Learning the C Button Accordion Part Two

I’ve been playing the C button accordion for two months now. Here’s what I’ve noticed

  1. I’m really good at the piano accordion. This isn’t me showing off, more a realisation that having played the piano for something like 40 years now, my fingers go where they should without me having to think about it. I never really registered the fact that I just have to look at piece of music for my fingers to play it, nor that they can form the shape of, for example, a diminished chord all by themselves. Learning another instrument has been a pleasant reminder of what I can do. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop noticing my mistakes all the time, of course. I’ll always feel inadequate compared to better players.
  2. The fact that I already play the piano accordion has been a big help in learning the button accordion. I don’t have to think about the left hand or moving the bellows
  3. The button accordion patterns make sense very quickly. There are only three shapes to playing any major scale on three rows. Or any minor scale. Or any scale at all, for that matter.
  4. I find the crossover from little finger to thumb fiddly.
  5. The books I mentioned on my previous blog entry are excellent. I’m now using book 2 of Maugain Manu’s Methode d’Accrodeon. I’m still on book 1 of the HOHNER FERRERO MEDARD – METHODE D’ACCORDEON CHROMATIQUE COMPLETE. I’ve put links to the books at the end of this post.
  6. I am nowhere near ready to perform on the button accordion.

The books I’ve been using:

Methode d’Accordeon Vol1 by Maugain Manu

and the HOHNER FERRERO MEDARD – METHODE D’ACCORDEON CHROMATIQUE COMPLETE Educational books Accordion

(Click on the images to be taken to Amazon)

Swearing in a Suit

Last week I headed into Manchester to do some writing, as I often do on Wednesdays. An hour in a coffee shop to go through my notes and get my ideas in order, and then off to the library for four or five hours of writing, free of the distractions presented by music and the internet.

All pretty routine, with one exception. I was going to a meeting that evening, so I was wearing a suit. The full works: shirt, tie, jacket, trousers, dress shoes. Nothing unusual. I wear a suit for the day job. I felt perfectly at ease.

Until I began updating my swearword list.

You haven’t got a swearword list? I started one when I wrote COSMOPOLITAN PREDATORS – a list of the different swearwords used by the inhabitants of Eunomia, the asteroid world where the action takes place. It made sense to me that an international community would have a cosmopolitan collection of swearwords. My swearword list contains the word, its meaning and its language of origin. I found it so useful I’ve been keeping it updated for the novel I’m currently writing.

It’s fun using swearwords from different languages, but not, I discovered, when wearing a suit.

Sitting in a cafe in a shirt and tie, copying down lists of rude words, I suddenly felt a little bit childish. Not just a little bit. I felt like there must be better ways to spend my time. I found that I was turning my laptop so that people couldn’t read the screen, that I was checking that no one was watching me.

Thinking about it, this shouldn’t have been surprising. My writing has always been affected by my environment. If not, I wouldn’t carry a notebook with me in order to capture live emotions. But even so, I didn’t realise that environment extended to what I was wearing.

Apparently it does.

So if you find yourself in a coffee shop in Manchester, and you notice a man in a suit blushing as he types away, come over and say hello. Just don’t take offence if I close the laptop first.

EXIF: WordPress Images Appear Rotated

I recently encountered a problem with images appearing rotated whilst updating the latest posting in the How Writers Write feature on this WordPress powered website.

The images looked fine whilst I was editing the page, but when previewed they appeared rotated.

Searching online showed this to be a known problem, all to do with EXIF data. You can read more about EXIF data by following this link to How-To Geek

The WordPress problem seems to be that the images are recorded with one orientation and then displayed with the rotation stored in the EXIF data added to them.

The easiest way I’ve found to get the images displaying properly is to first strip the EXIF data and then to rotate them appropriately before uploading. There are instructions on the How-To Geek link above on how to strip EXIF data in Windows.

It’s a lot simpler in Ubuntu or similar.

First, install exiftool

sudo aptitude install exiftool

Exiftool allows you to look at the EXIF data in an image as follows

exiftool someImage.jpg

We want the data stripped. Copy your images to a directory (I just copy them to my pristine desktop) and then run the following command

me@comp:~/Desktop$ exiftool -all= -overwrite_original -ext jpg .

And that’s it. Time for a cup of tea.

Shorthand

A few years ago I was travelling back to Manchester by train. I couldn’t help overhearing the phone conversation of the person sitting opposite me. He was an aspiring actor, travelling back from an audition in London, and he was recounting the experience so loudly the whole carriage couldn’t help but overhear.

He was a interesting character; it quickly become obvious that every setback in his life was someone else’s fault, that the main thing holding him back was people’s inability to see his natural talent.

So I started to take notes: I’ve written elsewhere about how important I think it is to capture conversation live. In those days I used to write notes in the back of the paperback I was reading, and that’s what I did…

… until the aspiring actor noticed what I was doing, and took offence. He’d read my words upside down.

Which is a roundabout introduction to the real reason I learned shorthand: so I could quickly take notes without other people knowing what I was doing.

I was reminded of this on reading the following article on the BBC website: is the art of shorthand dying out?

Perhaps it is. I don’t use shorthand as much as I used to, I now mainly capture notes straight to Evernote on my phone (although I wish there was an app that understood Teeline).

But I don’t regret learning shorthand. It still comes in useful occasionally, capturing conversations, getting ideas down fast, and giving me something to do in boring meetings.

Anyway, isn’t life all about learning new things?

Learning the C Button Accordion

This Christmas I took the plunge and began learning the button accordion. As I spent quite a frustrating time on the internet trying to find a suitable tutorial I thought I’d share my experience here in case other learners find it useful.

I should point out that I can already play the piano accordion, so my advice may not be suitable for a complete beginner to the instrument.

In the absence of a teacher, the quickest way to learn a new instrument is with a suitable tutorial. Looking around online two books were mentioned

Methode d’Accordeon Vol1 by Maugain Manu

and the HOHNER FERRERO MEDARD – METHODE D’ACCORDEON CHROMATIQUE COMPLETE Educational books Accordion

(Click on the images to be taken to Amazon)

Both books are only available in French. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem to someone who can already read music as the fingering is clear. If you can’t read music, you’ll need another book to explain note lengths and values.

I ordered both books. As the Methode d’Accordeon Vol1 by Maugain Manu was the first to arrive that’s the one I’ve mainly been learning from. It’s the more modern of the two books, and proceeds at a slower pace. If you can afford both books, buy them. Otherwise, If you’ve never played the accordion before the Maugain Manu is the one for you as it takes its time introducing the left hand. If you are already a confident piano accordion player and just want to learn the fingering of the right hand then the Ferrero Medard book may be more to your taste.

I’ve been learning for a week now and everything I’d read appears to be true… the button accordion does appear a more natural way to play. It’s not that great a step up from the piano keyboard, particularly given that my left hand is already used to using buttons, albeit in a stradella layout. I do have a tendency to get lost with the right hand still, and it’s difficult at the moment to play by ear, but that’s improving as I learn the scales (and there are only three fingerings to learn for the major scales… ).

Sadly, the button accordion is going to have to go back in its case for a few days whilst I practice for a gig on the piano accordion, but I’m already looking forward to getting it back out again…

Upgraded to Windows 10 and Ubuntu 15.10

… and that’s it.

Absolutely no problems at all. I didn’t even have to reinstall GRUB as some sites warned me I’d have to.

That’s a dual boot machine, partitioned flash drive.

I don’t know what else to say, I almost feel cheated. Both upgrades took about 15 minutes.

Looks like I’ve got no excuses for not filling in my tax return now.

The First Time I’ve Written the Word Chutzpah

I’m pretty sure the title of this post is the first time I’ve written the word Chutzpah. That last sentence was probably the second.

It’s not a word that I think I’ve ever used in everyday conversation, either. But I’m using it now because I’ve just experienced what I think is an excellent example of that quality.

By the way, if you’re a regular reader of my stuff, you may have realised that I like to protect people’s anonymity. For reasons that will very quickly become clear, I can’t do this in this post…

Yesterday I received a LinkedIn invitation from a Senior Project Manager called Tony Ballantyne. Now, I’ve made contact with another Tony Ballantyne in the past – the Historian Tony Ballantyne who I’m occasionally mistaken for – so I thought… why not?, and I accepted.

This morning I received an email from the other Tony Ballantyne explaining that he was moving to Australia, and asking if I’d like to buy his personalised car number plates. Maybe I should have been annoyed, but I had to admire his cheek. And thinking about it, isn’t that an inspired use of social networking? It’s not like he was trying this trick on just anyone.

Anyway, I’m not interested in personalised plates, so I wished him good luck on his move and that was that. If the other Tony is reading this blog post – think of it as more free advertising.

And if anyone else is thinking of contacting me in this way, don’t bother. It’s only amusing when it’s original.

There’s a Lesson Here Somewhere

I saw Chris Smither, one of my favourite singer songwriters, on Thursday night.

50 years in the business, he played to a crowd of around 80 in Manchester’s Band on the Wall, but I suppose there are many whose talent have gone unrecognised.

In some ways it was like meeting an old friend: I’ve watched him perform all over the country for the past twenty five years or so.

I spoke to Chris at the end, and we both remembered the gigs he uses to do at the Half Moon in Putney. I think there’s something storylike in the way we both live completely different lives and yet we connect infrequently in different venues, far from both our homes.

One of the many reasons I like him is he’s that he writes lyrics for grown ups. Yes, I like rock and pop music, but the stuff that I listened to when I was younger doesn’t have much to say to me now that I’m married with two kids.

Someone requested that he play Hold on. He began the song, but had to stop half way. It was his own song, his own arrangement, and it wasn’t working. As he explained, it had been a while since he’d performed it, and if you don’t practice them every day, you quickly forget them. This from an expert musician who performs live to an audience most nights.

There’s a lesson there somewhere.

Manifesto

(I read the following at the launch party for Dream Paris, 11th Sept 2015)

It’s a common question asked of all authors: why did you write this book?

So when I finished Dream Paris, just like when I finished all my other books, I sat down and thought about what my answer would be when asked that question.

It was only than that it occurred to me how odd this was. I’d just spent 381 hours or 15 and a bit days (I timed myself, see my website) writing a novel over the course of a year, and I hadn’t once stopped to think why.

Why am I doing this? Why write at all?

There’s a very easy answer to this. That great writer about writing, Sol Stein said that a writer was someone who couldn’t not write. But perfect though that answer is, it doesn’t actually answer the question. Why write at all?

I spent a lot of time over the summer, wondering just that. I spend a lot oIf my time writing, my family put up with it, they’ve rearranged their lives to a certain extent to let me spend my time sitting at keyboard.

Why do I write? I could say it’s because I’m a story teller, but every human is a story teller. The first story we tell ourselves is the story of who we are. We make up the story of what sort of a person we are: happy or sad or popular or deserving or hard done by. We make up stories about other people, our friends and acquaintances, and our stories about them never match their stories of themselves. We put ourselves in their shoes so we can try and understand their motives and actions. This is what scientists call a theory of mind, some say this is the dawn of intelligence.

So I don’t think it’s enough to say that I’m a story teller, because everyone is.

I could point out that like many people in this room I’m a professional story teller, what’s called a teacher, and have been since I taught fencing on a children’s camp in America and discovered to my surprise that I enjoyed it. All teaching is story telling, teaching is taking the real world in all its splendid, unknowable complexity and reducing it to a story that a child can understand. Not only understand, but believe. And any teacher will tell you that the student doesn’t always believe what you’re saying.

So I’m a teacher and a writer. I don’t know which of those things come first, I know that they’re both linked. Incidentally, my wife often points out that those are two things nearly everyone thinks they can do until they try it…

Now, I don’t know if the above explains why I’m a writer. I know it leaves me thinking who wouldn’t want to be a writer?

But that still doesn’t explain why I write what I write.

There’s a certain cachet in being a writer, and whilst I’m delighted with this, it’s a sign of our society that someone who has written an impenetrable 80 000 word novel about the pain of being middle class is generally held in higher esteem than someone who gives up all their free time to run a Scout Troop or a Brownie Pack.

It’s also true that there is less cachet in writing SF. Indeed it’s not uncommon for people to ask me if I ever intend to write a ‘proper’ book. And yes, that is as rude as it sounds.

Well, I believe that SF is the only truly original form of literature of the past 100 years. SF encompasses everything from the mainstream but adds its own unique sensibility. I believe that SF is read by people who appreciate the beauty in Euler’s Identity just as readily as they appreciate the beauty in the St Matthew Passion, and if they don’t understand either of those things then they don’t scoff at them, they don’t say they are boring they are pretentious, they set off to learn about them. SF recognises that there is as much beauty in maths and science as there is in the arts, and that all these things make humans what they are. In my opinion, to try and explore the human condition without acknowledging the cold equations is to fail as a writer.

I believe what I just said to be true, and I could say that’s why I’m an SF writer, but it’s not.

The truth is, I’m an SF writer because when I write, I write SF. That’s the way that I think. SF isn’t about the robots and spaceships and rayguns – I rarely write about those things anyway – it’s about the way you look at the world, it’s the way that the stories are told. I can’t write a story without extrapolating, without asking what if, without acknowledging the fact that there is a cold, impersonal but ultimately wonderful universe out there.

I want to explain the world, I want to find wonder in the everyday. Ultimately, I think that the fact of the evolution of the horse is more wonderful than any unicorn and I can’t pretend otherwise. That really would be selling out.

This is why I write
This why I write what I write.
I can’t help it, I have no choice