No real answer other than... it depends. Depends on the song and depends on the player. There is nothing stopping anyone from doing anything they want.
Playing classical with stradella bass?
- Thread starter Beemer
- Start date
Depends what you mean by "satisfactorily". Generally I'd say no, stradella can too often end up sounding heavy with all the refinement a 1970s bontempi home chord organ.
I've never quite understood the mystique around free bass. I personally find it a lot easier than stradella because it makes your left and right hand equal partners and the keyboard is a mirror image.
Here is an example that just is not the same on Stradella because the bass line really lives from the octave jumps:
Mediocre player, free bass.
Here is an actually good player with Stradella:
Wonderful melody play, but there just is a hole in the bass part. Of course it is harmonically the same (an octave jump is not a change in harmony). But the bass is no longer Bach in a way: with Bach, every note in every voice counts, and suddenly it doesn't. The bass is no longer playing hopscotch but walking straight and haltingly.
Mediocre player, free bass.
Here is an actually good player with Stradella:
Wonderful melody play, but there just is a hole in the bass part. Of course it is harmonically the same (an octave jump is not a change in harmony). But the bass is no longer Bach in a way: with Bach, every note in every voice counts, and suddenly it doesn't. The bass is no longer playing hopscotch but walking straight and haltingly.
Siegmund
Well-known member
Well, some of us learned accordion specifically because we weren't up to having our two hands be equal partners, and needed a "1 hand doing something interesting, the other hand on autopilot using only one or two fingers" instrument...
Malaroda plays quint converter and he is in freebass mode here (he is often playing notes on the 3rd row in that video), just choosing not to leap between octaves. It does sound different with the leaps missing.
He is often playing notes in the 3rd row and never in the 4th row. In connection with the sounding notes, this does not look like a quint converter to me but rather a 3+3 Stradella layout, typical for French or Italian instruments. I don't think I have seen mushroom buttons on the bass side for converter instruments either: again, for whatever reason they are encountered often in connection with 3+3 layout (I do have a 2+4 Morino Artiste VID though with mushroom buttons).
Siegmund
Well-known member
It may be some other more exotic type of converter, and if so it's quite possible it is 3+3 when in Stradella mode.
But it has the register-switches of a Mengascini converter, and on their Artists page they say he plays a "custom melody bass" (while the choice of 3+3 or 2+4, and of B or C system converter, is an off the rack option: I don't think "just" a 3+3 with C system 3 outer rows would be called custom.)
Well, I have no idea what this thing will do in converter mode (or whether it actually is in some weird converter mode), but as it is played in this piece, it looks like he is playing the 3 bass rows from a 3+3 layout and I don't think I hear more than an octave of range. The octave that I hear does sound fairly defined (not untypical for a single octave from a quint converter) and not like the full pedal-bass hearalike of a Stradella bass in Master. But it does not sound to me like there is more than an octave of it in play, and the fingering does not look to me like it is octave-sensitive.
I think that would be unusual enough to be called "custom". From the overall pitch I still think we are more likely hearing a high Stradella register than the "pedal octave" in a converter register, but if one has a 3+3 Stradella, I think nothing but a 3+3 converter is feasible mechanically and musically (and after all, I get along well enough with just 3 rows of free bass, so 3 rows in C system would be a playable layout).
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I have played this with Stradella in the past. You need to circumvent the Stradella limitation by using chords (containing the higher octave as well as completing the chords). This way you not only play the octaves but in some sense add a "continuo" as well. Actually you don't really play the higher octaves because you also need to play chords that don't have that note.
For instance, you start with D, Dmajor, C#, Dmajor, B, B minor, A, B minor, etc.
I still have a handwritten score that goes this way, but it is in C major, like the violin exercise Air on the G-string, not in D major like the original orchestral suite. See https://www.de-bra.nl/144.pdf
(This version was written in 1978 with the second voice added in 1979... and was my first arrangement, made shortly before I became conductor of the accordion group in Antwerp. The print isn't very good as in that era we had to write on special paper from which a print office could then make "copies".)
We played this also as duo, hence the two pages of the score.
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Well, I had to actually play it before slamming it, and to give credit where credit is due, it works way better than I expected it to, given the description.
[Big footnote:] If I were to play it on my MIDIfied Excelsior, it would suffer from "Jazz chord vertigo": acoustic accordions couple the bass notes into the chord reeds for reinforcement, and since in MIDI the chords are in a different channel and more often than not a completely different instrument, you don't want that. But since the levers generating the MIDI signals for chord notes don't have springs separate from the pallets, they are then free to fall forward(?) and trigger the chord note. There are two mechanisms for avoiding that: one is MIDI firmware that will not generate chords before 3 notes are present, one is a mechanical holdback that does have a spring and will hold back all the chord levers for the MIDI together, meaning that once you press any chord button, this holdback is deactivated. So when chord buttons are pressed together with a bass button opening a chord reed pallet not already in the chords, the corresponding chord reed MIDI is free to come in at any time it pleases (including not at all which would be the desired behavior). [End of big footnote]
It works and, due to bass line being largely independent from the chords, not in the Oom-Pah manner I feared. However, it works in a way similar to how piano accompaniments to the Bach solo violin sonatas work, filling in precisely chiseled and choreographed lithography of a harmonic framework with watercolors (which is better than the crayons I had anticipated). Too much information for me.
Now make no mistake: it works, and I have to give you credit for that. But in contrast to the original bass line zigzag (and the missing voices) it feels to me like the harmonic equivalent of a laugh track. It tells me how I should be hearing the harmonies and turns the polyphony of the original with its concerting voices into a voice-and-accompaniment thing. You call it «in some sense add a "continuo" as well». And that's more Händel than Bach to me (and the approach that the Rokoko and Romantic composers took up with regard to melody/harmony even while not continuing the notational practice of a continuo).
Long rant short: this is one of the pieces for which the limitations of the Stradella bass result in a turnoff for my listening experience. Even when it is taken on in as competent a manner as your arrangement illustrates. The Air is one piece that I don't want to view through the bass/chord (or quite plain continuo) lens that a Stradella bass is confined to.
I fully understand: the use of chords makes the whole piece sound much less like Bach. As a compromise I still like it more than just playing base notes and ignoring the octave jumps in the original, but the chords fit "modern classic" music, but do not fit Bach. I guess there is no real solution without using melody bass...
Walker
🪗
A big YES to the 'Air on a G String'...
I really like that recording by Bruno Maurice on B system bayan (an 'Appassionata'). It sounds silky, full bodied and gloriously sophisticated. Along with Galliano's Victoria, it's got to be one of the stellar CBAs.
You know, even back to my early childhood days in the '80s, I recall that smooth, mild, theme tune to the Hamlet cigar TV adverts. They were brilliant and often quite funny. The phrase 'happiness is a cigar called Hamlet' has never faded from my memory... goes to show the power of marketing, even though it's total nonsense.
On that tune (BWV 1068), I definitely prefer the free bass version to the standard bass alternatives that are 'close, but no cigar'. Still, on other pieces, I really like the standard bass version over free bass. True, free bass systems will often afford the opportunity for more faithful transcriptions. However, one should be careful not to overstate the benefits of free bass. For example, I don't think it's entirely correct to say free bass means 'having our two hands be equal partners'. I think regardless of free bass system, the left hand is at a significant disadvantage to the right hand. Other keyboard instruments, like piano, offer 'equality' to the hands in a way that the accordion simply doesn't.
I really like that recording by Bruno Maurice on B system bayan (an 'Appassionata'). It sounds silky, full bodied and gloriously sophisticated. Along with Galliano's Victoria, it's got to be one of the stellar CBAs.
You know, even back to my early childhood days in the '80s, I recall that smooth, mild, theme tune to the Hamlet cigar TV adverts. They were brilliant and often quite funny. The phrase 'happiness is a cigar called Hamlet' has never faded from my memory... goes to show the power of marketing, even though it's total nonsense.
On that tune (BWV 1068), I definitely prefer the free bass version to the standard bass alternatives that are 'close, but no cigar'. Still, on other pieces, I really like the standard bass version over free bass. True, free bass systems will often afford the opportunity for more faithful transcriptions. However, one should be careful not to overstate the benefits of free bass. For example, I don't think it's entirely correct to say free bass means 'having our two hands be equal partners'. I think regardless of free bass system, the left hand is at a significant disadvantage to the right hand. Other keyboard instruments, like piano, offer 'equality' to the hands in a way that the accordion simply doesn't.
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Funnily, on a piano converter accordion, the purportedly strong right hand has a maximum of 45 notes at its disposal (and we are talking humongous instruments here) while the left hand gets 58 notes to work with. My CBA converter is more balanced with 62 vs 60 notes. It is true that the right hand keyboard even on a CBA is quite favored (the harmoneon tries to set up things more fairly), but even there quite often the left hand gets a larger range (the classical full-size bayan setup however has 64 treble notes vs 58 converter notes).
craigd
Active member
So is it fair to say that we've reached the conclusion that basically no, the stradella is not adequate for musicians who wish to play classical music? Makes me wonder why we bother with convertors at all. They are heavier, bulkier, more complex. I have a Giullietti piano accordion with only free-bass, significantly lighter than my instrument with convertor. Since players of authentic scores or fully realized transcriptions would never use stradella, why bother heaving it around?
No? There is some music that you cannot do justice with Stradella, music that has not been written for accordion. But there is some ensemble or organ music that you cannot play adequately even using a free bass. The answer for basically every other instrument that you wish to play classical music on is to get a classical composer to write for it. One advantage of a free bass is that you are free of the melody/chord paradigm. But there is music fitting that paradigm: try playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" and you get oom-pah low octavated bass notes alternating with straight chords in the accompaniment. That's actually quite easier to play on the accordion than on the piano it has been written for, without leaving out anything.
Try "The Entertainer"'s left hand on converter rather than on Stradella, and you'll withdraw the question…
craigd
Active member
That's a good attempt at an answer, but I am not withdrawing the question!
Because I don't think that's the full answer. In fact I think if you try to play ragtime piano on any accordion, you'll set the instrument aside and go to the piano. Preferably an old upright, in a saloon in the red light district.
Doesn't that argument apply for any music not originally written for accordion? Like almost all of classical music apart from exotics like Hindemith's lament for accordion and viola?
craigd
Active member
Well, I'm not recommending you go to the saloon to play Bach or Beethoven. Kidding aside, Ragtime is such a percussive rhythmic thing that I've never heard it played with that feel on accordion. Unless someone cleverly smacks their instrument, I don't think it can be done. Joplin does have some beautiful melodies, and I like to pick them out on my accordion, but if stradella falls short for Baroque music, it' certainly also falls short for rag time
Siegmund
Well-known member
"Adequate" is a rather loaded word. It implies the "right" use of the instrument is playing transcriptions of a certain kind of keyboard music that requires melody bass.
You might just as well say that a Beethoven-sized symphony orchestra is "not adequate" because you can't play Mahler with only 2 horns instead of 8. What many orchestras really do is have enough permanent musicians on staff to play Beethoven-sized music, and hire extra temporary help when they want to play Mahler or Strauss or Wagner, rather than keeping a 120-person "instrument" on the payroll and only using half of it 80% of the time.
When we put a converter in Stradella mode, or we play a Stradella or even a diatonic even though we have a freebass in the closet, we are doing the same thing - carrying around just as much instrument as we need today and no more.
It turns out there is a lot of classical music that lends itself very well to Stradella. Have a look at a popular violin showpiece, Sarasate's Romanza Andaluza: if I had a converter, I would play the first 36 bars in Stradella mode, use the converter for 16 bars, and go back to Stradella again. If I didn't have a converter, I think I would prefer to play it all on Stradella and simplify bars 37-52 (and some other passages later on), rather than play it all in freebass mode. (As it happens, I spent a while this past fall arranging it for Stradella, but haven't had time to get any good at playing it yet. I might add that it's vastly easier on accordion, even playing both accompaniment and melody, than it is on violin, because accordions don't much care what octave they are in, and can more easily play two notes at the same time that violins can.)
You might just as well say that a Beethoven-sized symphony orchestra is "not adequate" because you can't play Mahler with only 2 horns instead of 8. What many orchestras really do is have enough permanent musicians on staff to play Beethoven-sized music, and hire extra temporary help when they want to play Mahler or Strauss or Wagner, rather than keeping a 120-person "instrument" on the payroll and only using half of it 80% of the time.
When we put a converter in Stradella mode, or we play a Stradella or even a diatonic even though we have a freebass in the closet, we are doing the same thing - carrying around just as much instrument as we need today and no more.
It turns out there is a lot of classical music that lends itself very well to Stradella. Have a look at a popular violin showpiece, Sarasate's Romanza Andaluza: if I had a converter, I would play the first 36 bars in Stradella mode, use the converter for 16 bars, and go back to Stradella again. If I didn't have a converter, I think I would prefer to play it all on Stradella and simplify bars 37-52 (and some other passages later on), rather than play it all in freebass mode. (As it happens, I spent a while this past fall arranging it for Stradella, but haven't had time to get any good at playing it yet. I might add that it's vastly easier on accordion, even playing both accompaniment and melody, than it is on violin, because accordions don't much care what octave they are in, and can more easily play two notes at the same time that violins can.)
Walker
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Hey craigd, these are interesting thoughts to explore...
I'm of the opinion that the standard bass system is the nearest thing we have to a 'universal' system on the accordion and a lot of classical accordion is very good on it. I think it is important for the system to remain present on both traditional (standard bass) and classical (free bass) instruments and not be replaced with something else.
However, some folk become so fixated on one aspect of the repertoire, perhaps some classical obsession or other, that it leads to a fixation on free bass. Eventually they start to think, free bass alone is the way forward. It leads to them wanting to separate themselves from the wider community of accordionists. We then hear things said like, 'all free bass CBAs should be called bayans and not accordions' or 'we need to get rid of stradella accordion', or 'we need to get rid of all the systems bar one'. Hmm... but which one?
Think of all the wonderful Quint free bass accordions in the USA and the marvellous players in America and Italy and New Zealand etc. Without stradella bass there is no Quint free bass, because Quint is derived solely from stradella (standard) bass design. Quint is the unfurling of stradella bass over multiple octaves. Think about all those marvellous Titano Cosmo's and the guys like Dr. William Popp who dedicate themselves to the instrument, and compose extensively for both standard bass and free bass accordion.
Also, think of all those marvellous Hohner's with MIII free bass. Morino and Gola and others clearly thought stradella mattered enough that it would be there alongside free bass. Some of the very best accordions ever made were MIIIs, and some of the best accordionists in the world play MIIIs.
Think of all the chromatic converters with the inner two rows of basses in stradella formation. Without stradella bass there would no longer be these rows available to 'rescue' the chromatic converter player when it's ergonomic foibles means the player has to play on the outer edges of the accordion to reach the lowest bass notes (the bellows control often gets a little ropey at that point). What do they do... they jump ship to the stradella bass octave - though you rarely hear a word said about it!
If accordion manufacturers stopped making standard bass accordions and converters, within a couple of generations the accordion would likely go the way of the harmonium... and the dinosaurs. What would we be left with? An empty forum, with a few eccentric harmoneon or free bass only enthusiasts perpetuating the myth of how their hands are 'equal partners'.
I'm of the opinion that the standard bass system is the nearest thing we have to a 'universal' system on the accordion and a lot of classical accordion is very good on it. I think it is important for the system to remain present on both traditional (standard bass) and classical (free bass) instruments and not be replaced with something else.
However, some folk become so fixated on one aspect of the repertoire, perhaps some classical obsession or other, that it leads to a fixation on free bass. Eventually they start to think, free bass alone is the way forward. It leads to them wanting to separate themselves from the wider community of accordionists. We then hear things said like, 'all free bass CBAs should be called bayans and not accordions' or 'we need to get rid of stradella accordion', or 'we need to get rid of all the systems bar one'. Hmm... but which one?
Think of all the wonderful Quint free bass accordions in the USA and the marvellous players in America and Italy and New Zealand etc. Without stradella bass there is no Quint free bass, because Quint is derived solely from stradella (standard) bass design. Quint is the unfurling of stradella bass over multiple octaves. Think about all those marvellous Titano Cosmo's and the guys like Dr. William Popp who dedicate themselves to the instrument, and compose extensively for both standard bass and free bass accordion.
Also, think of all those marvellous Hohner's with MIII free bass. Morino and Gola and others clearly thought stradella mattered enough that it would be there alongside free bass. Some of the very best accordions ever made were MIIIs, and some of the best accordionists in the world play MIIIs.
Think of all the chromatic converters with the inner two rows of basses in stradella formation. Without stradella bass there would no longer be these rows available to 'rescue' the chromatic converter player when it's ergonomic foibles means the player has to play on the outer edges of the accordion to reach the lowest bass notes (the bellows control often gets a little ropey at that point). What do they do... they jump ship to the stradella bass octave - though you rarely hear a word said about it!
If accordion manufacturers stopped making standard bass accordions and converters, within a couple of generations the accordion would likely go the way of the harmonium... and the dinosaurs. What would we be left with? An empty forum, with a few eccentric harmoneon or free bass only enthusiasts perpetuating the myth of how their hands are 'equal partners'.
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It's not just about "jumping ship": organ music often requires a pedal bass. The two Stradella rows provide the bass octave notes in the vicinity of the four rows used for playing the second organ manual in whatever position, and often with additional octaves/strength compared to the version you have in the bass octave of the free bass manual (due to chord reed coupling that may admittedly steal notes from the converter manual).
