Accordion Bass Scales – C Major
Scales are very useful for accordion basses – they help with playing bass-lines rather than using the left hand to play the root note of the chord. Because Stradella Basses are “transposing” once you have mastered this scale you can play all the others simply by starting on the appropriate button!
Video
Accordion Bass Major Scale Fingering
Here is the music with fingering: your left hand little finger is 5, ring 4, middle 3 and index 2. (It’s “piano fingering” so the thumb is 1 but we never use the thumb on the left hand of the accordion…..or do you?!) Notes with a line underneath like this: _ are played on the “counterbass row” (the nearest row to the bellows) all the other notes are played on the “bass row”.
Stradella Bass Major Scale Diagrams
Start with your 4th finger on C and play C, D, E using the fingers 4, 2, 4.

Then use your 5th finger to play F

Now you play G to A using fingers 3 and 5

Finally play B with the 3rd and C again with your 4th finger.

C Major Scale descending
Coming back down is the reverse of the above!
Dont try to do it all at once!
The first time you try to play scales on accordion basses it can be very confusing so break it down a bit – Just play C, D, E and back down E, D, C – get used to that little triangle shape. Now try the next 3 notes F, G, A – it’s exactly the same shape but played 5,3,5 instead of 4,2,4. Once you can do that you are nearly home!
Good luck and keep at it!
Cheers mate! Very helpful!
Hi George, thank you for your help with accordion bass scales.
I noted in an Australian AMEB accordion syllabus that the exam candidate would be asked to play scales both hands together for 2 octaves and sometimes 3 octaves. How does this work with the bass buttons?
Thanks
Sue (Piano teacher)
Australia
Hi Sue,
I must do a blog about this because it comes up a lot! The short answer is play the same scale twice or three times with the left hand.
Accordions with Stradella bass systems (2 rows of bass notes and 4 rows of chords) only have 1 octave of basses BUT each bass note plays up to 5 reeds in different octaves. Although there is technically a lowest note (not the same on all accordions) the join can be hard to hear. Imagine 5 people playing a scale up the piano all an octave apart – when the top one runs out of room they run round to the bottom and start again but the overall sound will seem to continue rising.
Hope that makes sense!
Cheers
George.
Your whole site is wonderful for me as a beginner. Just purchased a Paolo Soprani Donnina 80 and I am enjoying this instrument for the first time jjust today.
Thanks Carl
Enjoy your Paolo Soprani!!!
George.
Hi George,
First of all, thank you for your great work. Excellent job.
Found your site searching Google as I’m learning the Bass Major Scale Fingering and noticed a small “imperfection” on this “C-major-Standard.gif”
Going down on E, the fingering should be shown as “4” counterbass (same as when you go up) and not just “4”.
It’s in two places:
http://georgewhitfield.co.uk/accordion-bass-scales/ and
http://georgewhitfield.co.uk/accordion-bass-scales-c-major/
If you find it that it needs to be corrected, I wouldn’t mind if you delete this comment (to avoid further confusions).
Thanks again.
John
John!
Thank you – You are so right! I wonder how many noticed and never took the time to tell me? I will change them on my next editing day!
Thanks again
George.
Hi
I enjoy your videos very much.
Question: You instruct to play C major scale with 4th finger which for me actually makes most sense. However I see that most instructors out there teach to start C with 3rd finger, D with second , E (counter) with 3rd and so on. So which is it 4th finger or 3rd?
Regards
Chaim
There are diferent systems – I prefer mine so the answer is 4!
Seriously though, when you say “C with 3rd finger, D with second , E (counter) with 3rd and so on” I think this is a fingering without using finger 5 at all (which a lot of people find hard), I think it’s worth getting finger 5 working if you can so I teach my way.
In “real life” playing pieces rather than scales it’s useful to have different ways of playing runs of notes so why not learn both ways? – in fact I practice 3 ways:
1) C4 D2 E(counter)2 F5 G4 A(counter)5 B(counter)3 C4
2) C3 D(counter)5 E(counter)3 F4 G2 A(counter)3 B(counter)2 C3
3) (No Counterbasses – stretch!) C4 D3 E2 F5 G4 A3 B2 C4
Good luck
G