So-Called Scottish Tuning.

[Howie]

On my LMMM accordion the register you describe (one dot extreme left and one extreme right) does not sound the wettest.
Two reed M registers "dots" from mild to wettest are:
left and middle
left and right
middle and right

I haven't tried to work out whether left dot is flatter and right is sharper, that does seem logical. I just select the registers that work best for what I'm playing, I do change things up a lot.

And intuitively you might think that the MMM register would be wettest, but it sounds sweeter than the wettest two reed register. To my ears at least

 

[Shand79MorinoMan]

One thing I do know my ear finds most of the modern PA & CBAs' too harsh compared to my old Shand Morino, perhaps it is an age thing as far as I am concerned.. Is it too hard to say that I find their tuning quite aggressive?
Roy.

 

[maugein96]

Roy,

I believe we might have to draw attention to the fact that in the days before amplification, a couple of accordions would probably have struggled to cut through the din of a hall full of people at a ceilidh. Now I know next to nothing about the history of Scottish accordion, but would it not have been the case that a very strong musette tuning would have been required to do the job? If that were in fact the case then we're dealing with horses for courses.

In the days when they made them to double as implements capable of putting in fenceposts, all that extra bulk would perhaps have served to render a more mellow tone. In these days of the preference for lighter weight models, it seems that if you put the same reeds in a lighter shell you are going to have problems with sound quality. There are other posts on here discussing methods of quietening the bass side of a box down, but I have no idea if the theory behind it matches that suggestion.

The classical boys are used to playing in concert halls where the audience is seated, and they can perhaps make best use of all the subtle tones that the accordion is capable of, especially with amplification. Most classical instruments are only capable of producing one basic "tone", and it seems natural that classical players would want to steer clear of musette for that reason, if no other. The fact that they are able to change couplers makes for interesting variation, compared with other instruments.

A similar situation concerns jazz and other music which does not concern playing for dancers.

Therefore all the "dunts" and other techniques associated with communication with dancers are perhaps an alien concept to some members, as well as the requirement for very strong tuning. "Aggressive" is perhaps not a word I'd use, but I'm always mindful that the forum membership comprises people from many different countries, who may use different terminology to those of us north of Hadrian's Wall.

That is my theory, although I'm sure there is a lot more to it than that.

 

[Shand79MorinoMan]

:ch John, Thanks for your thoughts. When I said aggressive I was referring to the harshness of sound the of modern reeds coupled with the fact that nearly every band you hear these days at accordion and fiddle clubs seems to think that it is mandatory to have all amplification turned on full bore. The fact that this can be quite painful to the ears of the people listening seems to be totally lost on them. It is more than likely that if it were in a work place situation they would be closed down :hb

I do not know how many reed manufacturers there are left these days, but, there would not seem to be many.
I know the pace of life is now so much more faster & louder and everyone seems to shout when holding a conversation , this certainly does not help if like me you have two hearing aids, however when I am playing or just listening I usually turn them off or remove them because they amplify everything digitally and you loose the true sound of the acoustic instrument. That said, I know it is subjective but there are very few modern instruments that have an acceptable sound for me.
Another thought came to mind, 50/60 years ago recording equipment was not as complex as it is today when the engineer can highlight any instrument he/she favours, where as in years gone by what you heard on record or radio was what you got when you went to a dance in the village hall or grand ball.
I think that is enough ranting for now.
Roy. :ch :b {}

 

[rancoman]

Ewwwwww no that wouldn't be Scottish. It would sound like a wasp in a jar!

What we now call Scottish musette is relatively new - probably from the 1900's and the heyday of Scottish Dance music and Jimmy Shand - tuning was all done by ear because precise electronic tuning hadn't been invented,. so it was a tuning fork for the reeds on pitch and 'a wee bit flat' and 'a wee bit sharp' for the other two sets. 'A wee bit' was very much based on the ear and preference of the tuner.

I suspect that originally three sets of clarinet reeds were mainly to give more volume, as mics and PA systems had also yet to be invented. Sir Jimmy told me that, in the early days of radio broadcasting, there was a single recording mic, which hung from a beam on the recording stage, and no mixer desk - the lead accordion and fiddle sat close to the mic, second accordion next nearest, bass and piano out to one side and the drummer away at the back so he wasn't too loud.

I'm still learning a lot about other forms of musette tuning, but for Scottish, the flat and sharp reeds are deliberately not equally flat and sharp all the way up the keyboard - if I remember rightly, they are only a little off pitch at the extreme top and bottom, and a bit wider apart in the middle. That's because our ears hear the middle range more efficiently, apparently.

Using only the two sets of off-tuned reeds would produce a much stronger discord than if the middle reed was also used to smooth it out - maybe if the main musette tuning was not strong, the two-voice version would have a little more bite to it?

I rather suspect 'Scottish Musette' largely depends on the player. I'm sure if I picked up a classic French accordion with three voice musette I would make it sound Scottish by sheer incompetence, and if Yvette Horner or Emile Vacher had played my VERY Scottish Ranco, it would have sounded beautifully French.

 

[maugein96]

The fact remains that almost any musette tuned box supplied to the UK will probably have Scottish musette tuning in one form or another, unless otherwise specified, as that is what the manufacturers believe we are looking for. For example, the Italian firm Fisitalia offer their accordions with a choice of 6 basic tunings, and they are Swing, American, German, Italian, French, and Scottish. On the basis that there is no "English" musette tuning, then they simply assume that UK players will demand Scottish tuning, and it really is as simple as that. Those tunings apply regardless of whether there are two (MM) or three (MMM) reeds, and that causes an element of confusion. In instruments which only have two flute reeds it is relatively easy to work out their advertised tunings, as if we are talking in "cents" above normal pitch, swing starts about 2 cents and Scottish is somewhere about 23.5. The next "strong" tuning down the list is French at 20 cents.

Now, most French boxes only have 3 voices, and these are usually arranged LMM (bassoon and two flutes). The various styles of music they play tend to require that the high flute is a bit tame, and it will typically be less than 10 cents. Away from the three voice musette, which still has a following in France, "americain" has been the accepted standard French tuning for the majority of boxes since about 1950, and anything above 10 cents takes the tuning out of that category to "moderne". However, even that category does not go above 12 cents, and the reason for that is if you select what they call "plein jeu" or the master to we anglophones, then that register is going to sound pretty dire (to them) with the straight tuned bassoon and flute reeds being compromised by the sharp flute. It's just not their sound, is the best way to describe it.

French "musette pur" accordions are still made in the three voice version, and are most commonly found as MMM instruments. They tune them exactly the same as Scottish musette, i.e. one flat, one straight, and one sharp, but obviously the pitch difference tends to be narrower than Scottish tuned boxes, as is their preference. The fact that you can get very strong French musette and lighter Scottish musette gives the impression that the two are interchangeable, but I'm sure you guys are in a better position than I am to come to any conclusions on that score. All I can say is that Yvette Horner and Emile Vacher would possibly sound French on a Scottish tuned box with regard to technique, but to ears like mine I would probably detect something "foreign". There have always been French players who play pasos, South American, and everything else on full three voice musette, and Andre Verchuren made a fortune out of it. However, most of the big name professional players did not use three voice musette at all, and some of them dropped it out at some point in their careers. Others would make albums with a three voice "musette pur" box, then switch back and forward between that and "americain". At first I wouldn't listen to anything but "musette pur", but I eventually began to appreciate the "other" French tunings. With regard to the popularity of "musette pur" over "americain" it was probably a close run thing at times, and musette pur does seem to be making a comeback in France, although you wouldn't really think that when almost everything French we hear these days in the UK has connections to Galliano or Ludovic Beier, with not a three voice tune in any of their styles.

The mainstay of three voice musette has always been in the very north of France, where players like Verchuren, Aimable, and Edouard Duleu hailed from. Guys like Gus Viseur, Tony Murena, Marcel Azzola, Andre Astier, Joss Baselli, and Jo Privat literally "swung" a lot of players away from the musette pur style. Even Maurice Larcange, who made most of his money recording "musette pur" eventually changed over to "americain " and "moderne"

With regard to boxes which only have two voices, and which are common on the Continent, any tuning from swing to strong(ish) musette is possible. The fact that there is no register combination available other than two voice or single flute means the sharpness of the high flute is not so critical, and you'll often get such French instruments where the high reeds are "up" to maybe 16. They'll not usually get much higher than that as there is no third bank of flat tuned reeds to balance things out. I have such an instrument that sits between 14 and 15 cents, and wouldn't really want it any sharper than that. If Fisitalia supply boxes which have two flute reeds to Scottish tuning. i.e. one reed true pitch, and the other at 23.5 cents, then I don't think I'd want to be anywhere near it when it was being played! I suspect they only supply Scottish and the 20 cent version of French tuning on three voice musette.

When you actually bring those flattened reeds into play then that's where I have to stay in the league I'm in, as I have no real idea what little tricks the tuners do to get variations in Scottish, Irish, or any other three voice musette tuning. Jimmy Clinkscale imported a few instruments from Cavagnolo, Crucianelli, Maugein, and Piermaria in the late 70s/early 80s, and the majority of those had very strong three voice musette tuning, nearer Scottish than French. The very few ones (LMM) which never had musette tuning were referred to as "Paris tuned" by staff in the shop, with the caveat that you were about to buy something that "didn't sound right" to Scottish ears, and you would have a hell of a job getting rid of. However, even those boxes with only two flutes were tuned pretty wide, possibly to Jimmy's own specification. I don't think there were ever more than one or two in the Melrose shop at any given time.

In my experience most Scottish boxes usually come as LMMM with the musette tuning taking preference over everything else, even if that throws some of the single reed options way too sharp to be used with the basses. Sorry if this post had almost nothing to do with Scottish tuning, but I couldn't try to explain it any other way.

 

[boxplayer4000]

Scottish Tuning.
How can Scottish tuning be defined? For the sake of discussion I suggest it is based around A440 with about +24 cents and -22 cents. This is quite close to some forms of Continental musette tuning and the 24 cents is well below the 32 cents suggested by Mario Bruneau, the Canadian accordionist for some musettes.
A point not mentioned by some is that even if the + reed is 24 cents (wide by some standards) the speed of the musette is controlled by the - reed. ie. if the tuning is set at +24, 0, -22 this will sound quite different to +24, 0, -18.
Much of this thread talks about the Shand Morino accordion. It has, more than any come to typify the ’Scottish Sound’ with its clear, pronounced musette. My own feeling is that Jimmy Shand, who grew up on smaller, diatonic melodeons, not musette tuned, began to hear how 4 voice piano and 5 row button accordions were evolving with their LMMM set-up and felt attracted to that sound. Hence the evolution of the Shand Morino, a diatonic melodian with LMMM musette setting. The Shand Morino is accordion construction at its best and things certainly all came together in its design.
Like many smaller diatonics it has volume and projection belying its physical size ( a bit like some small infant children with sound levels in inverse proportion).

 

[donn]

Like many smaller diatonics it has volume and projection belying its physical size ( a bit like some small infant children with sound levels in inverse proportion).

Interesting how that works. I also think its interesting that the Scottish tuning is supposed to carry better, over other loud instruments. I guess I can see how it might be easier to pick out the accordion if its tone were distinguished by that characteristic warble ... though perhaps at some cost to the overall band sound.

 

[Shand79MorinoMan]

donn, I know I maybe biased but, a Shand Morino in a band gives it lift, swing and an overall great sound to dance to.
Roy. :lol: {} :ch :twisted:

 

[rancoman]

What a great thread! It's good to see so many people with excellent ideas, and we are teasing out what is really important and what isn't in creating the different sounds. Every day is a schoolday!

Interesting how often the Shand Morino comes up - Jimmy Shand was an extremely practical man, from a practical working background, and he would have used simple but clear logic when he designed it originally. He would start off by thinking 'what do I want to achieve?', then work out how to achieve it with the help of the experts in Hohner at that time.

I can imagine him thinking 'Top quality reeds, overall as small as possible (since he was brought up playing little melodeons), useful coupler combinations (for Scottish, of course) and so on. Then he would go to Hohner and their expert would be given the task of making the concept into reality.

Starting with the reeds and reed blocks, of course. So, the Hohner man would make the reeds and blocks, by trial and error, until he was satisfied with them, THEN build a body round that. Anyone who has had the pleasure of opening up a Shand Morino will know that there is NO spare space inside - every inch of space is crammed full of reed blocks. Possibly the case was even designed from the inside out, based on a group of reed blocks with the minimum clearance all round to allow the instrument to function.

Since the size of the accordion body and bellows in relation to the contents has a substantial effect on tone, and there was very little spare space, there would be little 'case' (or tone chamber) sound and more 'reed' sound. I have a feeling this contributes a LOT to the Shand Morino sound - more reed and less accordion?

With very few exceptions, originally accordion size would possibly have been based on the height needed to allow 41 piano keys of a reasonable size, and my gut instinct is that this size somehow became 'accordion size' and makers stuck to the standard size irrespective of the size of the contents inside. Exceptions included my own beloved Rancos and others with a body which is much shorter than the keyboard, where the keyboard fans out on leaving the case to 'full size'. I also see a lot of that in traditional older accordions - including some of the continental button accordions played by Vacher and Horner, etc. and this invariably produced a much clearer, less 'boxy' sound.

Quite wrong for jazz and many other types of music, but first class for their purpose, which was to be loud and clear in pre-amplification days.

I agree with the comments above on why we musette tuned as well - doing that would make it easier for our human ears to pick out the accordion from the rest of a lot of noise, whether musical or dancer-generated. Since the accordion was generally leading in melody in those days, that would be a big bonus.

Three identical reeds playing together will be three times as loud as a single reed - but no matter what the tuning, you cannot make them louder than 3x1. However, what you CAN do is make them more easily distinguished by our ears, and that is what musette tuning does. Same volume, but 'different' so it stands out from the rest of the sounds.

One final point - our ears are capable of distinguishing incredibly small and complicated harmonics. You only have to think of speaking with someone on a very crackly long distance phone call with poor transmission. Within a second of hearing the voice, we can distinguish that it is our brother or son, etc. - even though the words may be hard to make out.

I think this ability to record and register tiny harmonics plays a BIG part in what we are calling 'tone' here. I think we can register, although not necessarily realising what we are doing, such tiny differences as the difference between leather valves and the modern plastic ones (the plastic ones make the reed sound sharper by not absorbing tiny harmonics), the amount of 'boxiness' due to the size of the contents of the accordion, even the effect of different coatings on the pallets to airseal them (again because different materials absorb differing amounts of these minute harmonics.) The differences in reed quality, edge clearance, reed size and shape - all of those will be within the range we can register with our ears, even though we are perhaps not conscious of doing it.

All that does, really, is sum up wise comments from others - the 'tone' of an accordion is the sum of ALL the physical factors which go into producing the final sound, even the tiny ones we might not think would matter.

Having said all that, whether a tone is 'good' or 'bad' will still always be personal and subjective, based not only on the actual sound, but also on what WE think is good/bad, probably influenced by our personal musical backgrounds from childhood.

 

[Geoff de Limousin]

I notice that the Massimo Budriesi clip, above , shows a marked degree of Détaché playing. This came up in conversation with Tiennet Simonin last weekend when he played my LMMM accordeon, which I usually play with all voices on. Tiernnet imediately shut off the Basson, though he got plenty out of the three Musette voices ( which are zero, +20 and -25 cents at the A 440hz point)... It would appear that 3 voice Musette is popular in the Auvergne region ( perhaps a revolt against the Segurel sound ?) When I said I prefered the strong musette when it was mellowed with a good dose of basson he said that the sour effects of the musette are usually avoided by playing the notes quite short... not quite Staccato .

If you have not come across Tiennet Simonin, easily found on Youtube, he is one of the younger generation playing Traditional French music ( Folk if you like) and well worth a listen.