My Most Unexpected Musical Breakthrough 

The accordion, my first major instrument, taught me music theory, and made it so much easier to play by ear in any key. Unfortunately when I went to college to try and get a 4 year degree as a music major, the music department refused to accept it as a legitimate instrument to base a music degree. I ended up passing every music theory and writing classes with A’s as well as becoming a tutor for others in music theory, but was never able to graduate with a degree because the next nearest instrument to transition to from accordion was piano, and with 3+ years of piano lessons, I was still not able to play the left hand at a level to earn the degree. A 4 year waste of money and time from a college with a self righteous antiquated attitude.

This video made me realize how little I actually knew about the accordion and now I’m tempted to try it for myself hahaha

Accordion is such an underrated instrument. I picked it up as a joke after playing a bit of piano/keyboard, but I find myself playing the accordion way more now. Such an expressive sound.

Leave it to you to just find one of the world’s best accordion players to give you a beginner lesson. I love his “You’re such a classical player” remark. One of the most freeing things about playing music other than classical is that it so often isn’t either right or wrong. There are multiple viable choices. Glad it’s teaching you things about piano. If you want to fool around with something that gets you into breathing but doesn’t entail buttons or discomfort, try a melodica. Limited range so you’re typically playing with other people but cheap, easy, and it will make you conscious of a lot.

I love that you are a Yann Tiersen junkie. So many musicians I know just stare blankly at me until I play "that Amelie song."

I remember my aged (then) virtuoso Piano Teacher telling my 12 year old self many years ago that the "...definition of impeccable manners was: having the ability to play the accordion, but refraining from doing so." 🤣🤣 But I will say your rendition of "Julie..." was delightful.💖

The accordion needs a comeback, it's such a cool and expressive instrument!

Wonderful, Nahre. Growing up in NYC in the 1960s, accordion was the “poor man’s piano” for many of us living in apartment buildings. I am now learning piano, but I plan to return to the “squeeze box” when I retire.

Accordionist here, been following you for years and delighted to see this! Another comment on here mentioned "ignoring the assumed limitations of this instrument" which is spot on - I learned a lot when going beyond what is traditionally considered "possible" on it. As a forró player it is also my duty to recommend listening to Sivuca and Dominguinhos!

I used to play the accordion when I was a child. This is nostalgic for me, and the perspective of a piano player is super interesting. Loved the video!

I had the same enlightments with the diatonic accordion and the pedal steel guitar. They organized to fulfill every box of the tonal system and all it's inner relationships

Six years accordion player here, it just makes me so happy to see someone choose to learn the accordion. The accordion is a rare instrument nowadays and I really wish it could be revived.

I like the fact that you’re the type of musician who’s open to explore other instruments! .. I usually used to play piano and epiano for long, recently been exploring synths and electric guitars.. and it’s a unique experience when you come from different background of instrument to a newer one. Thank you for the content ..

This reminds me of my journey playing the organ. It has completely changed my general keyboard technique (for the better), has made me even more comfortable NOT using the pedal when playing piano, and it has made me sight read, breathe, and think of dynamics and orchestration differently than before I really started playing organ.

I’m also a pianist who just picked up the accordion! I decided to start learning about a year ago so I could participate in a folk band at my university. It’s been a huge learning experience and it was so cool to see this video because it made me realize how much learning accordion has changed how I play and listen to music :) thanks for sharing!

Dang, 25 years learning music, this is really cool to watch, a master at her craft, constantly learning.

Congrats for the initiative. As an ex high level classical piano player, the jazz players and the accordionists are simply eating us alive in their capability of playing music. Respect for giving it a go.

You successfully break down all mental barriers, and here's another example. Courage too!

omg i love seeing people discover how wonderful squeeze box instruments are, i've played accordion for a few years now and its helped me learn so much more about the basics of music theory than when i was trying to teach myself how to play piano.

The left hand side of the instrument reminds me of how playing guitar feels!

"You're such a classical musician. You make one mistake and must play it a hundred and fifty times." I laughed out loud and feel called out!

I wish every musician-every person, actually-can learn from your open-mindedness. Not many people accept to leave their comfort zone like you've done here. Even fewer are able to turn the discomfort into such a positive experience! Bravo, as always

As someone who has also been learning the accordion for the the last month, this makes me really happy. It's a wonderful instrument ❤️

I love literally everything about this. You are such a wonderful person.

Absolutely I love music, but I subscribed your channel mainly because of your fabulous charisma!

wow i love watching people learn new things!!!! youre so inspiring

My high school music teacher wanted to teach me accordion, but the association with corny Italian love songs and polkas made it unthinkable to me. Yet NOW, I have a friend who is the keyboardist for Weird Al, I guess there IS a place for the squeeze-box.🤓 Good luck on your musical journey.

I started playing accordion at age 6. After a short time knowing how to keep the bellows moving is like breathing. You don't think of it at all. Just like a person playing the violin knows when to move the bow back in the other direction. Jumping from one chord to another will also get super easy rather quickly. Like doing a turn around C--Am--Dm- G7 like the song 'Heart and Soul' or 'Tijuana Taxi' C --G--G--C--A7--Dm--G--G--C--C or jumping from a C to a B7 like the first two chords in 'The Sound of Music' in the key of C. And you can carry your accordion around. Jo Anne Castle was an expert on Piano and Accordion on the Lawrence Welk show. Go watch RU-vid clips and get inspired. BTW, I am having the opposite challenge that you have. I just started learning the piano and my right hand is at least 10 times more advanced on the keyboard than my stupid left hand. It's so annoying!

Accordion is a great second or third instrument, it really does get you thinking. It's not for wimps either let me tell you, my Lira model 20B accordion Weighs 30 lbs.! That's three _heavy side_ Gibson Les Paul guitars. Accordions are extremely expressive, and like the organ you can play more genres of music than any other instrument. I'm a guitarist since age 12 in 1978. In the 90's I rescued an early 60's Lowrey Berkshire electronic organ. I can't stress enough how important it is to try a different instrument if the one you've tried doesn't suit your fancy. I grew up with a Hammond L100 organ but it wasn't until I got the Lowrey organ that I fell in love with organ. Interesting though I did get a Hammond A100 (a B3 W/ internal speakers) after I played the Lowrey for a of couple years. I own 9 great organs now I consider the best brands/ models from 1946 to 1984. For all you reed fans, in 1946 Wurlitzer Theater Organ Div Tonawanda NY USA realized that after World War II they wouldn't be able to make any money making theater pipe organs anymore (plus they'd already retooled to manufacture b0mbs for the war effort). So they bought the patent for the *Electrostatic Free Reed Organ* from the Everett Piano & Organ Company. NOTE, the reeds were not used _acoustically_ , but for their harmonic character and accurate "never needs tuned" tone generation, and filtered for "Organ voicing" -FLUTE, STRING, HORN/REED, DIAPASON. A very cool graphic article on the North Suburban Hammond Organ Society (NSHOS) explains in thorough detail how the 1953-1963 Wurlitzer 4600/4410 Continuous-Free Reed, electrostatic reed organ operates. Actually I adlibbed a video playing my 1956 model 4410. links to to the article and Ken Griffin albums/ TV performance in the description below the video, VIDEO TITLE: *Wurlitzer 4600 Electrostatic Reed Organ aka 56' 4410 + Hammond HR40 , Spectratone + Leslie Horn V-21*

Omg nahre I LOVE the accordion!! Especially because it's used so much in folk music..... I would love love love to see you explore that with ur new instrument!! Big fan!!

This video resonates with me so much! I'm a guitarist and my best friend was a pianist/organist/accordionist. He always said that to him it's a miracle that ANYTHING could be played on the guitar. He saw the guitar as six simultaneous keyboards, one keyboard per string with the added restriction that each keyboard only allowed one note at a time.

I started out hours and hours ago trying to learn how to play ‘the wellerman’ on a $35 melodian. And now it’s 2am and I have found myself way over here completely out of my league. lol. Yet fascinated.

Your curiousity and willingness to always learn new things is really inspiring. You are doing good things - thank you 🙌🏼

So glad people more people can see all the amazing things even beginning accordion has brought me!

Nahre, this is so much fun! I absolutely love that Accordion is a combination of skills you're already proficient at and skills you're completely new to. That makes for a fascinating learning journey. Definitely one of my favorite videos if yours yet.

More accordion, please please please! It sounds so wonderful in your piece.

Shout out to the Melodica, a cheap and fun instrument which allows you to experience the importance of breathing in musical phrasing on the keyboard while not having those impossible left hand buttons to deal with…

Cory seems like such a chill teacher

Nahre, you're such a great source of inspiration in so many ways! My deepest thanks.

I love hearing about your musical journey. It’s always inspiring! Can’t wait to hear about your next adventure

Wow! I have enjoyed your piano lessons. Now I will enjoy your accordion lessons.

Excellent video, I can def relate. Been playing piano for 30y, incl. professionally, and discovered the accordion a few years ago. It was so easy to pick up and taught me so much. The 'breathing' part is very true. I've had a feeling of osmosis with my instrument and been able to express myself much better than on the piano. I had an electronic accordion and the bellows gave it a much more 'acoustic' feeling than any electronic keyboard I've ever owned. The other very true part is how the accordion forces you to be much more intuitive because you don't see your fingers so you need to focus on the feeling rather than looking in a rational way at where your fingers are. I'd encourage any experienced piano player to get a (piano) accordion. Some of the benefits I do not recall you mentioning is how easy it is to travel with an accordion (and pianists know how frustrating it can be to carry a keyboard). For what it's worth, I also tried playing on a button accordion. I did my best, spent a lot of time on it, and was very hopeful that I'd become fluent (not least because button accordions are much better for jazz than piano was, being laid out in a more logical way), but it's been really frustrating so it's been a bit of a love-hate relationship.

I love the enthusiam!!! We can tell you loved this journey!!!

I suggest you to check out the "bayan (accordion)" It has buttons on the both sides! I think you'd find even more of chords relationships if you try bayan It's a very virtuoso instrument!

I love the accordion so much

I was so psyched to see this video pop up! I hadn't played piano in many years, but have been playing lots of other stuff...like Accordion. I was SHOCKED to sit down at the piano about a month ago and find out that I suddenly just knew how to play in such an expressive, intuitive, and confident way. I used to do all my songwriting on guitar. It's basically all piano now.

You've done it again Nahre. You've done a simple video, and packed it with info and love of music...🤠👍🍁🍁

Love your style, humor, talent, and delivery... thanx!

Hey, sweet vids! For me this concept has been very important. Starting out as electronic music producer, I went to DJing, and then to learning guitar, and then to making instrumental music, and then to piano. Everything is so interconnected in music and there’s so much to learn and overtake the teachings from other concepts / instruments! I love how you apply feeling signatures to every tiny passage, I could only do the same when we talk about music sonically, for example character of a sample, I learn a lot from you!

If you have time to explore the accordion more, there are different bass systems that you can play with the left hand too. The bass system you were using is called Stradella (where each button plays a chord), but some accordions allow you to switch to a "free bass" system using one of the clips so that each bass button plays a single note, which means you can play all sorts of classical music/pieces written for organs etc. Fascinating instrument!

I am happy you made this video about how the accordion has brought you new insight. You play it well.

Love hearing about all these musical journeys! Learning different instruments is super important to your musicianship I think.

Nahre: Thanks for sharing your explorations. Your videos remind me to keep pushing my own limits and you always come up with creative ways to do that and start me thinking about creative things I could do to expand my music. Once again you are such an inspiration.

I've recently been trying my hand at the accordion, and watching someone as talented and accomplished as you illustrating your struggles and lessons learned was heartwarming ❤

Thankyou for such a wonderful video. I'm classically trained on piano and pipe organ and you reminded me why I love the similarities and differences between the instruments and the demands of each. The piano accordion has always been on my wishlist to learn. I think you did really well for just a years worth of practice. Keep up the great work 👍

I'm a trained drummer, fake-it-by-ear pianoist, and crude bass player. I've always thought that any skill you can pick up on a new instrument kind of lends insight to your other instruments and makes you a little better on all of them.

What an insightful and poetic video. Thanks for being such an inspiration.

Awesome video Nahre!

I loved this video. Thanks so much for sharing. I love watching people flexing their mind muscles learning something new, and breaking beyond their comfort zones with musical instruments.

Thank you,Nahre⭐🌹⭐

Nahre, allowing us to experience your experience....a treasure. Thank you.

Love this! Piano and violin player here who found my bro’s old accordion in the attic. New subber 😊

Hi! Your authentic presentation is so nice in these videos. I love your video production (sounds and graphics) too. 👍

I've always LOVED the piano organ! It's got this low-fi organ tone, and the chords work really well to back minimalistic pieces.

this was fabulous / priceless will make u even more brilliant than what u already are.. looking forward to enjoying the gift which keeps on giving.

Ah I love finding these channels, Adam Neely-level theory +musicianship +musicality has a contender here. Thanks Nahre for sharing your fascination

Such a great idea. When I switch instruments, it really gives me an omniscient view on my writing. This a great video! Thanks!

I play percussion for "folk" music--it's really just ethnic rhythmic styles--and I took up piano playing mainly to get better at playing chimes/ glockenspiel/ xylophone and melodica, but also to build skill with harmony. In many drumming styles, the harmonic character of the notes produced by drums makes a big difference in how the drum music sounds. It can sound consonant or dissonant. I like for it to be harmonious. It just feels better. I want to tell you that everyone who approaches the subject of music has a starting point--an instrument or a style--that has plenty of depth of its own, and serious students of music can always make unexpected discoveries by changing something about their approach. It's really very validating to me to see you having a big breakthrough. From my perspective, you're a highly-accomplished musician, and I just play weird drums...and yet, we both see that there are more discoveries to make, more insights to have, other approaches to try. Music is a strange occupation. Just by enjoying sound, all the work of learning becomes play.

Your original piece is lovely!

As always, thank you for the inspiring video. I think as a lifelong musician the only thing I’ve learned is that there is no real craft if you can’t try and find creative ways to access beginners mind. One of the things I admire most about the work that you do here with these videos is you’re constantly looking at things from new angles and trying to find a deep understanding as well as a beginners entry point. Thanks for the great work!

Extremely underrated instrument. It blends so perfectly with strings too, like Piazolla 😍

You're amazing. Love the videos/content you put out!

I've been an accordion player for a few years now and I am so happy to see that you did this video! It's such a great instrument.

It was a lot of fun to listen to play and explain the accordion. You're quite charming and I'm very happy that I stumbled across your video.

This is one of the most beautiful videos you have ever put together, I wish I could express it better in words but thank you so much for sharing this.

You, Nahre Sol, are absolutely a beautiful artist.

I'm happy to see that the accordion is getting a bit more attention lately. I hope you'll continue to enjoy your new instrument :D

Well done. Excellent endeavor and analysis

5:40 When I started making the connections between the circle of fifths and chord structure in high school I remember being angry with my music and theory teachers for not making it more apparent. It's probably the single most important thing to understand for writing and even enjoying music second only to rhythm and song structure. Its crazy how much more musicians of the past had a much more intuitive understanding of theory despite all the information out there today. We put so much focus on learning chords and scales rather than learning the rules and patterns of music that make it all make sense.

So many people disparage the "Stomach Steinway" but it is an incredible instrument. It was the most popular instrument in the early 20th century, supplanted only by the guitar - providing the bellowing is challenging - right on, Nahre - you're really on to something! Just play it a little bit every week and enjoy the secrets you learn from it.

Well done, Nahre! Keep it up!

This is probably my favorite video of yours for all time. I always adore how you described lessons learned from anything you'd tried on. But this one confirms lot of things I'd believed all along like phrasing and how humanity an instrument players should allow those to play along in the performance. And besides that your essay is clear, and maybe because you're much cuter! 🤣 I really don't know now.

I’m so glad you decided to play this amazing instrument

Amazing video (as always 😁) so inspirational!

this is so dope! so excited for your journey Nahre : )

Thank You for your passion and exploring music always looks so fun & fantasy and so happy. It encourage me so much. Really love when you play with smiling ☺️😇🥰

I love seeing other musicians having a go at 'my' instrument. It is a lot of fun/frustration, but once you got the bass, it makes a lot of sense. Great for theory/harmonising rules as you are forced to learn them just to be able to play etc. I met Cory when he came to New Zealand, real nice guy, VERY lively. I loved your quote about 'its one thing choosing not to look and not being able to look' :D

Always love your video's. This one somehow made me very happy. I know several pianists who also play accordeon (or even bandoneon) and they are usually the nicest people imaginable. Curious and versatile.

I love the accordion and free reed instruments in general. I hope you share more videos of your progress with this instrument

Love this video!!

Excellent video and very enjoyable.

Another fantastic technique video! I can only imagine you’ll tackle the bagpipes next. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Bravo Nahre ! Wow.

I love your spirit of exploring different musical dimensions

SUCH AN INTERESTING VIDEO! I'm into a deep crisis as a crap musician in this period...your enthousiasm is a breath of air and a great encouragement! Thanks!

Thank you for the video!!!

Bravo and Encore !!

Love the accordion and the Amelie soundtrack. Your teacher is amazing. I love the French Musette style and have listened for years, so many great players and pieces. I hope you continue with this instrument.

Oh My God! I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE this. It makes me so happy! Thanks.

Keep making these please 🙏