When I first started learning the accordion, I carried a tiny bit of piano arrogance with me. I thought, I already know music. This should be easier for me than for others. Like how knowing Spanish makes Italian feel familiar. I assumed music worked the same way.
It didn’t.
The more I learned, the smaller I felt. Knowledge didn’t make things clearer it made the unknowns multiply. What I thought I “already mastered” became the first things to fall apart.
For example I had no idea I struggled with keeping time until tango rhythms and polkas exposed me. In the accordion, if your beat isn’t right, the bellows can’t breathe properly. Your melody collapses before it even begins.
Sight-reading was another slap. With piano, I relied on my ears; as long as it sounded nice, I passed. But with 120 tiny buttons on the accordion, you misplace one note and the whole harmony shifts. It’s not just knowing what chords could work you also need to know which ones your hand shape can reach with the least resistance.
Every time I play, my brain boots up like a full operating system reading, coordinating, breathing, balancing rhythm and emotion.
It’s brutally honest. Music exposes every shortcut you took in the past.
And I realized something: The same piece sounds completely different depending on who plays it. Not because of the instrument, but because of the person.
You’re not playing notes. You’re playing your experience, your musical taste, your rhythm sense, your emotional vocabulary.
Only when you understand other instruments, music theory, rhythmic placement, melodic breathing, and the character of each phrase can you make a piece alive.
Otherwise, it’s just words read off a page flat, dry, and forgettable.
