When I first started learning the accordion, I carried a quiet pride from my piano years.

I thought I already “knew music.” That I’d pick things up faster, lighter, easier. Like how knowing Spanish makes Italian feel familiar. I assumed music worked the same way.

It doesn’t. Not even close.

The more I learned, the smaller I felt.

Because knowing more doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you aware of how much you don’t know.

The things I thought I was good at were often the first to fall apart.

Take counting time. I never realized my sense of rhythm was flawed until I stepped into real tango, polka, and the accordion’s own breathing-based rhythm system.

On this instrument, timing isn’t abstract. If your beat is off, the bellows choke. Accents collapse mid-air.

There’s no hiding.

Then there’s sight-reading. In my piano days, I played mostly by ear. My eyes skimmed the score, and as long as it sounded “right,” I passed. That doesn’t work here.

One hundred and twenty buttons form a kind of harmonic black hole. One wrong choice, and the entire weight of the harmony shifts. It’s not enough to know what could work, you must know which option your hands can actually execute as the optimal solution.

Every time I play, my brain boots up in full combat mode. Eyes reading. Hands navigating. Bellows breathing. Rhythm looping inside my body. Emotion threading the melodic line.

The process is brutally honest. Painfully so. Every shortcut you ever took in the past gets exposed under bright light.

And I’ve learned this too: the same piece, played by different people, carries completely different souls.

Because you’re not playing notes. You’re playing your background. Your experiences. Your sense of beauty. Your understanding of rhythm and breath.

Only when you understand other instruments, theory, harmony, voicing, breathing, timing, expression, can a melody truly come alive. Otherwise, it’s just a text being read aloud.

Clear, maybe. Correct, maybe. But lifeless.

No memory. No presence. No you.



—— XC Scribbles · 拾玖 XIX 🪗