However, when playing concertina music, most of those songs are unfamiliar to me - not having been in the habit of going to see polka bands as a youth..
So, since the student should now be somewhat familiar with the key of G, I scoured the music collection of the Czech Area Concertina Club, and came up with "27 Songs" that are in the key of G with no accidental sharps or flats or naturals.
Now, these songs are all on the CACC sheet music list, so you can find the official CACC versions there. (which will make your life easier if you ever go play with the CACC on their second Tuesday meetings in New Prague, MN).
However, the "27 Songs" is simply the melody line extracted from the sheet music without any melody notes. It also has no buttons notated.
This is useful, because it makes the music transcription very easy for me, when I need some easy music in A or D or C - its just a couple clicks of the button in my music program, and I can practice the same songs (whose melodies I know from practicing them in G).
In the future, I intend to add in the harmony notes to the melody, and also have separate "bass line" music to practice, as well as the three parts together (RH melody, RH harmony, LH bass line) - but without the button numbers shown on the music, as is the case with the original Official CACC versions. The Official versions typically show the button numbers and indicate which buttons are "pressed", and have the LH chords notated, but no notes. The notes of the harmony are usually not present, except as button numbers above the notes.
I have added one innovation.
In the "76 Easy Songs", I do not show which direction to play the music, not having gotten that far at the time. With the CACC "27 Songs", I thought it would be wise to put the "press" and "draw" indications in the music. However, that's a lot of work, so I thought to simplify a little bit.
As you can see above, I am following what the Bandonéon players do to notate their music, which is to use the same notation as a string player (like violin). The square and V marks in the music are directions for bowing: down-bow and up-bow respectively. The down-bow mark corresponds to the concertina "press" direction, which we usually show as the "hat", whose proper name is the "marcato" accent symbol. The up-bow mark shows where to "draw" the concertina.
In this manner, I can show where to change direction with the bellows, and also even where to use the thumb air valve: if you examine the "A Ja Sam Polka" above in the eighth measure, there is what looks like an apostrophe in the top line of the staff. This is a "breath mark", more typically used in vocal music, but is also used in wind and string instrument music. Where there is a "breath mark" indicated, use the air valve to expand or contract the bellows and continue playing in the same direction.
It would be nice if I could do without the notation completely, but at my skill level, I don't think I would make the correct choices for direction.
I have also noticed that the changes in direction correspond more to the changes in the left hand chords, and have relatively little to do with the right hand melody. It is far simpler to play G Major in the press direction and D Dominant in the draw direction for the left hand. This obviously has additional implications in how the music is written.
For now, I will keep to the above notation, as it is also pretty easy and fast to do on the fly with a pencil if you have to sight read new music.
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