Reddit reviews The Mighty Accordion

I purchased "The Mighty Accordion" from Amazon. It's a book just for learning the Stradella bass system. I'm still a beginner in general, but the book seem very helpful for positioning, and slowly learning the layout.

https://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Accordion-David-DiGiuseppe/dp/0786688394

It definitely lends itself more to self-learning (which is probably good since teachers are difficult to find).

For people coming to accordion from piano, I highly recommend this book which is basically entirely a left hand book. You know what to do with your right hand, so isolating and working on your left will get you going quite quickly with accordion.

Obviously you can drop over to /r/accordion to ask for advice about purchasing. My quick 2 cents is to aim for no lower than a 96 bass. Really, you should aim at 120 or you might feel held back at some point and as an experienced pianist, you'll likely advance quickly enough to actually realize what you're missing on a smaller accordion.

Many hobbyist go smaller for weight reasons and because they won't miss that much if they don't have things like a diminished row, are missing the ability to play in keys, or especially are finding limitations due to lack of bass redundancy at the ends to allow for facility. But to someone who has a lot of music background, most of these are must maybe with the exception of extra redundant basses (the big difference between 96 and 120).

Also, while the used market in trumpets is fairly safe online, accordion is much more questionable so you might want to look into some buying guides and will mostly likely want to purchase in person or order new/refurbed from a reputable dealer.

I haven't been playing much longer than you and there's no way I'd play in public, but here's what I have:
For jumps, it can be frustrating but I don't think there's any real trick other than to practice until the muscle memory gets you there. Like any difficult passage, you want to practice that particular part in a loop sometimes, rather than playing the whole song which is less efficient. Consistency comes pretty gradually but it does get easier. Also, I find that after a while, I know immediately what I did wrong and can recover more easily, so maybe it's not too noticeable.

I'm not sure how you manage to look at what you're doing on the left side; are you using a mirror? In any case, that's no good, you want to get used to navigating by feel. It helps if the buttons feel different. If your accordion only has an indentation on C, maybe mark the A-flat and E somehow so they feel different? (See chart at [1].)

For exercises, "Melodic Adventures in Bassland" [2] is fun and helps quite a bit for sight-reading bass notes and for remembering where the buttons are and their relationships to each other. There are also a lot of exercises in "The Mighty Accordion" [3] but I found them too boring to use much since they're not really songs. It has fingering and exercises for advanced chord combinations, though, so it might help later.

[1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Accordion/Left_hand

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Palmer-Hughes-Accordion-Melodic-Adventures-Bass-Land/dp/0739021729/

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Accordion-David-DiGiuseppe/dp/0786688394/

Someone on here recommended [The Mighty Accordion by David DiGiuseppe] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786688394/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). I just started using it and I love it. It's perfect for people who can already read music and understand basic music theory since it just focuses on the left hand.

You're going to love it! When you get some experience under your belt, it's not an informational book, but this guy's books come with a CD, and I find it really helpful to hear a song when I'm learning it https://www.amazon.com/Klezmer-Sephardic-Tunes-Traditional-Performances/dp/1847612563/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543119702&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Klezmer+accordion

He has books for different types of music, you may or may not like it. Last up, it's super in depth, but if you want to master the left hand, this book is the gold standard as far as I'm concerned : https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786688394/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1543119891&sr=8-1

I picked up the accordion relatively easily having played classical piano as a kid/teen. I would definitely recommend trying it if you have an accordion available and you're interested, It's such a fun instrument! I bought this book after someone recommended it on here. It's great for pianists cause it focuses on the left hand and doesn't waste time going over beginner music theory.