RINOLDI CORNER

There are many kind of accordions. I will mention the most important ones.

Piano accordion: Introduced around the 1920’s, it was created to give the accordion a “respectabe” look (by making it similar to the piano or organ, with a “keyboard” to play the melody.) Also they hope it will make learning more easy, since buttons were complicated for the cast majority of wanna-be players.

Chromatic button accordion: It has lots of buttons on the right hand, for the melody. Its size is approximately the same as a Piano accordion, and usually the accompaniment is, as the piano one, “Stradella” system. There are 2 main chromatic accordion types: “B” system (Very popular in Russia and most of Europe; also it is the system used by concertists and for more classic music), and the “C” system. They both look almost identical, but both have different button layout. Esentially, a “B” player has to learn “C” system to play on it, which is rare since it would take a totally different digitation. “C” accordion is more popular in Italy, etc.

Finally, another completely different accordion is the “diatonic”, which is smaller than the above, and is not capable of playing in all keys since it uses a diatonic scale, instead of a chromatic one like piano and button chromatic. This diatonic accordion is mostly used in mexican, colombian and Irish music, although there are differences in construction, sounds, layout, ect.

Filed under: Accordion