Sheet Music Sunday + Musical Monday: Korobeiniki

On Sundays/Mondays throughout the month I’ll be sharing my adventures in accordioning. The accordion is an awesome instrument capable of rich depths of harmony and melody. Unfortunately, I barely make any time to practice it, so what I share with you this month is going to sound rather choppy.

For the rest of the month I’m hoping to share accordion arrangements on Sundays, and recordings on Mondays. This week I’m a little behind, but that’s okay, because if you’ve followed my blog in the past you’ll have already heard the recording I’m going to share today. (I’m too lazy to record a more recent/fluent version)

That’s right, it’s Korobeiniki, a delightfully suggestive Russian folk song. It’s best known for its inclusion as the Tetris A music across a multitude of Tetris titles. A simple transcription of the song is below. (I haven’t done music theory in aaaaages, so apologies for errors. Let me know if I’ve notated things poorly and I’ll endeavour to fix them)

This is a pretty straightforward arrangement mostly comprising of alternating bass patterns. You start on the hatched E button in the top half of the keyboard and alternate with the E minor chord, then move to A -> Am. After that is the E Counterbass (G#, denoted by the underlined fingering) which alternates with the E Major chord.

There’s only one tricky bit in the arrangement, a little bass run through A A B C. It crawls from the upper half of the keyboard to the middle section, ending on the middle C button. I’ve put in some suggested fingering.

Then it’s a slow progression back up the bass through D minor. (I used to jump up to a different chord from the C, but my hop was just too unreliable)

I was going to add some little diagrams here but is anyone actually going to find them helpful? I’ll consider them for my next post if anyone is interested.

EDIT: Scribbled a thing in the end. Dunno how helpful it is.

Have fun with Korobeiniki! Don’t have an accordion? Try out my accordion simulator. You’ll be able to play most of the piece except for the G#s in the right hand. Just hum them or something.