This was originally published in February 2011, in a slightly different form. Reading the front pages of today's "fake news" rags, I can still see that our world's understanding of accordion lingo could fairly be described as a dearth. I hope this piece serves as a still-potent paliative (for the inimitable, and inexplicably quiet, Tom B.)
A friend made a comment a few weeks ago indicating that those who are not Of the Bellows may have difficulty grasping the lingo of the box. "Yeah, yeah," I thought, "thus is the fate of squeeze-muggles." Then I read a sentence in another friend's accordion blog, and it shocked me into sympathy. Describing a sort of uber-box, Andy, at Melodeon Minutes wrote, "It was a Gaillard, 4-voice -- yes, 4-voice -- in D/G, tuned LM-MM+, with two switches behind the keyboard."
All I need is a black, Dino Baffetti two voice, MM+, three-row, F/Bb/Eb, americano-tuned accordion, two friends, and the truth
"Good Lord," I thought, envious, "That's quite a thing!" Then I imagined the uninitiated perusing that line (maybe the boys at Homeland Security) wondering, "What kind of thing?"
Then, in my own paean to the Hohner Corso, I found that I'd described the red, pearloid wonder as, "A wet tuned French-sounding box." Holy Cow! Is that even legal in New England?
So, what does it mean? With apologies to Andy, I've decided to use his exemplar sentence to explain some of the naming conventions of accordions.
4-voice: Button accordions -- aka, melodeons -- generally have more than one reed for each note. Each reed is a "voice." Two or three voices are normal. Four is extraordinary in a multi-row box because of the weight. Each voice requires an entirely separate bank of reeds.
In D/G: Button accordions are diatonic, meaning they are designed to play in specific keys, rather than all keys (like a piano). In this case, the outside row plays in the key of D, while the inside row (the one nearest the bellows) plays in the key of G. Different types of music have differently keyed accordions that are most common. English music tends to favor the D/G melodeon. French music the G/C. In Irish music, B/C and C#/D accordions are all the rage. There are fantastic exceptions to all of these generalizations.
Tuned LM-MM+: This means Low Medium-minus Medium Medium-plus. Is that clear? Back to the four voices. Each reed for a particular note is not tuned to the exact same pitch. Say that the note being tuned is A. The main reed will be tuned dead on pitch. This is the Medium reed. The Low reed will be tuned a full octave below, filling out the sound. The Medium-minus and Medium-plus will be tuned slightly above and slightly below the Medium reed, creating a sort of tension that is generally pleasing to the ear -- similar in function to vibrato for other musicians.
Two switches behind the keyboard: These allow you to turn on and off entire banks of reeds. So you can play all four reeds, or just the M reeds, or just the low reed. That it's a switch behind the keyboard makes it simple to, for example, throw open the flood gates and engage all the reeds the last time going through a tune, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Not that you'd actually do that, though. It would be vulgar.*
A wet tuned French-sounding box: So, back to the LM-MM+ thing. When tuning the reeds, the further apart the tuning, the "wetter" they are said to be. Some types of music call for a "dry" tuning, with the reeds tuned relatively close together -- Irish music, for example. Other types of music call for "wetter" tuning, French and other continental musics, for example. A demonstration (on a piano accordion) of dry to wet tuning is demonstrated in under two minutes in the below video.
So there you go. Suddenly it all makes sense, hey? Additional resources for this can be found at Melodeon.net, and Steve Dumpleton's excellent Voices and Tunings FAQ. Further questions, comments, or corrections are welcome. *This is sarcasm. I love vulgar.
