Some possibilities:
Double Bassoon Jazz Accordion
- Thread starter 96Bass
- Start date
32251
Active member
What makes that a “jazz” sound?
I am afraid not. It was improvised solemn music. I cannot remember a bit of it, and I suspect that it was fully worthy of getting buried alongside.
96Bass
Well-known member
I'm not sure who came up with the double bassoon reed but it caught on with jazz accordionists. There are several manufacturers that make a "jazz"model, double bassoon being the common factor. There is a recent thread on this forum where a member purchased a "Van Damme" model accordion having double bassoon. Art Van Damme was a very famous jazz accordionist.
Please help
Can someone tell me the details of this Excelsior Symphony Gold. When it was produced and the significance of Art Van Damme's plate on the back.
www.accordionists.info
Dingo40
Been here for ages!
Ventura
Been here for ages!
What makes a jazz accordion a jazz accordion….
What makes a jazz accordion is when it is played by Art VanDamme.
www.accordionists.info
Nothing specific makes a jazz sound. But you do see a lot of jazz accordion players use the L register (in cassotto) because it has the nicest sound. The problem with using the L register is that on a standard piano accordion you can only go up to A5, and to circumvent that special jazz acccordions were made that instead of going from F3 to A6 in the M register go from G3 up to C7, which gives you C6 in the L register. The missing lower notes are not a problem as I see jazz players rarely play very low notes.
The real problem is: why to the jazz players not simply use the M register, also in cassotto, so they can make do with a standard 41-key accordion? (Frank Marocco was a famous jazz player who just used the standard 41-key keyboard.)
The reason (with PA) is that in the M register the sound differs "too much" between the white and the black keys, whereas in the L register all notes have very similar sound. There are a few accordions that sound nicer in M than L (the Hohner Morino and Gola and Scandalli Super VI sound really nice in the M register). For the cases where you then want to use an MM register with the nicest sound you need... an LL register. So rather than fixing the problem with the sound difference between white and black keys (or really, the sound difference between the two blocks in cassotto) accordion manufacturers started making accordions with LL and/or accordions with extended keyboards (up to high C).
Well, for solo performances you could play it a row in and hope that nobody in the audience has absolute pitch.
Ventura
Been here for ages!
when Paul explains the physics of these fine points even i (think) i understand !
now on to the less quantifiable reasons..
not just for Jazz, but also players who use their treble like Vocalists use their voice,
we want a really clean, sweet, and pure tone that carries with great dynamics
(as opposed to raw boldness and volume)
and we like that tone to be rich.. more than a solo M or solo L..
but the OPPOSITE of Musette
so our L+L and M+M are tuned in unison, or damn close to it..
some of us, like on my 960, have all 3 M-McM+ reedsets basically tuned unison
(mine is an LMMMH configuration)
AND then there is the touch
we need it to be light and responsive, ridiculously quick, so
you are talking about high-end accordions that are built with dual pivot
rods and walnut bodied keys and hand tweaked balancing and springs
and SHARPLY CUT AND TRIMMED valve pads over the reedblock plate
this also implies an action mechanism that has near zero lateral play,
which goes back to the Pivot not merely being low-friction, but also
being quite robust
when those Jazz players are flying, the keys are barely depressed but
the sound has to still be perfect, so the airflow must be perfect too. Precision,
with that minimal lift of the pad off the hole.. and the buiider/finisher
needs to do this with a split Cassotto keyaction, meaning two points
where the pressure and pads must mate then lift perfectly in an absolute
harmony of motion
so you can say sure, a good accordionist CAN play Jazz on a student LMH,
and they probably can.. for a minit just for giggles and grins.. but when some faker
calls some piece of crap he sorta fixed up a Jazz or Pro accordion on their Reverb listing,
and it doesn't make the grade, people just gonna laugh at him because we know
which ones were built the right way and which ones were not
and those who do not play "Jazz" or need that level of touch, let them play
a real Super6 one time and they will understand what a difference that
level of quality makes.. let them squeeze a real AC one time and they will
never forget what it felt like.. how it almost plays itself..
what is a Jazz accordion ?
simply the best, with the cleanest, purest, sweetest sound imaginable
inspiring to play
rock solid reliable
something you treasure if you are lucky enough to get your hands on one
Good idea, except for one detail... I have absolute pitch...
I have once played it already, but for that I entered everything in Musescore and transposed it. I transposed it down from G to Eb in order to play it on the bass accordion. I wanted to keep it as high as possible but still reach the highest notes. As my bass accordion goes up to Eb4 in the L register (the only bass accordion I know that has registers and goes up to Eb4) it just fit (with lower notes to spare).
That's almost funny. Without absolute pitch, G to E♭ on a CBA is a transposition that can happen by accident. I've done that intentionally for a few pieces (to check out where the accordion timbre is best accommodated: that can differ to the original instrumentation) and it works reasonably well for me. You just have to avoid getting confused by marked buttons and must watch out for large jumps which your hands are likely to do in "absolute pitch".
A very nice description, not of what a jazz accordion needs to be but what generally every high quality accordion needs to be, whether it is used for jazz or classical or baroque...
It is the care (and time) that goes into making the finest accordions, making sure every key has the same touch, every note is voiced to achieve the best possible response without choking, and everything tuned to perfection... that distinguishes the top notch accordions from the bulk of the accordions on the market. A top notch accordion with a nice dry-tuned MM sound doesn't need a (dry-tuned) LL register at all. A friend of mine got talked into buying a (new) accordion with LLMM (one of each in cassotto). I found it disappointing, mainly because the manufacturer failed to get the tuning of both L reed sets absolutely right in the lowest octave. L reeds are hard to get right in any case (as especially on push the frequency tends to drop a bit) and two L's, one in cassotto and one outside... very hard to get that right.
For me the accordions I have are "good enough", and I can make the recordings for my arrangements with them. But if I were a pro player, none of my accordions would be "good enough", even after the countless hours I already spent on improving them.
And I have worked on many accordions by now and have come to realize which are made with more care and which are not. When an accordion was made with some reed plate positioned incorrectly so either the inside reed doesn't play or the inside valve rubs against the side wall of the resonance chamber, or when the leathers are not protected against getting caught in the bellow folds, or low L reeds hit the next reed block or the bellows frame... I know that quality control was lacking. Basically the only accordion I ever worked on that I wouldn't mind owning was a Gola 459. (But sadly it's a PA and not CBA...)
