BTW, for those of you interested in getting a good bellows 'bounce' and a lively 'chank-a-chank' zydeco and cajun style (amongst many other styles) out of your keyboards, here's a little tip (sorry if this is obvious to some of you )...

This doesn't work too well in style mode, because it's a two-handed technique, but give it a whirl anyway, you might like it!

First things first... You can either practice this over a basic beat from the drums only, or if you want to try on a real tune, try using your built-in sequencer to record just the accompaniment to a favorite tune. Jambalaya has always been a standard of mine for this technique. If you can set it up so the sequencer repeats itself over and over (for practicing!), so much the better...

Now, there's an easy way to do this and a hard one. We are going to do the hard one first You'll see why in a minute.

The trick is to get your hands together, playing the same chord or two note sixth or third, on top of each other. You then play an alternating hand in a fast, simple sixteenth or eighth note pattern... 'chank-a-chank-a-chank-a'! Once you get this smooth, tight and rhythmical (that's the most important quality, it MUST be rhythmic), you can start to change the occasional note in one hand or the other (rarely both) to drop a third to a second or raise it to the fourth, to give some internal motion to the pulse, and you can also try using a three note chord in the RH and a two note chord in the left, to give the downbeats a bit more push... OK, you getting it now?

It's a bit difficult, isn't it?! Getting your hands in that close make things very tight and cramped... But here's where the magic of keyboards comes into play. Split your keyboard. Put the same accordion patch on both halves. Transpose the bottom part until it is in the same range as the upper. OK, now you can play exactly what you just did, but without your hands being on top of each other! This allows you to be a lot more inventive without your fingers getting tangled

It also allows you to try things like editing the patches to be slightly different to each other to emphasize that 'in/out' difference you always hear in the real thing. Mess with the tuning tables if your arranger has them. Make each one slightly out of tune on certain (different) notes to imitate the reed banks differences. Make the LH very slightly duller than the RH, to emphasize the effect you get when the in stroke is stronger than the out pull... And work that volume pedal a bit on the long notes!

With practice, you can get a VERY infectious accordion 'bounce' and 'chank-a-chank' going on all your favorite Louisiana musics, and many, many other styles too.

It's also a great technique for many other sounds, too, like guitar cross-picking, banjo picking, mandolin and many others, whenever a lot of rhythmical notes are being played in a small section of the keyboard...

Give it a try, and 'laissez le bon temps roullez!'