The best thing is the air button. And the crinkling sound of the bellows when you open it for the first time in a long time. Like lungs filling from zero to maximum – a really satisfying breath. Most instruments need attention before you can play them. Individual parts have to be put together, strings have to be tuned, bows have to be resinated and reeds have to be moistened. Accordionists have to courageously ventilate things. Otherwise it will crack.
The air button is at the top on the left side of the accordion, slightly away from the other buttons. Pffft, pfffffffft. The first thing I learned was how to control it. Because you also need it to close the instrument noiselessly.
Back then I had Early musical education and recorder lessons just behind me and spent a lot of time wondering which musical instrument would best correspond to my ten-year-old personality. The criteria: It shouldn’t be piano, guitar or flute, the standard trinity from which most children in the flute circle chose. I wanted something special, and most of all I wanted something that didn’t have to be cleaned after playing. Just no wood that could rot from the inside because there was too much saliva on it. In general, it was important to me to have my mouth free to be able to sing. Oh yes! An instrument you can sing to! That would be something!
And so my accordion career began with a misunderstanding, because you really can’t sing to it. It’s heavy and loud, you play it sitting down and carrying it strapped to your chest. No matter how beautifully the bellows unfold, your own lungs don’t have much room to maneuver behind them. But because I’m not one to give up, I still went to class every Wednesday. For ten years. And what can I say, it was the best time.
What I love about the accordion:
• That it is so physical. If you play the accordion, you also train your posture and biceps, you rock and rock and jerk and twitch to make it sound like something. At the same time, you learn to be a little dramatic. Can’t hurt.
• The mother of pearl buttons, so shiny!
• It’s great for the brain. Right hand melody, left hand bass and chords, without really being able to see what you’re doing, then operating the bellows and reading music. I’ve never multitasked more in my life.
• The sound is so much more changeable than you think, just the many registers. And in terms of genre, almost everything is included, from Bach to “Because the Night”, from Piazzolla to “Poker Face”.
• I have played in duos, trios and in the orchestra. There aren’t many of us, but we stick together.
• My teacher. That was fantastic!
What I don’t love about the accordion:
• It’s really extremely inconvenient to transport, and the one time I forgot to put it in the trunk, then reversed the car and drove over it, that was the end of my career. Miraculously, the instrument survived relatively unscathed, but I realized that my thoughts were already elsewhere. In another city and a shared room where there would be no room for my accordion.
Now I’m learning a little piano, just for myself. You just sit down. No pffffft, no nothing. My hands are too small to play an octave without pain.
Recently the accordion instrument of the year Chosen in 2026. And I remembered who my heart belongs to. I would never sell my accordion. And it should urgently be ventilated again.