Tangos for Accordion: A Collection of Traditional Argentine Tangos Arranged for Keyboard Accordion

Executive summary. This is an excellent introduction to playing tangos on the accordion by an experienced teacher. It presents 34 different tangos in a variety of styles, in different keys, from several decades of tango history. The choice of material is good as are the arrangements. At 91 pages this book represents very good value for money. If you haven’t gotten into tango before, make this your first book because of the instructional value and the arrangements. This is a splendid addition to educational books for accordion players. The pieces are great fun to play.Layout and Format are much better than most. The size of the music is just about right (even for old eyes). Most of the tangos occupy two pages. In the few cases where a tango takes three pages, there is an unfortunate page turn, but this is easily fixed by photocopying and taping. DiGuiseppe took care to avoid bad page turns wherever possible.Very useful is the brief historical overview (approx. 1,275 wds). The world of tango is large and full of unfamiliar terminology and foreign words. DiGuiseppe’s summary sifts through this for you and gives you all you need to get started.There are explanatory pages on bass notation. I suspect it’s very close to American Standard. No fingerings are given for the bass part, so whether you’re a 3/2 player or a 4/3, there won’t be any confusion. Lines under the notes tell you which ones to get on the counter bass row.Next comes instruction about the rhythms of the tango and how to play them on accordion. Four basic styles are delineated. The author deserves a lot of credit for creating varied rhythm patterns for each piece. You never play very long doing the same old thing.Sources. The pieces are drawn mostly from the Argentine tango literature, with an occasional Spanish or American composer thrown in. For almost every tango DiGiuseppe provides a brief identification of the composer. If you want to go beyond this, you can consult todotango.com, an incredible resource for tango.Level of difficulty. The title page states, correctly I think, that the book is intended for “intermediate to advanced players.” At least one piece has four flats, another three sharps, but nothing more intimidating. I believe—without a thorough search—that DiGiuseppe has retained the original key of most pieces. If you’re playing alone, it wouldn’t matter, but if you play with a group, you might encounter people who prefer the “original” or “standard” key. The level of difficulty varies slightly. The easiest one is probably “El Choclo,” which most people will recognize. An intermediate player should have no trouble sight-reading this one. The most difficult tango has some 16th-note runs. On the whole, the right hand, piano-side hand is straight-forward, although in a few cases I had to work out some RH fingerings in pencil. At least twice the notes go higher (F♯)than my 96 bass accordion does, but that is almost certainly because the original piano score goes up that high. The more challenging part will be playing the bass at speed: changes in the bass occur quickly and there is an occasional bass run. DiGuiseppe notes that Argentine tango tempos “vary between 90 and 130 BPM.” Start slow, work up to tempo. Tango isn’t blisteringly fast. I also purchased Argentinian Tango And Folk Tunes For Accordion: 36 Traditional Pieces. I much prefer David DiGiuseppe’s book for learning tango and for repertory.

I restarted playing the accordion during Covid lockdown. I ordered this for a variety in music to play. The songs are challenging but great.

Una excelente colección de tangos. Nivel medio-superior. Buena edición, quizá se agradecería una tipografía algo mayor. Muy buena relación calidad-precio. Excelente como los otros libros para acordeón de David Digiuseppe. 100% recomendable.