Accordion? Squeezebox? Has anyone recently ventured into this territory for the fist time?

[seratone1]

Many time seeing live bands, Ive seen the keyboard player switch to an Accordion during acoustic numbers - or when a 'carnival' feel is required (Springsteen, Cracker, REM to name a few). During recordings I've used accordion patches on my Nord 4d, and way back on a Korg X5d.

I want to start using the real thing.

Does anyone have any suggestions of where to start? Pick up a rental? What size? I'm literally going to be doing wheezy comping pads in G and C, not exactly 'flying finger' polka's or Cajun music.

A concertina? I don't even know what that is....

 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Iamthesky]

Once upon a time, my band suggested I could get an accordion for acoustic shows.

I played around on an old accordion when I was very young -- before I even started piano -- and I know enough to realize that it's a whole different world of instrument.  If that wasn't enough to dissuade me, I then saw the NY band Squeeze Rock perform and knew the effort to reach good performance levels was a lot more than I was prepared to put into an alternate instrument.

[pogo97]

Be prepared to put in several months to learn to work the bellows. Not an instrument to be trifled with.

[seratone1]

Good point - all I want to do is wheeze around the roots and 5ths (i just found a fine accordion patch on my Yamaha MX49). I went to a special accordion store today, that had hundreds of them on racks. They tried to sell me battered old student Hohner 32 Bass, 2 Octave machines for 600$?!!!! - the funniest part was when I politely asked if I could take a few pictures of the models...the three people in the place, 2 Staff, 1 really old guy blazing on a huge one - gathered around in disbelief that I could take photo's with my Phone !!!!!!

I asked how much to rent one - first they said we don't rent them , even though the one I was looking at had a "Rent Me!' tag on it.