You can now find a full preview of my first original song, "Our Story", on my myspace page, with links to an Indiestore that I have set up for anyone who would like to support me by purchasing my music.
You can preview and download Our Story now at my Indiestore for £1.50 (/$3.00/€1.90.)
"La Noyee - Solo" now has over 1 million views on Youtube! So a great big thankyou to everyone who watches and comments my videos - your continued support inspires me every day.
I have had a lot of requests asking me about my make and model of accordian by those of you who like the sound of mine or the accordian sound on Amelie, so I thought I would answer them all here for everyone. Firstly, I play an "Allodi" accordian, and actually this is really because there is not much choice here in England and they have a large shop full of high quality Accordians in London - however - since purchasing the instrument I have actually had the sound of it altered by a technician as the sound was too 'bright' - whereas I wanted it to be more 'bittersweet'.
You see, the tuning of an accordian is achieved through 'musette', where two or more sets of reeds are tuned slightly off pitch from each other. The smaller the musette, the more bittersweet and wistful the sound. Larger musettes will give you that brash tango sound you can hear on most italian accordian music. If you like my sound, or the sound from Amelie, you really want one voice setting with a very small musette, as heard here:
...and one voice setting with a slightly larger musette (still small in comparison to true Musette) as heard here:
On the bass side, you will find that Accordians come with a different number of bass buttons - my model is a 96 bass, which is plenty enough for me. Finally - women's models are generally a little smaller - I actually began learning on a women's model without knowing it was one, before purchasing my Allodi.
Hope this helps everyone in their quest for the right instrument.
I have recently had a high-end microphone pickup system fitted to my Accordion - in no small part thanks to the lovely Lisa Lindley-Jones. The system houses 3 Sennheiser microphones on the Treble side and one on the Bass. Some clever micro-circuitry inside ties everything up to 2 volume knobs and an output jack - which, essentially, means that I now plug the instrument in exactly the same way one would an electric guitar. I have since purchased a Fishman Preamp to help EQ and compress the instrument, and the results are very promising! No more external microphones to be dealing with, which means a much stronger, more direct sound.
This is the first recording I have made with my 'new' instrument to test the sound quality. This is a quick bedroom recording and I am not a sound engineer, but I am very pleased with the immediate results and look forward to producing my original music in this manner. The song is "Le Banquet"... you may know it!
