In 2010, I got a phone call from Dr. Norman Seaton, asking if I would do some kind of presentation about the work my father (the Bill Palmer of the Palmer-Hughes Accordion Course) had done. To be frank, I had never even heard of the National Accordion Association, and I’d been away from the accordion for quite a while, but after giving it some thought, I decided to appear and do the presentation. It changed my life.

Many of you may know that from roughly 1968 until 1992, my father basically retired from playing the accordion. Instead, he concentrated on his devotion to baroque, classical and romantic music as well as to piano pedagogy. However, in 1992, he decided to pick up the accordion again. This time, he did in style. He had Faithe Deffner build him a custom Titano accordion with a super extended piano keyboard (45 treble keys) and a 160 bass converter quint system. This instrument was the first Palmer Super Emperor Convertor model. It was made by the Pigini company.

More importantly, it had a MIDI system installed in it. During the 1980’s when MIDI (the Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was in its infancy, I had founded the MIDI Special Interest Group of the Houston Area League of PC Users.

As Dad saw what could be done with MIDI, he realized that the accordion was uniquely suited to be a MIDI controller — the right hand could provide the treble while the chord buttons could provide chord signals and voices and the bass buttons could provide the bass instruments. Not only that, it could be possible for the shift registers to provide significant MIDI information as well.

Before my first presentation at that convention, I walked into one of the dealer’s rooms and watched Shelia Lee give a demonstration of the Roland FR-7x. This instrument was basically what Dad had been looking for. It provided not only all the common accordion voices, it had lots of orchestral and organ voices. It had several free bass systems, and it even provided some simple percussion sounds.

A few months later, I purchased one of these instruments, and became hooked on digital accordion.

At the 2019 NAA convention, I will be giving an expanded version of some material that I presented in 2017 and 2018 concerning building sounds on your digital accordion, using your digital accordion with various accessories, and getting the most out of your instrument. I will be participating in some of the roundtable discussions on digital accordion, and I will be available to help people with their instruments.

I will also be co-presenting a program about Conjunto music on the accordion with Debra Peters (picture right) and will be presenting my part on piano accordion and chromatic button accordion. I’ll show you how this type of music is especially relevant to the state of Texas.

March 7-9, 2019 we plan to share a few luxurious accordion melodies straight from Texas very own music genre called Conjunto music. Conjunto music was primarily played on the diatonic accordion with Bajo Sexto and a Bass. Few have played these melodies on chromatic accordion and/or piano accordion. Until now!

In addition to the workshop, Debra Peters and friends will present a portion of the Friday evening Dance program organized by Nancy Bernstein. Debra will lead a set of Tex-Mex Conjunto and Tex-West for our dance night.

In other Debra Peters news: Debra Peters & The Love Saints will continue in 2019 to perform and host every last Tuesday of the month residency at Austins finest Honky-Tonk, The Broken Spoke!

Debra Peters will return to Cotati Accordion Festival, Cotati Ca. August 2019 and she plans to once again join Joan C. Sommers accordion orchestra at ATG 2019 in Denver, Colorado. Debra will soon have a new website where every song she ever wrote and recorded will be for sale directly from her own website! Sheet Music for some original songs will also be there.

A message from Norman Seaton…. “Let’s all plan to wear our finest Texas style cowboy hats Friday evening!” Maybe Nick Ballarini will start a contest with a prize give-a-way for BEST COWBOY HAT.

Hope to see you all at the 2019 NAA Convention!