Today, December 23rd would have been my mother’s birthday. She has always been my inspiration for music and the reason I turned to the accordion when I was looking for a change from the piano.
I still aspire to be as good as she was but I have fun doing what I do so it’s all good.
The weather was nice today so, in honor of my mother’s memory I went down town and played some carols and Christmas music. I even got to meet Santa !
I was playing downtown a few weeks ago and the owner of a new cocktail bar stopped to chat with me. We swapped cards so I contacted him a week or so ago and offered to come play in the early evening just for an hour or so.
It looks quiet but it did get busy a little later on. I just played a few carols and Christmas pop songs and my usual stuff. Seemed to go over well and I had fun. The family and a couple of friends came out to support me as well.
Cool little place, even has a real baby grand player piano.
I’ve got another short gig next Friday at a German bottle shop as part of a fund raiser for a music teachers association. It’s a bit of a drive but there’s a Christmas market on there as well over the week end so I shall check that out while I am there although I doubt it will be anything like the traditional German Christmas markets but you never know.
There was a post some tome ago on Facebook or a forum somewhere that asked a question along the lines of “What do you struggle with most learning the piano”. This was my response because so many of the answers resonated with my own experiences and while I no longer actively play piano, having moved on the the piano accordion, I thought I’d share my own experience in the hope that it may help others.
About me: I’ve played some sort of keyboard pretty much my whole life from around the age of ten or so onward. I am now at retirement age (but not retired) so it’s been a while with plenty of missteps along the way. My inspiration was my mother who played semi professionally. As a child we had a large studio upright piano but my mother played accordion at that time. Later on she switched to the newfangled (at the time) electronic organ so the piano went and we got a Lowery Holiday organ.
So here are some nuggets of wisdom (or not) based on a lifetime of trying to be a better musician.
Things have been pretty quiet so far this year. I’ve played a few open mics and sat down town a couple of time and played this year but that’s been it so far.
I’m not really in the mood to play farmer’s markets right now and it seems like this year at least, even the winter slots at the places I usually play have all been pre booked so no chance for any ‘last minute’ gigs there.
I am having knee replacement surgery at the end of June so I expect that’s me pretty much out of action for the next few months, at least when it comes to playing out anywhere.
So the plan last year was to go out and play downtown on December 23rd for my mother’s birthday but the weather had other ideas as it was a cold as the Arctic out there but at least I was not traveling/stuck like a lot of people over the Christmas period.
Weather today is beautiful and I had thought I’d go downtown and play a little but in the end I am really just not in the mood and since I do that sort of thing for fun, it does not seem like a good idea to force it.
On the other had, after some encouragement (at least I thinks it’s encouragement) from the wife, I’ve applied to join a local German Dance band. Still not sure I want to wear the whole lederhosen thing when playing but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it LOL.
On the plus side, my hearing is hanging in there, no major problems although the left ear it still feels sore sometimes after playing if I crank it up (which I tend to do). If I don’t get any more occurrences of the hearing loss this year, it’ll be a good year.
So, first off. I spoke too soon about that midi setting for the volume now being on when I fire it all up. It seems to have reverted to being off. At this point I have no f****ing clue how to get it to be on by default. So I just have to remember to make sure it is on once everything is fired up.
CME, the makers of all this WIDI stuff, brought out a small ‘programmable’ three in, three out, MIDI merger/router/filter and they had it on sale with free shipping as an initial promo so I grabbed on because I figured I would find a use for it (which I did of course).
It has to be powered by a USB-C connector but I’ve got a port left on my battery pack on the BK-7m stand so not a problem there.
The diagram below shows my initial configuration:
Both the accordion and the foot pedal send MIDI to the backing module. The foot pedal is basically operating in a blind mode, that is, it has no idea what the backing module is actually doing but so far that seems to work quite well.
This next diagram shows what I was aiming for so that the foot pedal could listen to MIDI from the backing module and react accordingly:
I also want (ultimately) to be able to send MIDI from the foot pedal to the accordion (via the WIDI Jack) so that I can change settings on the accordion using the foot pedal instead of having to fiddle with small buttons while playing. The problem is/was that every time I plugged in the MIDI out from the BK-7m into the WIDI Jack, the WIDI Jack would just hang after a while. At least I think it is the WIDI Jack hanging but the backing module would not respond any more and I would have to reset everything.
Which is where the MIDI merger/router/filter box comes in. I figured I could put it between the BK-7m and the WIDI Jack and have it route everything coming and going to the third port which I could then send to MIDI Wrench on my iPad so that I could see exactly what midi was being transmitted.
So now I have this:
This works great. The first thing I noticed is that the BK-7m was sending MIDI clock messages out and there were LOADS of them. From reading various posts on the CME Facebook page I think that there are limits to how much data, especially clock and sync type data, you can really send over Blue tooth MIDI. So I turned that off in the BK-7m. I also set the U6MIDI Pro to filter them out, just in case the setting ‘reverts’ to on like that other setting keeps reverting to off.
In addition the BK-7m, being a Roland device, sends out active sensing messages, something that the accordion and my pedal do not care about. There’s no way to turn them off in the BK-7m so I set the U6 to filter them out.
I’ve been running like that for a while now with both the in and out MIDI ports connected and it seems to be pretty stable now.
I just need to figure out how to mount it all now as it’s a bit of a mess, just sitting on top of the BK-7m:
The next challenge is to figure out how to get MIDI from the foot pedal to the accordion. Currently I am thinking that if I swap the WIDI Jack for a WIDI Master I can turn on MIDI thru in the WIDI Master and use the U6 to somehow filter/route the MIDI messages to the accordion.
The alternative is to use another WIDI CORE X and build my own little specialist box to do all the above, basically combining the U6 and the WIDI capabilities into one unit. But that’s a ways down the line!
I am also thinking of redoing the board in the foot pedal using a different micro processor (ESP-32) which is more powerful and has more program and storage memory and also putting the whole thing on a ‘real’ PCB but before that I have to learn to use some PCB design software.
And you though this was a music blog LOL!
Yes, I am actually playing at last…!
On a whim I emailed a local(ish) farmer’s market last Friday asking if they had music for the following day and if not, did they want some.
They didn’t have anyone so I got to play. I did about three hours. I was able to wander around and test the range of the blue tooth midi in the open, it was quite good, probably around the advertised 65 feet or so before it lost the connection from the accordion to the backing module but as soon as I walked back into range it picked up again.
I did have a couple of the usual hangs where the backing module just stopped responding or it switches into ‘piano’ mode but I just reset it and it was good. On the whole it worked quite well.
I even got asked back so I am back there next month.
The great thing about the colder months is that most people don’t play, too cold I guess, but it means it’s pretty easy to grab a last minute gig at a farmer’s market if the weather looks nice.
I am also playing at a flower market next month along with some others from the accordion meetup group I am in. I am just doing solo stuff and it should only be for a couple of hours. Just hoping the weather stays nice.
And then I am playing at a Mexican (actually Honduran) restaurant on Friday. I went to an open mic there a couple of weeks ago and they mentioned about me playing so I contacted them. It’s just for an hour or so and if I get a free coffee out of it, I’ll be happy as I get to play in a more formal setting but I don’t have to do a full gig (I hate playing bars really) so hoping it will be fun.
I am also practicing playing standing up which is somewhat different from sitting down. It’s more tiring for a start and you can see even less of the keyboard and buttons than you can when sitting but I always feel like I can also interact more with people, especially in the restaurant setting I am playing at. So, we will see how it goes.
I ‘think I’ve solved the problem of things just stopping working. Up until now I’ve had the WIDI Jack velco’d to the back of the BK-7m where it was out of the way but on a whim I just hung it over the front of the BK-7m and it actually seems to fix the problem.
I am thinking there are two possible reasons:
I am hoping it’s the first reason and not the second because less than 3 feet range is not good! I did take it to an open mic recently and played with it hanging over like that and had no problems so if that’s all I need to do, I can live with it.
I was having a problem with the volume not working until I pressed a pedal button. I found a receive MIDI setting in the BK-7m MIDI Basic settings section that was OFF by default when I turned the BK-7m on. It was set on in the BK-7m MIDI USER1 settings but it seems they only get pulled in when the Connection Wizard runs and that only runs when it receives a MIDI message from the pedal when a switch is is pressed or from a bass button on the accordion.
I’m not totally sure what I changed or how I got it to stick but the default for this setting when I turn the BK-7m on is now ON, so the volume pedal works from the start.
I must say that having a totally wireless setup is great. So much so that I now want to get rid of having to plug the volume pedal into the FC-100 and create a wireless MIDI volume pedal that would be stand alone.
I am also looking at using MIDI Designer Pro 2 on my iPhone to see if I can make some sort of phone based controller app so that I can control the BK-7m from my phone. If nothing else just to switch songs in the play list. That way I could step away from the BK-7m and play while strolling and still be able to switch songs.
First off, let me say that at a basic level the WIDI foot pedal works. It will make the BK-7m switch between variations, do fills, start.stop etc using the WIDI wireless MIDI system.
There’s at least one thing I need to change in my code relating to how I handle fills when I switch variations. With the hardwired FC-7 type foot switch, when you change variation, it plays a fill then switches. I assumed that when I told the BK-7m to change variation using midi, it would do the same thing.
Apparently not.
But it does sort of answer why there are three UP fills and three DOWN fills, something I wondered about.
It seems to me that when switching from a lower variation number to a higher one, I need to first send the appropriate fill and THEN switch variations. Four variations means three steps between them, which explains why there are three UP fill patterns and three DOWN fill patterns.
When going to a lower variation, I need to send the corresponding DOWN fill before switching to the new variation.
Assuming that’s how it’s supposed to work, it should not be a hard code change.
So, that’s the easy stuff!
On to the ‘real’ problems…
The first problem does not even involve the wireless foot pedal. I have a WIDI Bud Pro (the USB dongle) plugged into the USB port of my accordion and a WIDI Jack plugged into the BK-7m’s midi input (the midi out is not connected currently).At home this setup works great, no problems.
Yesterday I was playing for some seniors at a facility and had the same setup. I was using my homemade ‘real’ hard wired FC-7 pedal to control the BK-7m, not the wireless one so the accordion to BK-7m connection was the only midi connection involved.
For some reason, the setup would just not work properly. One one occasion the BK-7m just hung with a note playing. Other times it just stopped following the accordion. I was lucky to make it through a song without problems.
And of course, I had not taken a midi cable as backup!
I can only assume there was some sort of wireless interference that was affecting the blue tooth but it was totally unusable. I was only there to play a few pieces so it did not matter too much and what I played, they enjoyed but it really pissed me off!
I’ve also been having problems with the foot pedal I am building.
It will work just fine for a while and then it stops responding to the switches which means it is not sending MIDI to the BK-7m. The accordion is still connected and sending midi so the BK-7m is following the accordion and the volume pedal plugged into my foot pedal still works and sends MIDI just fine.
If I leave it for a while, a minute or so, it will start working again. WTF comes to mind.
The only theory I have is that something in the libraries I am using is trying to use more storage than I have available. I only have around 500 bytes (of 2k) of storage left for dynamic variables and stacks and the stuff that C creates so it’s possible that is the problem.
If I compile the code with the debugging stuff omitted it’s all a lot smaller ao more free space, which I might try and see how it works but I really need some code to monitor the storage usage to see if this is my problem or if it’s something else, although god only know what if it’s not this.
Update.
I found a memory usage library so I plugged that into my code. From what it is telling me, I am hardly using anything above the initial allocation.
I was only looking while in the main loop so it’s possible lower level functions consume some storage but I certainly don’t see any sort of ‘leak’ that would slowly consume memory.
So, it’s back to square one!
I have been using my breadboard setup to experiment with volume control of the BK-7m via MIDI/WIDI but for some reason the numbers were all over the place.
Turns out the ‘reason’ was someone (me) completely screwed up the wiring of the TRS socket!
Once I spent some time with pen and paper I figured it out.
The Roland and Yamaha pedals use different wiring systems (of course) but now that I know how to correctly wire up the socket, it was pretty easy to configure it to include a switch so that I can switch from either pedal style.
The arrow to 16/A2 is to the analog input pin on the micro processor.
It's a Busker's Life For Me 