Chromatic button accordion progress

Really great progress on the new French chromatic button accordion today, with my first go playing some of my own arrangements of favourite tunes with the sheet music sitting in front of me. Until now I’ve been focusing on my tuition book, trying to learn the unfamiliar to me grid of dozens of buttons instead of the piano type keyboard I’m familiar with. So today’s challenge was to read the sheet music for some of “my” tunes, find the notes on the button grid and play them right, in sequence. Went so well! I played Sunrise Sunset right through, with up to three note harmonies on the unfamiliar keyboard. To be fair I’d tried it by ear before, but I was so much more assured with the sheet music, despite the still new to me button grid keyboard. Also played some Allo Allo, Pirates of the Caribbean theme, and the opening of my Poirot theme arrangement in progress. All reading the sheet music then finding the right note(s) on the button grid. And at a decent speed. With left hand chords too (easy bit!). So chuffed. Adore my wee French box, and it’s helping me more generally neurologically. Even if the piano accordion is still my main instrument.

And yup, I probably need a second accordion icon here, this time for my chromatic button accordion rather than my big piano accordion ...

Book 38 of 2023: A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time book 7)

This is the 7th book in the gargantuan Wheel of Time epic fantasy series, which has 14 main books, and a prequel book too. I am aiming to read the lot, and have been reading them intermittently since late 2021. I'm reading them in between other books, which lets me pace myself, and get over any reading slumps from it.

This 7th book was a book of two halves. The opening was full of character but relatively little plot, but I really enjoyed the first third to 40%. Then it switched to a different location and hit a terribly long holding pattern. There could have been more interesting things happening in that section, but it just saw a number of the core characters circle around things for hundreds of pages, making virtually no progress. The end of the book saw more action again, which was a perk up. But I was glad when it finished. The great bits I'd rate 4/5 but the not good bits 2/5. Which gives it - and this is rather generous - 3/5 overall. However I'm still very much enjoying the larger story, happy to be immersed in the world, and determined to know through the novels (e.g. not reading plot summaries on Wikipedia) what happens by the very end. I do expect more of a downturn in the coming novels. But I am now a bit over halfway through by pages and words (the full saga is about 11,000 pages or >4 million words long). So progress!

Tuck shop

Dropping off back to much needed sleep, and of course my brain chooses now to torment me with questions about the tuck shop I helped run at Hawick High School in the mid 1980s. It was run out of a small store room / cupboard along the sciences corridor. And my brain now wants to remember if we jammed a table across inside the door to sell from, with the boxes of goods and money behind. And what was the money box like - I do have a memory of that one. But honestly, brain go away 😜

I shared this on Facebook too, so if any of my school friends can remember more about the tuck shop than me who was running it I might fill in some gaps! It was a great way to build up mental arithmetic skills ...

New accordion icon

Just added a new one, to use for my chromatic button accordion posts. This shows the correct accordion - my French chromatic button accordion made by Maugein. With the new to me non piano keyboard button grid on the treble side. I will keep using my other accordion icon (Paolo Soprani made red piano accordion, that I've had since 1981) for other accordion posts. I do like red!