Hey everyone!
I only started learning accordion a few months ago, and I’ve absolutely fallen in love with the instrument.
One of the biggest struggles I’ve had as a beginner wasn’t necessarily playing the songs, but actually finding the notes for songs I wanted to learn.
Half the time I couldn’t find anything, the arrangements weren’t made for accordion, or the sheet music was locked behind a paywall. I also found that most learning apps weren’t really designed with accordion players in mind.
So I decided to build something myself.
Introducing Bellowkeys.com⁠ 🪗
It’s a free, Synthesia-style accordion learning platform where you can:
Upload your own MIDI files and visualize the notes on an accordion.
See what both hands need to play.
Slow songs down, loop difficult sections, and practice at your own pace.
Share MIDI files with other players and discover music uploaded by the community.
I’m still relatively new to accordion myself, and I originally built this just to make learning easier for me. But after seeing how much it helped, I figured why not share it with everyone else?
My long-term goal is to create a community-driven library of accordion music. Somewhere people can share arrangements, help each other figure out songs, and make learning more accessible, especially for beginners like myself.
The website is live, but it’s still very much a work in progress. I’m actively developing it, fixing things, and adding features.
And one thing I want to make clear: I have absolutely no intention of putting this behind a subscription or paywall. I built it because I was tired of running into those exact barriers. At most, I’ll eventually accept optional donations to help keep it running.
I’m not an expert accordion player. I’m just someone who recently picked up the instrument, fell in love with it, and wanted to make learning a little easier.
I’d genuinely love feedback from more experienced players, beginners, or anyone willing to give it a try. Feature suggestions, criticism, and contributions are all welcome!
Website: https://bellowkeys.com
Music should be an adventure. Adventure should be free.

This is a vibecoded website, which I generally look down on. But I made it for myself to use and don't hate it. So you might not hate it.

I been playing accordion for a while, and my next step is getting better at recognizing and playing chords and their inversions. My main goal is to be better at looking at sheet music and seeing how chords form melody.

Like at the beginning of Clocks by Coldplay. It starts arpeggiating down through an E flat major, first inversion. Then it moves to Bb minor, second inversion. And then F minor.

It's so much easier to look at melody in sheet music when you can think of it in terms of chords rather than just hunting note by note. It's like typing words instead of gibberish.

A second benefit is just understanding what notes are being played on the bass side. I like to play accordion with my wife while she plays guitar. There are an annoying amount of F to A minor chords in some of the songs she likes, and I'm slow at finding A minor. So I play C major and A, which is A minor 7th.

Rather than do flashcards to help me learn and identify chords, I helped Claude make this website.

It displays a chord in various ways, uses your microphone and listens for you to play it on the treble keys of your accordion. Select what kinds of chords you want to practice, and what inversions you want to work on. You can display any combination of chord name, notes on the staff, note names, and fingering.

Everything is in treble clef, because... accordion.

There's also a "Play along" section where you can work on practicing chord progressions. This might be useful if you play with a band. I thought it was a fun idea but that's not what I'm focused on right now.

Should work on computer or mobile, but didn't work on mobile Firefox for some reason. Needs microphone permission so it can hear what notes you're playing, but nothing else. All data is stored in your browser. It's meant to be used while playing your accordion.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think. It's open source and completely free.

Basically, which is better when writing sheet music, writing the proper names of chords, or the combinations of chord and bass buttons that make them?

Writing Dm7 as F/D or D9th as Am/D tells me how to make that chord, and for chords that can be made multiple ways, the slash chord tells me which option to use in that instance, instead of having to figure out in my head what the most convenient version will be.

But is this a lazy way of doing it? Am I hampering my learning by doing this instead of memorising how to construct more complex chords?

And which is easier for other accordionists to read?

I haven't had time to practice as much as i'd like since starting this project but got an accordionist to try it out! So far he was able to adapt well to using a handle for bellows but it does require some getting used to

This accrodion is really beautiful

My grandma used to play the arcodeon when she was a child and today she asked as to lower it from the attic and it's this one. What I know about it. It was given to her at 1959. Parts of it are from turtle bone. It is 120 bass thing. It has a custom engraving. I'm pretty sure it was pretty expensive back then.

Thanks

this poor old girl is definitely very flaky but she sounds beautiful. i am a total beginner functioning with very little knowledge of the instrument! i looked all over with a flashlight to try and find a model number or name, but the only information present is Hohner. i spent all morning digging thru catalogs and images but couldn't find any that exactly resemble mine.

my current novice understanding is that it is a diatonic button accordion from the 70s, but take that with a grain of salt. ive attached some pictures, and i also have a video of me playing it if that helps an expert identify it.

here's the video, on bluesky because i can't really figure out if i can upload videos on reddit.

any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated!