End of Week 3 - Hinter meiner Stadltier

The last couple of session I was focusing on learning a real fun song called "Hinter meiner Stadltier", which means something like "Behind the door of my barn". There are quite some challenging parts in this piece, especially for a newbie like me but I'm pretty happy with my progress.

Couple of things that I need to improve on:

1. Bass runs - it's hard to play different things with left and right hand, and the bass is still throwing my off quite a bit, especially the more advanced runs I have to focus on
2. Solo - this piece has a accordion solo in the end which sounds pretty epic if played well - and I hopefully will get there at one point
3. Singing - this is not a focus yet, and I will sing louder when I have the fingerings and bass down

Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit!

Now that I have my Ziehharmonika (accordion) back I'm super motivated to pick up where I left off a few days ago.

Figuring out how to correctly play the bass part is tricky, and it takes quite the effort to practice and figure this out. Playing slowly helps a lot I noticed, then increase the speed. I continue learning "Ein Prosit" and it's slowly coming together:

The lessons I'm taking are from Hubert Fuchs - https://www.ziachfuchs.com, and he has a pretty awesome compilation and training lessons with a lot of focus on getting down to playing right away!

I will try to set aside some time every day to continue making progress on a couple of pieces. The things I want to learn initially are:

1. Ein Prosit
2. Hinter meiner Stadltuer
3. Gstanzl

So let's see how the progress on those will be.

The long story of getting a couple of buttons adjusted...

First road block was that the Gleichton of the accordion was off (it was on a different button then I wanted it to be).

I went to a local accordion shop in Seattle, called Petosa - but they weren't very familiar with diatonic accordions (especially the style with Gleichton) and fixing it would have taken them a long time - many weeks they said... :( That was a bit odd, and quite the set back on my motivation to learn this instrument....

Fixing it myself?

I even contemplated fixing it myself as this should take long I thought... At that time I also learned a lot about the various tones of the instrument, and scales, etc. I have a three row GCF accordion, which is what I wanted, since you can sing along with it pretty easily. Here is me, mapping out the tones and tuning of the instrument to figure out if any buttons are off and if they would need adjustments....

To the rescue!

I called the dealer over in Michigan, who kept my spirit up high and referred me to Michael Arralde. Mr. Arralde is amazing, and I can't praise enough for his professionalism and quality of work! It literally took him 10 seconds to figure out what needed to be changed. He has perfect absolute pitch, and that certainly helps! And he is a great and very friendly individual as well, and he also knows how to play!

While being at his shop I also met other accordion and button box players, some amazingly skilled players - very inspiring!

Three days later Mr. Arralde calls me and the button box is ready to be picked up! Super happy about that quick service. Thanks Michael!

First progress towards learning the piece "Ein Prosit"

This was my skill of playing the third day. Trying Ein Prosit, which is a popular short song that everyone in Austria would know.




But as I had mentioned the Gleichton was off, so I needed to get that fixed.

First time playing

This is my Steirische, directly after unpacking:

It's pretty amazing! On the right side you can see the helicon bass, which is the deep low sounding bass that makes this accordion extremely unique in sound.


I am taking lessons with Ziachfuchs in Austria, who has an online class, and there is also the button box academy in Austria I'm looking at to make progress.

This was the very first hour of playing (Gleichton is on the wrong button at this point though):

Trying to become familiar with the buttons and the style of playing. This should be fun! :)

Learning the Steirische Ziehharmonika (Accordion)

Long story short, I decided to learn the Steirische, which is a popular traditional accordion played throughout Austria. My dad knows how to play it, and we have one back home where I grew up.

Since I'm now living in the US it wasn't easy to actually find one. I had ordered a regular accordion (a Hohner button box), and it turns out that there are some pretty significant differences compared to the Steirische.

Little did I know when I started this endeavor about 4-5 weeks ago.... Most notable:

1. Gleichton - the Austrian diatonic button box does have a Gleichton, which means there is one button that plays the same tone on push and on pull. The Hohner I had gotten off of Amazon didn't have that.
2. Helikon Bass - the styrian diatonic button box I want to learn has an amazing helicon bass that is extremely unique and gives the Alpine music it's special sound

So returned the Hohner accordion from Amazon. But here it comes, I found a great dealer over in Michigan who had a Steirische made in USA - so really a unique thing! I goit from Castiglione - highly recommend for you accordion needs http://www.castiglioneaccordions.com/  They did some changes that I wanted to be made, and the instrument arrived 5 business days later, safe and sound!

Looks really nice I thought, and went ahead to start and practice.
This is when I decided I shot blog about the progress and commitment on learning this, and I recorded this short video (sorry, just in Austria German, but I don't really say much):

ps.: Since I am a newbie I didn't recognize that the Gleichton was off right away, but I'm getting this fixed. More about this later :)