When I first became seriously interested in the accordion I was unable to find any useful information on the subject. I liked the sound, but I knew from experience that I would never do well with a piano keyboard.
I had been playing the harmonica for most of my adult life, and I figured that maybe a diatonic button accordion might play like a harmonica. I listened to recordings from a Cajun album and found I could play along with a harmonica.
Returning from a vacation trip to the Mexican border, I stopped to see Marc Savoy at the Savoy Music Center in Eunice, Louisiana. I purchased from him a one-row Hohner HA-114 in the key of D. It seemed a little clumsy at first, but I could pick out tunes immediately. In about two weeks, I was fairly proficient on the right hand and began to play the chords with my left hand.
A few years later I added a Hohner Corona III, a three-row instrument. I played it one row at a time. I was aware it could be played across the rows, but couldn't figure it out. A video on Tex-Mex playing gave me a start on cross-row scales. I made keyboard diagrams from the video, and modified them to suit my own preferences. These diagrams, which are in the section on pull-stroke playing, were the beginning of this web site.
The instruction book which came with the Hohner instruments had keyboard diagrams which were based on staff notation and difficult for me to understand. With a little effort I transferred the alphabetic notation to my own diagrams and this made them understandable. From there I went to do-re-mi notation.
I kept at the diagrams until I felt I had exhausted all reasonable possibilities, and then wrote some text. The result was a 17-page manuscript.
The manuscript contained the basic information I would have liked to have had before I purchased my first accordion and during the years I was playing s three-row box in single-row style. I thought the accordion manufacturers and dealers should furnish this information to promote the sale and playing of their instruments.
Initially I made up a few booklets, using a neighborhood copy service. When I saw what my costs would be, and the amount of work involved, I realized it would not be economically feasible to market this work. Better to give the information away free than become entangled in the webs of commerce for little or no gain.
So here it is. This site is typed manuscripts with HTML coding added. It took a while to get the hang of HTML, but it's really not far removed from marking up a manuscript to go to a typesetter, which I have done many times. I put the whole set of files on a single floppy. When browsed with Internet Explorer they look and behave exactly like they do on the web. Even the links to other web sites will function if the floppy is browsed while connected to the web.
I have presented this material as a lecture/demonstration. It took about an hour and a half, with the audience asking questions as I went along.