re: button accordion

[Aaron Bousel <apbousel...>]

Been really enjoying this thread.  I'd like to confirm much of what Owen
had to say about which instruments lend themselves to what.  One of the
things I do is tuning and repairing accordions at The Button Box
<www.buttonbox.com> in Amherst, MA.  I am a piano accordion player and
that's mostly what I work on, the other guys dealing with the diatonic
single action (different note on the push and the pull) instruments.
Occasionally I do tune one of those and hence have the opportunity to see
what I can play on it.  It's interesting that the first time I fooled
around with one I very quickly abandoned trying to play any klezmer and
found myself trying to pick out one of the two or three Irish tunes that
seem to be in my head.  As to the continental chromatic double action (same
note on the push and pull) a lovely little 4 row Guilietti just came into
the shop.  Having never played one of course I had to try.  (After fixing
it first, of course)  Somehow I managed to stumble relatively easily onto
an ahava rabah scale and was able to play part of a klezmer tune in fairly
short order.  It did seem to fall nicely under the fingers.  I should note
that I'm not one of these people who can pick up almost any instrument and
immediately know how to play something on it so this is more a comment on
the nature of the instrument than on any talent I may posses.

The English concertina which plays the same note on the push and the pull
and is fully chromatic would have no problem with klezmer, or any other
kind of music for that matter.  There is a recording of English concertina
which includes a J.S. Bach Suite, "As Time Goes By" and everything in
between.  While I suppose it could be used in klezmer music, it could not
play the same role as an accordion as it is more of a solo voice instrument.

One note on reeds.  The original post referred to "double reeded"
accordions by which, I assume, the writer meant accordions that play
different notes on the push and the pull.  All accordions use a different
reed for the push and the pull.  It's simply a matter of how they are tuned.

Aaron Bousel
Amherst, MA