Problems with both hands: LH too loud

I have finally run into my first real difficulty with how I thought I was going to learn to play.

With my "legato attempting to be a piano" style, the left hand completely drowns out the right hand melody.  It is effectively impossible to play a right hand melody over a left hand chord of more than 1 or 2 buttons.

What to do, right?

Well, you can:

1.   Play everything as a chord, so the right hand melody just becomes part of the chords.

      See this example of what I [think] I mean.

2.   Play the left hand really light and punchy, in true polka style.
      See this example for what I mean.

Now, maybe it is just my particular instrument (a B-flat "Star", I believe).  Or maybe I don't know what I'm doing..

But it seems correct: the left hand reeds and holes are much larger, since they are lower notes, so it makes sense that they will be louder.  With a bigger hole, more air will go through the left hand side, so its like the left hand is stealing air from the right side when you start playing with both hands together.

 3.   Play just chords and let someone else play the melody.

This seems like a good option to me if you have some horn players to play with.  As the concertina player, you can take over the piano role of a combo, which makes your group a lot more mobile and takes up less space as well.

I'm still working on being able to play with both hands though - because it seems as though if I don't push the left hand buttons the entire way, I can mute the left hand a little.  That requires some pretty sensitive feel though - it would be nice if there were a volume screw for the left hand that would limit the maximum opening of the valve action, if this would have any effect at all.. like the volume pedal for an organ..

4.  You could also play a walking bass line with the left hand.

That is pretty advanced stuff though, considering that the Chemnitzer button layout is nothing like a piano, so even if you did know how to improvise a bass line, you'd have a lot of practicing cut out for you regardless.