Index Introduction Background Definitions Setting Technique Harmony Bass Drills Scores References
#. This page describes technique needed to render a Bulgarian tune that has been arranged as per the "Setting a Tune" section of this tutorial. While a student need not be expert at setting a tune, he should be familiar with the terminology and concepts described in that document.
#. This is a complete rewrite of the technique and fingering portion of my tutorial, started circa April 2014, and is still mostly incomplete. The older version (available HERE) attempted to be a systematic prescription of technique and fingering. While I still think such a prescription is an admirable ultimate goal, I feel the complexities of the subject are too great for me to write such a document at this time. The structure of the current document will, hopefully, serve as a building block toward that goal.
#. The present document is a toolbox of ideas and techniques to be applied as the student sees fit. Each idea or technique is presented in a concise paragraph. The student should not attempt to master any single technique before moving on the next. Each technique reflects more or less upon the others, so the student should work back and forth between pairs, using each to improve the other. Over time, the student's technique will begin to reflect all the various aspects, first in technical drills, and eventually in performance.
#. This tutorial in not appropriate for absolute beginners. It assumes the student has a basic facility on the accordion and some general understanding of Bulgarian music, and has tried things out on his own enough to play some basic melodies. Once he gets to the point of being interested in systematically improving his playing, this tutorial may be appropriate.
#. Setting a tune and technically rendering are described separately in this tutorial for purposes of clarity. However, the student learns these skills both at the same time - modifying a setting based on the technique he has mastered (or is attempting to). Expect your settings to be constantly modified as your technique improves.
#. Buyer Beware: I have very limited experience teaching Bulgarian music in person, so what I write here may be unhelpful to real people (you know who you are).
#. Ear training is key to improving musical performance. Formal lessons in ear training, available in the classical realm (and perhaps elsewhere), can be a benefit here so long as one can separate what is generally applicable from what is specific to the classical idiom. There are several aspect to ear training.
#. One must first listen and listen to Bulgarian music all the f'ing time for months to work it into your head at an intuitive level. Ideally, this happens before you ever pick up an instrument. If you have enough previous training to listen critically at this stage, that's great, but it is not essential. Building intuition is the main purpose of this listening, so using Bulgarian music as background to daily activities is quite satisfactory here.
#. As one begins to play, one must train one's self to listen critically - to hear unevenness and irregularity in a passage as you actually play it, rather than the idealized version as you imagine in your head. Without hearing problems, you will not be able to correct them. There is a significant danger here because there is always a lag time between hearing a problem and mastering the new body motion that allows you to remedy it. It is the idealized version of the passage that probably inspires you to play, so hearing the problems with your own playing can be very discouraging. (In college, gave up playing music for several years because my ear training progressed so much faster than my technique that I couldn't stand to hear my own playing.) Remember that ear training is a lifelong process that parallels your (hopefully) improving musicianship. It is my experience that good musicians often view their playing as merely mediocre (compared to the models to which they aspire), while mediocre musicians often view their playing as "pretty good" (see Dunning-Krueger syndrome). This reflects a disparity in listening skills.
#. Eventually one must combine Bulgarian musical intuition and self-critical listening skills to listen critically to expert performance, now with the tools to hear fine differences, and pick up nuance. From such critical listening, the student finds ways to further improve his own performance.
#. Ear training is a skill you refine throughout your musical life.
#. Along the ear training, the student must also develop a sense for body attitude and efficiency. Failure to pay attention to your body can, in extreme cases, lead to serious back injury or tendonitis. In most cases, however, it simply prevents you from being able to perform comfortable and precisely. General principle here include:
Like most other musical goals, body awareness is a skill developed and refined over many years.
#. Bulgarian accordion can be played standing or sitting, and should be practiced both ways. In either case, the instrument should be mounted solidly on your body so that is not constantly shifting beneath your hands. While standing, take care not to counter balance the weight of the instrument by swaying your back. This will hurt your back over time. Instead, stand solidly with feet spread about the distance of your shoulders, with slightly bent knees. Angle your shoulders slightly forward of your hips, using your hips (not your back) to counterbalance the instrument's weight. While sitting, the keyboard will dip somewhat between your legs. Extend your right knee outward to allow access to the upper keyboard.
#. Optimal hand attitude to the keyboard is achived though a combination of shoulder, elbow and wrist angles. The right shoulder should be relaxed and mobile. The right elbow is slightly raised from its natural position, drawing the shoulder slightly away from the body and angling the forearm back toward the keyboard. The elbow angle varies as the hand moves between the upper and lower keyboard. When on the lower keyboard, it is important that the elbow angle not become too acute, creating tension in the muscles of the upper and lower arm, and impairing finger mechanics. The join of the forearm and wrist should be straight or nearly so. A marked angle at this join impairs finger motion, and can be relieved by elevating the elbow with the shoulder accomodating the elbow's motion. The hand, neutrally angled and rotated, should be elevated so that the thumb knuckle is slightly above the plane of the keyboard. This will allow both fingers and thumb to depress keys by moving directly downward and inward from the neutral position of the hand.
#. A description of left-hand technique is needed here.
#. Let us consider the problem of playing a Bulgarian melodic 16th note outline on the white keys. Outline here means that we will ignore ornamentation. In classical piano, one typically starts will scale practice. I find this an unproductive approach for Bulgarian music where extended scalewise passages are unidiomatic. In Bulgarian music, the more typical problem is keeping ones fingers from stumbling over each other and the melody turns ever inward.
#. For practice purposes, we'll start with a variant of Exercise #1 from Hanon's "The Virtuoso Pianist" resticted to one octave using the right hand.
IMAGE OF HANON #1 EXTRACT [click for complete version]#. In previous versions of this tutorial I emphasized the use of fingers 1, 2 & 3, and exercises restricted to those fingers. I now think that was a mistake. For purposes of playing melodic outlines, all 5 fingers are useful, and should be trained via outline drill. Things will change markedly when we later consider ornamentation.
#. Play Hanon #1 slowly, keeping it even and legato, keeping the hand relaxed and using minimal extraneous motion. That's actually quite a lot to deal with right from the start, so you should repeat the exercise concentrating on a single aspect each time (once for evenness, once for legato, etc). After than combine multiple aspects into a rendition. Start at tempo of about 3 16th notes per second and work both faster and slower as you find useful. Fight the temptation to accelerate, or to only practice and fast tempo. Exclusively fast practice only reinforces bad technique. At slower tempos that you can hear and feel irregularities most clearly, and enables you to improve your listening skills.
#. Bulgarian melodies should be played legato. Some may find this surprising, associating a detached, marcato style with melodic vitality. However, the power and drive in Bulgarian music comes from a combination of smoothness, precision and legato. At very fast tempos, legato becomes a simple necessity for technical execution. At present, concern yourself with legato and ignore speed concerns. Are every pair of notes in the exercise absolutely connected, with no gap in sound between them? If you're listening carefully, the answer is almost certainly yes unless you're already very expert. Note that, since keys take time to depress and reeds take time to sound, absolute legato requires starting to depress each note _before_ the previous one is completely released. Mere mortals do no achieve perfect legato quickly, so it is a skill you must return and practice over and over again.
#. Evenness is another attribute of Bulgarian melodies that must be refined over many sessions. Evenness becomes particularly difficult at slow tempos, so be sure to practice them that way once you're succeeded at moderate tempos. Slow, even practice is the shortest path to mastery. Unlike many up tempo American, Irish fiddle tunes (and some Romanian tunes, for that matter), Bulgarian tunes are not played with a "swing" in which alternate 16ths are played longer and shorter (or emphasized and deemphasized). If you've grown up in Western culture, this sort of swing comes out without really thinking about it and will surely mark your Bulgarian playing as "Americanized". If you want to do this anyway, well, I can't stop you I suppose, but I certainly discourage adding swing until you have developed enough technique to make a conscious choice about the matter. Practice evenness!
#. A good general principle is to minimize extraneous motion when playing. Such motion makes playing awkward and impares the efficiency required to play exactly, especially at fast tempos. However, since the anatomy of the hand is quite complex, with all sorts oddities one of the kind one might expect from an evolved organism, defining exactly what motion is "extraneous" is not a simple task. For example, it is impossible to lift the 4th finger independently of the others, an interdependence not present in the other fingers. When an expert teacher is not available to diagnose extraneous motion, a mirror is an extemely helpful guide. As your playing develops, you should constantly reexamine your motions is search of futher improvement.
#. Extraneous motion I've noticed cropping up in my own playing includes the following:
EXAMPLES FROM OLD TUTORIAL#. Relaxed muscles perform directed motion more exactly than tense ones, and do not tire as easily. Bulgarian accordion playing should not be stressful, but like slipping into a warm bath. However, your hand should go exactly where you want it to go, and not flop around, so there is some minimal tension required for exact playing. Thus, there is a happy middle ground between restrictive tension and sloppiness that you must constantly reevaluate as your musicianship improves.
#. To help find the right level of relaxation for playing, try playing Hanon #1 very slowly (about 1 16th per second). Do not overly worry about even tempo or legato, but work on using the minimum possible effort depressing each key. Then try to maintain this level of relaxation while playing at a more moderate tempo.
#. For the pianists amoung you, here is a piano exercise that I find helps me better find the right level of hand relaxation for the accordion. Play 4 octave scales with each hand alone. First play the exercise piano (softly) attempting to connect the notes as smoothly and evenly as possible. Then play the same scale markato mezzo-forte (accented, moderately loud) preparing a finger above each note prior to depressing it. Alternate smooth and markato scales several times. Then play the scale with every 4th note markato and the remainder smooth. When you return to the accordion, try to recall the level of tension you used during the smooth scales, and then relax even further as is appropriate for the accordion's lighter action.
#. Relax fingers not currently in use
#. Note the relaxed position of hand
#. 2-5 depression via extension and retraction
#. Hand insertion - rotation the hand for 1 and 5.
#. Other Hanon exercises on white keys.
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Copyright 2013 Erik Butterworth. All rights reserved.