Play the piano so which one to buy for easiest entry?

[lckt13]

I thank one and all for this valuable information.

[ceemonster]

[is the layout of the basses on a piano accordion any easier to learn than [insert favorite concertina system here]?]

 

vastly. no comparision. there is a learning curve to being able to manipulate them easily and hit the right button without being able to look at them, but it has more to do with the weird ergonomics of these long rows vertical to your hands, not with difficulty in learning the layout....

 

for the op:

 

you might also check in at www.melodeon.net. they are very nice folks with tons of info and discussions about accordions. they are centered to bisonorics, but their forums include an "Other Instruments" section with chat about PAs and other beasts.......

 

also, the "Chiff & Fipple" website, which centers on pipes, whistle, and i think flute, features a "squeezeboxes" section that sometimes has interesting fauna & flora....

[inventor]

1) Regards the Jeffries Duet system mentioned much earlier as a common system. In fact it is a very uncommon system indeed; Crane & Hayden Duets are much more common.

2) [is the layout on the basses on a piano accordion any easier to learn than (insert favourite concertina system here)?] If as Dirge has done you inserted "Maccann" then it is true "hugely no comparison"! However the chording on a Crane Duet is not at all difficult. Chording on an English Concertina is quite easy, however playing melody and piano-accordion type bass together is quite difficult. On Anglo Concertinas the home keys are quite easily accompanyed, however you may have to play the melody quite high on the right hand side or cope with the melody invading the left hand side at the same time as you are accompaning on the left. Outside the home keys things become increasingly more difficult and some chords are only partially available. Jeffries duets are probably nearly as difficult the Maccann, however they are as mentioned above very uncommon.

3) This leaves me with the Hayden Duet with which I can give a very direct comparison with the "Stradella" (piano-accordion) Bass.

The chords on the Hayden Duet (HD) are in the same order from left to right as those on the Stradella Bass (SB), both follow the Harmonic Cycle; however the HB this is "concertinaed" into half the width of the SB. To play a chord on the HD you have to play 3 or 4 buttons together on SB just 1 button (80 bass 2 buttons for a 4 note Dominant 7th); but you only need to use 2 fingers for major and minor chords and 3 for 4 note dominant 7ths on the HD. However on the HD you may play these sequentially (arpeggios and broken chords) which is not possible on the SB.

Relative minors on the HD are at the same position (just move one finger) as it's major chord, on the SB they are the next three diagonals to the right. This involves a lot less hand jumping on the HD than the SB if you like to intersperce relative minors into an accompaniment. Equally on a pure Relative minor tune you can jump to the relative major chord more easily on the HD than the SB. On a Harmonic Minor however this may be easier to accompany on the SB, but because of the "concertinaing" of the width of the harmonic cycle this presents no real problem,(or you can cheat on the HD and play the Dominant 7th chord as Root Fith and Seventh [2 adjacent fingers] which doesn't need any movement of the hand !).

So far as deep bass notes are concerned; I would say that Major Counterbasses are easier though not much on the SB and Minor Counterbasses are much easier on the HD, indeed some piano-accordionists are unaware that minor counterbasses are even possible on any less than a 140 bass model.

The smaller 46 button Hayden Concertinas may be seen as roughly the equivalent of a 48 bass piano-accordion and the larger 65 button the equivalent of a 72 bass piano-accordion.

So all in all I think that the Hayden Duet left hand may easily compared directly with the Accordion Stradella Bass, there are plusses and minuses. Note I have played an 80 bass Stradella (in conjunction with a developed melodeon type right hand) years ago, and then changed to a Hayden Duet: the transition was easy!

5) As you already play the Piano have you looked at some of the modern compact 60 Bass (12 X 5 row) that are available nowadays?

Inventor.

[inventor]

P.S. With regard to ceemonsters coments about the vertical rows of buttons (at right-angles to the line of the hand rests) causing problems with the ergonomics of Maccan duets, (which also occur on Crane Duets and English Concertinas): this does not happen on Hayden Duets, (or on Anglos and Jeffries Duets).

Indeed one of the reasons that the rows of buttons on a Hayden Duet are tipped over at a slight angle (10.5 degrees to the line of the hand rests), is so that buttons on alternate rows of notes are not immediately above each other.

This allows those buttons (which are an octave apart) to be played by 2 adjacent fingers, either together or alternately more easily.

Inventor.

[lckt13]

i am very impressed with the knowledge and outpouring of same on this site for my and others benefits. Thanks once again!

[lckt13]

I am heading to Italy in May/June. is there one you recommend for buying there? and if so would SOME of you recommend the Hayden Duet? if not which one for me who plays the piano but never played an accordion. thanks once again!

[Dirge]

You need to appreciate that 'Inventor' is Brian Hayden, the man the system is named after and he is proud of his baby.

 

Hence his suggesting that playing every individual note of successive chords is as easy as hitting one button that pre-selects all 3 or more notes of the chord for you. I wasn't thinking Maccan, Brian, I was thinking ALL concertinas. I really do believe that, for the circumstances described, a concertina would be the wrong route.

 

Brian designed his layout to be particularly easy to get to grips with and it does seem to be so. The big problem is an odd one. Because he invented it relatively recently it was not one of the types made in quantity by the 'great makers'. So there are pools of all sorts of quality antique concertinas to graduate to except for Haydens.

 

Try an elise and if you like it for itself, fine. Good value, easy to play etc etc. much, much more portable than an accordion too. However if you ever start to think that you'd like real concertina reeds and the sound that goes with it, or a bit more range; a few more bass notes particularly, then you are paying huge amounts of money (in duet terms; I'm not suggesting that the prices aren't fair for the work, just that they are multiples of the vintage duet prices at the moment) and waiting in a queue for a new one unless you are very lucky indeed and find a better instrument second hand. So it's buy an elise and paint yourself into a concertina corner. Be sure you LIKE the corner first. Mind you I suppose it could be THEN that you buy the accordion; they really are that easy to pick up if you can already use a keyboard.

 

Concertina Connection have done a really good job in producing beginner concertinas. They did 'cheap to get you started' Anglo and English system instruments that were huge successes and then they tackled the other main concertina type, the duet. Duets are subdivided into several systems all quite different and they chose to make the Hayden, rather than one of the older types with a reservoir of instruments. I am sure this was because the Hayden system is the simplest to learn (and I suspect, because of that, this is the instrument, more than an English or Anglo, that gets sold to people who just wander into the shop and 'fancy a concertina'.) But Wim, the boss, would not have been human if, when someone said 'Of course, they'll have to come back to us when they want to upgrade.', he didn't smile a little.

[ceemonster]

[P.S. With regard to ceemonsters coments about the vertical rows of buttons (at right-angles to the line of the hand rests) causing problems with the ergonomics of Maccan duets]

 

please re-read my post. i was quite clearly referring to piano accordion, not duets of any kind. i have no clue whether maccann duet is tricky because of its vertical layout. it may be given that the hands do not alternate as they do with the vertical layout of EC. or it may not be.

 

there had been a question regarding difficulty (or not) of PA basses relative to difficulty of various concertina systems. i offered my take on this, and quite specifically referenced PAs.

 

when you are holding a piano accordion, the bass side on your left runs in a weird vertical way relative to your body. plus, you can not see it. and it can take a while to hit the right button with confidence.

Edited February 16, 2012 by ceemonster

[Anglo-Irishman]

when you are holding a piano accordion, the bass side on your left runs in a weird vertical way relative to your body. plus, you can not see it. and it can take a while to hit the right button with confidence.

 

What's wierd about that?

The relevant aspect is surely that each row of buttons is in line with the line-up of your finger-tips as you play. Just like on the horizontal keyboard of a piano when you're sitting in front of it.

 

Of course you can't see the bass side of an accordion. But you can't see either side of a concertina - whichever system - when you're either playing from sheet music, singing (head up for proper breathing) or playing fluently from memory.

 

Granted, on the Stradella bass, you have to find the right chord button blind. But on a concertina (any system) you have to find the right three buttons blind to form a chord.

And on the Stradella bass, you have the tonic, subdominant and dominant chords next to each other, so you never have far to search to get the next chord. And once you've got the chord sequence for one key, you can transpose by just shifting your "home finger." (I know this from the chromatic autoharp, which also has its chord buttons arranged in the Circle of Fifths on each row, with a separate row for each chord type. And, by the way, the rows are vertical to your body, i.e. aligned with your finger-tips, and thus easy to reach, although you can't see them!) On all concertina systems, you have to move all three (or, on the Crane Duet sometimes just two) fingers to get the next chord, and you have to not only change to a different button pattern, but also gauge your jump to a fourth or a fifth up or down the keyboard. And to transpose on a concertina, you need to learn a whole new set of chord shapes, like on the guitar.

 

I'd say that the difference betwen the Stradella bass and the left side of a Duet or Anglo is analogous to the difference between my favourite stringed instruments: autoharp and 5-string banjo. The demands on your dexterity and coordination in hopping from one button to another are vastly less than moving several fingers to a different part of the keyboard/fretboard, and at the same time altering the spatial relationship between the fingers!

 

So I would expect the Stradella left hand to be as easy to learn as the autoharp left hand - though perhaps just as difficult to really master for virtuoso music as any other instrument.

 

Cheers,

John

[lckt13]

I have more information now that my aging mind can muster!