Why are those high notes present on CBA?

[maugein96]

In a recent post member Donn passed comment on the relative merits of CBAs having M reeds that went way into the upper octaves. I dont really know the answer to that, but some old school players certainly made good use of them.

Here is a clip of Emile Prudhomme doing just that:-



Then talking of polkas and high registers, Ill move onto Adolphe Deprince, from Mechelen/Malines in Belgium. Apres lOrage (After the Thunderstorm) is one of the old style polkas that tended to be more popular in Belgium and the north of France. Adolphe Deprince was perhaps the Polka King and although this one doesnt go particularly high, he was extremely good at playing way up there.

 

[debra]

In a recent post member Donn passed comment on the relative merits of CBAs having M reeds that went way into the upper octaves. I don't really know the answer to that, but some old school players certainly made good use of them.
...

These clips go high but I believe not higher than the highest notes on a 41-key PA. That goes up to a high A. A "small" CBA will go up to Cis (having 46 notes), and a larger one up to E (58 notes) or G (64 notes), thus almost an octave higher.

Only the M reeds go up that high. The H reeds typically only go up to Cis (so that just fits the 46-note keyboards. Once you go above that the H reeds turn into M reeds. And on some accordions you don't even reach Cis with the H reeds.

The main reason CBAs go up very high and down very low is to have a large range without needing to change registers. I can go up to the high G in LM (both in cassotto) without the need to switch to MH which has H not in cassotto and thus has a different timbre. And I can go down to E one octave lower than a 46-key accordion so in MH with H not in cassotto I can go down to where other accordions need LM with different timbre again.

So it is not the M that is important, it is the ability to go very high in L or LM and very low in H or MH.

 

[maugein96]

Hi Paul,

As usual I couldn't get exactly what I was looking for on You Tube, and those were definitely not the best examples of what I was trying to describe.

I have a MMM 120 bass Cavagnolo where the lowest flute reeds sound like bassoon, so I appreciate what you are telling me there. If I ever find an example of ultra high stuff on CBA I'll post it, but it would probably only run to a couple of bars.

 

[Morne]

There are some older style concert bayans that go up to 67 treble (and extra repeats on the bass = 150 buttons). They are dry tuned, 2 voice (MM) without any register switches and theyve got large multi-reed plates. As far as Ive seen, many of the older bayans did not have register switches, so this would have been how they got the total L-M-H range on a comparable PA.

 

[maugein96]

Thanks for that Morne. That's a lot of treble notes and I suppose the music style doesn't really require register changes anyway.

I knew an old professional player who had his Fratelli Crosio CBA adapted so that it sounded something like a bayan, and it would have cost him a lot of money, but I never heard him play it. He had tried to find a bayan in C system, but couldn't manage it (going back to the late 80s). He played professionally in Scotland and France, and enjoyed Russian folk tunes as a means of relaxation away from his pro repertoire.

Russian music has inspired a lot of people to start playing, and is fast becoming one of the most common music styles in media like You Tube.

 

[debra]

I knew an old professional player who had his Fratelli Crosio CBA adapted so that it sounded something like a bayan, and it would have cost him a lot of money, but I never heard him play it. He had tried to find a bayan in C system, but couldn't manage it (going back to the late 80s). He played professionally in Scotland and France, and enjoyed Russian folk tunes as a means of relaxation away from his pro repertoire.

Some really famous players (like Alexandr Dmitriev and some others) have CBAs that say "Pigini" but that have had bayan reeds (and reed plates) fitted to create a hybrid of Italian mechanics (supposedly better than Russian mechanics) with Russian reeds to produce bayan sound. On one of the Jupiter sites in the photo gallery you can also see bayan reed plates being mounted in a Bugari PA.
Whether these hybrids sound like a bayan is not entirely decided, but they do at least have the essential bayan parts: larger, more rectangular reeds instead of smaller trapezoidal reeds that are typical in Italian accordions. But things are coming together: especially the larger accordion reeds are nowadays also almost rectangular in Italian accordions and piccolo reeds in bayans are becoming trapezoidal... still, the sound is distinctly different and I have yet to see a hybrid that really sounds like one or the other.