10 Button Single Row Accordion

[Ed Harrison]

Any one playing a 10 button single row accordion?
How do you have it tuned and what keys do you play in mostly?
Thanks .... Ed

[rh]

I have two one-rows in D. One is currently playable and the other needs work.

The playable one is a Weltmeister 4 stop tuned LMMH, looks like a standard-issue black melodeon. I play it pretty often, the action's not the fastest but i love the sound.

The one in need of work is a 60's Italian two-voice which looks kind of like a red Paolo, but it has only one row. The action is great. It's tuned very wet and a couple of the reeds have fallen out. Whenever i get around to having it worked on, i'll probably have some nice handmade reeds put in and keep it wet (or maybe swing) tuning.

I pretty much play in D and G (i just work around the C nat and change registers if i run out of keyboard space). I play by myself, so no worries transposing keys or anything -- if i want to play a tune, i'll just play it in D or G.

[colomon]

We've got a lovely Honher one-row 4-stop in G, and I usually play our Hohner G/C as if was two one-rows stuck together -- I do my best not to play across the rows, even when it would simplify matters a lot. I've played mostly Canadian tunes on it, lots of Newfoundland singles plus a couple of lovely waltzes from elsewhere, though I'm working up a few Irish tunes as well. Usually I play in whatever key the accordion is in, though I think I've got two Newfoundland tunes in D (with no C-sharps) which actually fit really well on the G box.

[Baxter]

Hi, Ed! I knew a gentleman in Wisconsin who played mostly polkas and slides in D or A on a D one-row that was the spitting image of a Cajun box. Sounded quite nice too. Ballyvourney (D) and Johnny Mickie's (A) are two polkas that I think fit nicely on one row, and Walsh's Hornpipe (A) should also do well.

[Ed Harrison]

Thanks for all the replies. My LA accordion is in the key of C ,
dry tuned with just intonation. I can make it sound wet by closing one
of the stops part way. Can play in the keys ocf C, G
and A minor. Moslty learning Cajun tunes and a few Irish.
I'm currently learning the tune "Maid in the Cherry Tree"
or some times called "Curragh Races". I can see how it
would be nice to have an accordion with two rows, but think
I will stay with the one row for a while.

Can anyone expalin why equal temper tuning is use in Irish
boxes when only a few keys like D, G, Am are moslty used and
the fiddle, whistle & pipes play in just intonation? I'm new at the
squeezebox and would like to understand these tunings better.

Thanks.... Ed

[StevieJ]

Can anyone expalin why equal temper tuning is use in Irish boxes when only a few keys like D, G, Am are moslty used and
the fiddle, whistle & pipes play in just intonation? I'm new at the
squeezebox and would like to understand these tunings better.
Thanks.... Ed

On a two-row half-step box (what most people would understand by an "Irish box"), anything other than equal temperament strikes me as a complete can of worms!

Over at concertina.net there have been a number of discussions of the issue, though: start here, maybe: http://www.concertina.net/forums/index. ... topic=2913

Steve

[Ed Harrison]

Thanks StevieJ, there's alot of information on the concertian forum. I did see some posting that go for the just intonation tuning. I think a lot of it many be what you are use to and what you learn to play and how your ear has been trained. I play highland and uilleann pipes, clawhammer banjo and dobro and would say they are in just tuning. If I tune the banjo( to a G chord) to equal temper with an electronic tune; it will sound out of tune until I flatten the B (second) string. Same with the the dobro tuned in G.

With the uilleann pipes, tune the tenor drone to D with an electorinc tune and maybe the A note on the chanter(its a D chanter) but the rest by ear to the drone.

I also saw some good infromation from Peter Laban and Geoff Wooff(pipers) on this subject, so I really appreacite your posting.

Since you are in Montreal, how do they tune the 10 row accordion there?


Thanks .... Ed

[StevieJ]

I agree that it's what you're used to, Ed, and as a fiddle player there is nothing I like better than the sound of perfect fifths, natural thirds and what I call the "vinegar notes" in Irish music - those with a little plangent edge, esp. Fs and Cs.

As it happens in my formative years (an awful long time ago now) I played quite a bit with Geoff Wooff and learned to adjust my intonation to the notes of the piper's chanter. (I don't think an uillean pipe chanter is quite in "just intonation" though.)

And one of the annoying things about the accordion is that it is too well in tune - too even-tempered - which results in a lot of colour lost from the music.

But a fiddle player can adjust his intonation from note to note. Once you've tuned a box, you're stuck with the result. And with a two-row "chromatic" box, I wouldn't like to be confined to a small range of keys - I had enough of that playing the whistle, and if any kind of alternative tuning were adopted, the box would sound very strange once you ventured outside the territory of one or two sharps (which even as a novice squeezer I do quite often).

But reading those posts at concertina.net has stirred up something. I intend to look into the possibility of having my backup box tuned in "mean tone ¼ comma" or whatever it's called. If I can find someone to do it, that is!

I don't think that one-row players up here use Cajun tuning, even though the range of keys they play in really is limited. I'll ask my local virtuoso next time I see him and report back.

Cheers
Steve

[colomon]

I don't think that one-row players up here use Cajun tuning, even though the range of keys they play in really is limited. I'll ask my local virtuoso next time I see him and report back.

Can you explain what Cajun tuning is? My wife and I have been puzzled by references to this for years....

[StevieJ]

Can you explain what Cajun tuning is? My wife and I have been puzzled by references to this for years....

No I can't, other than to say that Cajun boxes are supposed to be tuned to some form of alternative temperament. Read this post and a later reply from Steve Chambers: http://www.concertina.net/forums/index. ... 2913&st=22

[Paul Groff]

Hi everyone,

One of the members of this forum sent me an email, asking me to have a look and chime in. Lots of interesting topics so far, and this one in particular.

For a few years now, I have been researching the alternatives to equal-temperament as used in some concertinas and accordions from the 19th century to the present, mostly for the playing of folk, amateur, and traditional music. This subject has mainly been neglected but could absorb several lifetimes' worth of scholarly work if it became more popular. I started late and don't do it for a living so I have just scratched the surface.

It's an education for the ear of many 21st century musicians in the "developed world" to spend some time listening to chords and harmonies with acoustically pure intervals (especially fifths and even more especially thirds). That's because many of us grew up in a culture musically dominated by the equal-tempered (ET) scale that severely compromises the sonority of major third intervals. Many have come to take for granted the "options" allowed by ET (free modulation between 12 keys and their scales/modes, equivalence of the enharmonic sharps and flats, etc.) as well as its "compromises" (narrow fifths, very wide and active [harsh? raucous?] major thirds, lack of contrast in the size of particular intervals in different keys, etc.).

However, pure intervals (maybe not EVERY fifth and/or third, but one or more important ones), and on the other hand some other intervals that might be even more "harsh" than we hear in equal temperament, are an important ingredient in the beautiful sonic flavor of many types of traditional music around the world. The "12 tones to the octave equal temperament" concept is not a fact of nature, but actually a rather short-term, culturally localized fad when considered in the context of all human music. * Even within "european art music" the ET scale became standard relatively recently, never dominated all aspects of performance, and has been dramatically rejected by some movements within that tradition.

There are a lot of websites now that will let you learn more and even hear some examples of alternative scales and harmonies if this subject is new to you (search for "just intonation," temperament, "baroque music," "microtonal music," etc., or alternatively for "Georgian polyphony," gamelan, Hawaiian, barbershop, etc. etc.). Some digital electric pianos (not only the fanciest ones) have several different tunings and temperaments you can dial in, and if you have even rudimentary keyboard chops that is a great way to experiment with the sound of these alternatives for different musical purposes.

Back to squeezeboxes. As was mentioned by someone earlier in the thread, for playing solo or with sympathetic musicians you may not need to compromise the beauty of three or four important chords if you have a typical 10 key button accordion (with 19-20 different notes, running up a diatonic [major] scale). To simplify things a little, let's forget about the fifths for the moment since equal-tempered fifths aren't too harsh (just around 2 cents narrow) -- but of course, those can be tuned pure also. Let's talk major thirds, which in equal temperament are about 13.7 cents wider than the pure, consonant sound most untainted ears would probably prefer. * That is, to get a pure third doh-mi (such as D-F# or C-E), you could leave the lower note alone and flatten the upper note by 13.7 cents, relative to its pitch in equal temperament.

The german 1-row boxes exported to the U. S. in the 19th to early 20th centuries tended to have the thirds doh-mi, sol-ti (=sol-si) tuned pure (that is, both mi and ti=si tuned a good bit flat of equal) and fa also tuned flat for a sonorous dominant seventh chord on the draw. However, if you use the third interval fa-lah as a harmony, that is really sour (wide) in the old tuning and so you could move up a little from that "flat" fa to an equal tempered fa (for an ET, wide-of-pure, interval fa-lah), or tune fa sharp of equal to get a pure interval fa-lah. These intervals would be D-F#, A-C#, and G-B on a D accordion; C-E, G-B, and F-A on a C box.

I often listen to great cajun music though not initiated into that tradition as a player. But from what I hear and have read (and seen of the instruments), all those options have been used in Louisiana cajun 1-row accordion playing -- along with plain vanilla equal temperament. *

The cajun fiddlers playing along with those non-ET boxes can tune right into them. Fiddlers that learned in a very traditional context might prefer those pure intervals (at least some of the time) and use them anyway. As noted earlier in this thread, the fiddle like the flute and the voice has every microtone available on the "palette" of pitches. So in the hands of a great player it can be incredibly flexible not only in executing the ideal choices of the player but also in responding to the sound of other musicians. Because fretted (as opposed to steel) guitars usually end up in something close to equal temperament, they can create some tension with a box tuned differently. However, this can be exploited as part of the flavor of the music by good musicians, and I hear that tension as traditional too.

What about Irish music? Well, again, the fiddle, flute, voice, pipe chanter, and even the whistle have the option for great subtlety in real-time control of the exact pitch used for any note. Great players on these instruments, when playing solo or in ensembles not including instruments of fixed pitch, are going to use that flexibility for a powerful musical effect. When playing with fixed-pitch instruments (if they want to conform and play right in tune with them), they could go to equal temperament and it seems these days many do. Or they conform to another fixed tuning or temperament of choice, or allow for a tension.

When considering the options for tuning a box, I think an interesting comparison can be made with the early experiment in harmonizing Irish music with a "fixed pitch instrument" that was crystallized in the evolution of the Irish pipes, with its chanter, drones, and regulators. The tuning of individual notes from the regulators is not readily adjustable in real-time while playing, so you can think of the regs as a "fixed pitch instrument" accompanying the chanter. In that case the compromise that was accepted and retained for a couple of hundred years, so far, is to optimize one or two major keys and their modes, with gorgeous chords on the tonic, dominant, and subdominant. That sound may not be obsolete even today (see another area of C&F). Pipes vary in the way they are configured, and of course the notes of the chanter are flexible in pitch, but in general you will get about as many great sounding intervals or chords on a 1 row box tuned in (what is usually considered) "just intonation" as you do on a full set of Irish pipes.

Of course the subject goes much deeper & wider but that's a lot for now.

*Intentionally provocative here; I do appreciate that ET is sometimes useful.

Paul

[StevieJ]

Paul, welcome aboard and thanks for your very helpful summary. (When is the book coming out? )

I find all this stuff particularly fascinating, especially given my love of the plangent sound of the older traditional fiddle players.

I have an old one-row that I bought as a tuning project and on that I think it would be fun to experiment with the tuning scheme you described. But I think I'll put the plan to change the tuning of my 2-row boxes on hold. I'll live with the curse of equal temperament - complete flexibility in terms of keys you can play in, and complete inability to bring out the sweeter, darker colours that fiddles and other instruments can produce.

Interesting to reflect on the effect that fixed-pitch instruments, pimarily accordions, have had on the sound of traditional music - and not just Irish music.

One of the top young Quebecois accordion players told me that he felt his chosen instrument was responsible for impoverishing their traditional music, particularly in terms of having a limiting effect on the modes and keys used - and perhaps, I would speculate, on tuning as well.

The piano accordion, which is so popular in Balkan countries now, must have had a similar effect on the music formerly played on fiddles and bagpipes.

Indian popular music seems to embrace every instrument and style known to man. It's amazing what you hear in restaurants over your dal and chapatis - everything from piano accordions to Hawaian guitars mixed in with traditional-style singing and tabla playing. I wonder what this does to the more complex Indian scales!

Steve