learning The Chicken Dance!


**She didn't say "fooling around", I think, but it was something to the effect of getting acquainted with it and not playing real music.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Accordion chronicles

EDIT: This post is pretty long. I won't erase it because I spent ages writing it, and I may want to read it someday, but you can just not read it. The gist of it is, I'm going to get an accordion. Knowing this and watching the video below is all you really need.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


For a few months I'd been thinking it would be cool to play the accordion. Yes, I think the accordion is cool, as opposed to the guitar, bass, drums, recorder, trumpet, tuba, clarinet, oboe**, violin, cello, harmonica, kazoo, sitar, banjo and the oh-so-popular ukulele***.

No, I'm kidding. Kazoos are cool.

But anyway, back to the accordion. A few weeks ago I started to think seriously of learning to play, so I conducted a little Internet research, established a budget, picked a type of accordion, and set out to find one to buy. I'll have an Italian one, I thought. A piano accordion, and I'll spend about 3000 pesos.

HA!!! HA HA HA!!

Here, let me give you a brief lesson in accordions. This will be boring and maybe a bit unnecessary fun.

This here, children, is called a piano accordion (it says "Hohner" because that's the brand; 'tis a good brand). There are other accordions, which have buttons on this side, but since I already play some piano this is easier for me.

Now, on the side that doesn't have the piano keys, you will notice a series of white dots. Those are buttons, and they are the bass buttons. If you press them (and move your accordion around), this allows you to create harmonies that will come out of the accordion! Just like magic!

See, the more bass buttons you have, the more stuff you can play. There are some with as little as 12 buttons, which are really useless. You can play basically anything with 72 bass buttons, and any extra ones after that are repeated so that your hand doesn't have to jump around so much to reach distant buttons. 12o buttons is the most there can be.

120 is very expensive. I settled for 60 or 72 bass buttons.

I suppose I was even lucky to find accordions at all. Fortunately, here in Mexico accordions are widely used by homeless people who play them on the street to earn money, and by bandas, the likes of Los Tigres del Norte:



Lovely.

THIS IS WHY I WANT TO PLAY ACCORDION!! NO NOT REALLY!! Hell, no.

But anyway, since people that play in bandas are apparently the ones who buy most of the accordions around here, what they sell is mostly 12-bass accordions. This is because in banda music, the accordion player only uses the keyboard side of the instrument, since there's no point in using the bass buttons because there's already 15 more members of the band that are playing bass instruments (really, those groups are huge).

Come to think of it, they could just use a keyboard with a patch. But whatever.

Add the bass lackage to the fact that nearly all the accordions available for sale were Chinese. The Chinese have accordion factories, so their product lacks a special ingredient: love. The Germans and Italians don't just slap them together with machines and enslaved children, but rather with wise old accordion experts that work 20-hour days, so their instruments are way better quality. Also they cost a lot more.****

So I'm going to buy a Chinese accordion with 60 bass buttons for more than double of what I was originally hoping to spend. Although I'll only be paying two-thirds of the price, since my Dad hopped in to save the day. Well, not really, it's because I caught him in a good mood one day when he was listening to a podcast that said we should all take time to enjoy the little things of life! Like playing childrens' games, and learning an instrument! He went, "Oh, this is true! You should listen to this podcast!"

I seized the opportunity, and sidled over to him, and was all, "Well, actually, Dad...". So he offered to pay for a part of it. Whee!

But it's okay that my accordion won't be a good one, because it's not like I've ever played before. I won't be needing anything very good, you know? It would be a bit of a waste, I suppose, to buy a complete beginner something along the lines of a 25,000+ peso Hohner accordion with the 120 bass buttons. Which was the only non-Chinese accordion I found.

WHEE!!

** actually, I think the oboe is cool. It sounds like it should make a low, tuba-ey sound, but it's all high and melodic and sweet.

*** I do have a ukulele. I can play one song on it. Well, not really-- I can play half of one song and half of another.

**** It is a widely known fact that accordion experts can eat only caviar and truffles, the expensive kind. Their employers are obligated to provide lunch and dinner, so it costs them a lot. I mean, this is the only way I can explain the price tags on their accordions! Oh, it might have something to do with all the work it takes to assemble a good instrument, too, but I'm not too sure.

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Discovery of the day

Hermit crabs like honeydew melon.

Or perhaps I should feed them more often.

Anyway, today I went over to the crabby-tank to give the little decapods (deca...paw-feet-claws?) some fresh water. Someone was sitting in the food dish, and it made me realize that I haven't actually given them fresh food for a while, about two weeks. I don't need to do it that often, because a) they eat their coconut substrate, and b) in the wild, they eat rotting fruit that falls from trees, so as long as the food stays in the dish and doesn't get mouldy or something, I let them keep it.

But anyway, this afternoon we'd bought 2 kilos of mangoes and 2 honeydew melons for the grand sum of 4o pesos**, so I soared to the kitchen, fast as a speeding bullet, and hacked up some melon to put in the crabs' food dish. Then I went and got them a little piece of mango –variety is important– and came back to find two crabs already gorging themselves on the melon. Which was very quick of them.


**With 40 pesos you can buy any of the following:

1. Four ice cream sandwiches

2. Not quite two toothbrushes

3. Twenty pens

4. Four (kinda small) hermit crabs

5. Five glasses of orange juice (or enough oranges to make more than that)

6. Five mililtres of chocolate praline fragrance from Sephora

7. One fifth of a hamburger-shaped pillow that I really want

8. Six point six six six six six six cans of diet Dr Pepper from OXXO

9. One fifteenth of my shoes (some lovely Converse)

10. NOT MY DOG BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T COST ANYTHING, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!