Who invented the button accordion

With the chromatic range of a violin, English concertinas were intended for playing Classical music and became fashionable during the Victorian era. London, c. Wheatstone was not only a physicist and manufacturer but also carried on a publishing business.

Soon after , he published an instruction book for the duet concertina and 12 books of arrangements of popular music to promote the introduction of this model. The symphonium features two characteristics of his concertina: the same notes at pressure and suction, and alternative distribution of the diatonic tones to the right and left hand C is for the right hand, D for the left, E for the right hand, etc.

The chromatic tones are the buttons of the outer row. The two groups of 12 buttons on each side produce a chromatic range from c1 to d3 lacking d 1.

The form of the instrument recalls a sheng without pipes. Accordions and concertinas were introduced to Latin America in the 19th century by German immigrants.

Modern mariachis and banda groups often include accordions. Tex-Mex repertoire consists equally of these regional folk dances and of European forms like the waltz, polka, and schottische, all of which call for accordion. Around , the instrument appeared in Argentina and was adopted into milonga and tango musics. By , they were produced expressly for the Argentine and Uruguayan markets, with 25, shipping to Argentina in alone.

The instrument is also popular in Lithuanian folk music. Accordions are free-reed instruments consisting of pairs of pre-tuned metal reeds now usually steel riveted to metal plates now usually aluminum alloy. The plates are glued into a long reed-box projecting into the bellows, and reeds vibrate when air flows first over the reed, then through the slot on the plate.

Air flowing in the opposite direction merely bends the reeds without vibrating them. For keyboard accordions, the left hand provides continuo bass notes and chords , while the right adds melody and additional accompaniment. Most modern accordions also have leather or plastic flaps over the air slots to prevent loss of pressure.

Register knobs and tabs on the outside move slides to engage or close additional ranks of reeds; these may be marked by a code of two horizontal lines with a dot signifying normal pitch or octave displacement, depending on its position. Single-action Single-action instruments include the melodeon and the British chromatic accordion. Each melody button controls a pair of reeds usually adjacent notes of a scale , so a scale can be accomplished with only four buttons C, E, G on the press and D, F, A, B on the draw.

This is the original action of the earliest accordions and is similar to that of mouth-blown harmonicas. Double action instruments such as the piano accordion and the Continental chromatic accordion favor music with a more complex, sweeping character, as each pair of reeds gives the same note, regardless of the way the bellows move.

Shortly after clockmaker Matthias Hohner established his harmonica and accordion firm in , he shipped some to American relatives. Hohner pioneered the use of machine-punched reed covers and mass-produced wooden combs. Harmonicas free-reed adaptations of the accordion reed plate system became popular on both sides of the Atlantic. The Accordion is a bellows-driven, free reed, aerophone musical instrument. For many years it was tied to traditional folk dancing, but it has undergone an evolution that actually began at the time of its inception and which has continued to this day, gaining widespread popularity as it has become known and played all over the world.

In the year Leonardo da Vinci designed a musical instrument that was very similar to an accordion; it had a double-action bellows with a vertical keyboard for the right hand and the sound was produced by flattened pipes made of paper or very thin wood.

Many European immigrants to America brought their musical instruments with them. The Concertina was invented in by Sir Charles Wheatstone, English engineer, physicist and inventor. It is a chromatic, unisonoric instrument, each button produces a single note, whether the bellows is opened or closed. Generally it has 48 buttons which are positioned, half on one end and half on the other, following alternate scales, like the notes on a pentagram. On one side, the buttons correspond to the notes on the lines and on the other, to the notes in the spaces; the center rows of buttons play the natural notes and the outer rows, the accidental ones.

The chromatic accordion is the direct descendant of the accordion invented by Cyril Demien in the early s. On both sides of the instrument round buttons activate the internal mechanisms which allow sound to be produced. The regal, later termed the Bible regal because of its wide use in churches, was the next step along this line. It had a keyboard, one or two sets of bellows, and, unlike the accordion and other open-reed instruments, close beating oboe-like reeds. This instrument eventually lost popularity due to a tendency to go out of tune too easily.

It was frequently used for accompanying madrigal singers, between the 15th and 18th centuries. There were actually many varieties of the free-vibrating reed instrument developed during the early s. Some of them are still quite well known today. Heinrich Band of Krefeld, Germany, invented the bandoneon in ; this square-shaped instrument, played by pressing finger buttons is popular with Argentine tango bands.

That same year Alexandre Debain finished his harmonium in Paris. In this pipeless organ commonly found in churches and households until the advent of electric organs in the s air is passed to the reed blocks via foot-operated bellows.

In some early models a second person was required to pump air into the instrument through bellows attached to the rear of the keyboard. Early Literature As the renowned for accordions grew, so did a demand for instruction manuals. The first such textbook, featuring both original music and arrangements of familiar pieces, was written by A.

Reisner and published in Paris in Another tutorial volume, Pichenot's Methode pour l'accordeon, appeared later that year. In Adolph Muller published his instructional book in Vienna, and since then the music market has sustained a flood of similar programs, with about 30 titles published during the s alone. Additionally, early accordions, like the bandoneon and, for that matter, the harmonica that exists today, produced different notes on the press and draw of the bellows.

Thus, if the C key were pressed to produce that note on the opening of the bellows, the note D might sound when the bellows were closed. These instruments are characterised as diatonic, and the pitch of their notes was determined by the placement of the keys and the reeds by each maker.

The chromatic accordion, which produced the same note on the press and the draw of the bellows, came into use in when an accordionist named Walter requested that one be custom-built for him. His model, incidentally, also featured 12 bass buttons, cleverly arranged so that all 12 key signatures could be accommodated. One interesting development from this period was the appearance of what subsequently became known as the Schrammel accordion, first used in with a quartet comprising an accordion, two violins, and bass guitar.