I was also at the Dodgeville event. The event was pretty amazing, with Ray Abshire and Courtney Granger playing traditional cajun music for two nights in a row. They would start playing at 8:00pm and not stop unit l1:00pm or later. No breaks at all. I have sent some pictures of Larry Miller and his "Last Accordion" to Joan for posting as well as a picture of Ray Abshire and Friends. It is really wonderful when people like that come north and share their culture with us.

Number 7. But for me there's a wide gap between knowing it and doing it.

>But, here’s a kicker that he demonstrated .. y’all
>familiar with “Thee-Chanky-Chank-Button”? Did you
>know that your accordion even has one?

Please explain

Ray made the point that the use of the #7 button is the distinguishing characteristic of the 'chanky-chank' cajun sound - particularly on 2-steps...

Ray also suggested that good accordion repair-persons can tell whether or not a player is 'playin'-it-right' based on the wear to the buttons and leathers on the #7 & #10 buttons...

Big Nick...did I remember this correctly?

Braves,

The Chanky-Chank key was something that,
up this moment, I had never heard of.

For those who will be attending the Balfa Heritage
week, I didn’t want to give it away

No fair taking lessons from Ray Abshire in
Chicot and pretending that you already knew
about the Chanky-Chank button!

Yes, Doc Marc, I recall Ray's description to be
as you’ve stated it.

I wouldn’t want to try to describe it in depth until
I’ve had time to review my tapes and am fairly
confident that I can do it to some level of proficiency!

Actually, Ray said that I was already doing it to
a limited degree, but I’m still trying to understand
what I was doing to make him state that observation

Any other Braves familiar with the Chanky Chank button?

--Big

A really good example of using the 7 button like you're talking about is the French Two-Step on Ray's first album For Old Times Sake. If your curious about what he means that's a good place to start listening. It's a relatively easy song to learn and the "Chanka-Chank" on the 7 button is pretty obvious. I'm not going to try to explain in detail how to do it, I'll save that for Ray, plus I'm far from being a qualified accordion instructor.

However, I will say that not having that "Chanka-Chank" sound is one of the things that keeps your playing from sounding Cajun and thats what a lot of begining players (myself included) struggle with. They can play the notes of a song correctly, but something is just missing. It doesn't really sound Cajun and it doesn't have that "make you tap your foot" two-step rythm. The good thing is that once you start getting it, it's a whole lot easier and cleaner than putting a lot of triplets and frills in a song.

Learn something every day....

Perhaps someone with video could shoot the part of the class that deals with it and get Mr. Abshires permission to post it on Youtube for the folks that cant get there.
Thanks,
Greg

Yes, please, I would love to see a clip

Hal