Lessons from Wim Nagtegaal

Since May 2000 Wim Nagtegaal has been my Cajun Teacher.
Though it''s quite a bit of driving, it is certainly worth it.
His method of teaching is to play a melody at such a speed that it can be followed by dummies.
For people with a resstricted memory (like me) Wim also puts the tune on cassette or minidisc.
And so you have the possibility to listen once more to the things you have been doing.
Finally I begin to play fragments during the learning sessions, but that was quite different in the beginning.
In the beginning I took the recorded parts home with me and than I would put the music on the computer.
The files on the hard-disk I could read with a Wave editor.

In such a wave-editor each played note became a kind of wave as is shown above.
In that way I could pick out each melody note by note.
Following a well-known method (for trekzakken/pullbacks) I numbered the buttons 1 up and till 10 and I indicated by means of a line whether I had yo pull or push the bellows.
The tunes I put in a spreadsheet table and in that way I could not forget what to play.
I also added bars, though that is kind of difficult in Cajun-music.
The fat underlining means that the bellows must be pushed.

So I played from paper, but in due time I play most things by heart.
It seems a time-consuming activity, but you get the hang of it in the end.
I would advise everybody who wants to learn how to play Cajun-Music to take lessons from somebody who know what it''s all about.
So you can ring Wim Nagtegaal 0031 030 - 2314800.
Wim can also teach you Irish music on the two-row-button-box.