In the taxonomy of musical instruments, is the concertina an accordion?

[Jody Kruskal]

In the taxonomy of musical instruments, is the concertina an accordion?

 

When people ask questions about my unusual Anglo instrument, or when I try to tell them about it...

 

The word accordion usually comes up. Yet I feel inclined to insist that no, It's not an accordion. It's a concertina. They are different, I say, rather defensively.

 

Concertinas, I might explain, are like the accordion and the harmonica etc. are all part of the world of "free reed" instruments. 

 

They look at me with eyes glazed over. TMI, I think.

 

Then I play and sing, to make them stop asking these impossible questions. Questions that take too many words to explain at a gig.

 

So, what do you think? Is the concertina a type of accordion? Has the word "accordion" won the culture war for "bellows driven wind instrument", or "squeeze box"?

 

Or... is "The Concertina" (whatever that is... so many kinds) ) a creature that should stand up and be proudly counted as a free reed? Standing shoulder to shoulder with the harmonicas, melodicas, melodians, symphoniams, pump organs and shengs...

 

in addition to the accordions?

 

Your thoughts?

 

Edited November 22 by Jody Kruskal

[alex_holden]

I would say they are cousins. They have some similarities and a common ancestor, and arguably one of them is more familiar to the general public. Calling a concertina a type of accordion is like calling a double bass a type of guitar, or a pipe organ a type of piano.

[gcoover]

Since most people are only familiar with piano accordions, I just tell them it's a forerunner to the accordion. Maybe throw in something about Charles Wheatstone since they might recognize that name.

Gary

[David Lay]

The questions usually end when I offer that it is a "mini-accordion".  If not, "sqeezebox".  ....unless they are actually interested to know more.

 

I wonder if aversion to the accordion is what makes them stop asking.  As a teen, I always avoided the Lawrence Welk show on TV and was uncomfortable when my father turned the car radio to the Polish-American hour.

Edited November 22 by David Lay

[Tiposx]

"Squeezebox" yes that seems to work over here. It's what I called them before I ever held one.

[Tiposx]

Probably influenced by The Who pop record of that name.

[Matt Heumann]

Taxonomically TMI: they are both free-reed aerophones. Concertina?: the first two being Wheatstone & Chemnitzer, both called concertinas. Wheatstone patented his prototype symphonium (not a concertina yet) in 1829.  The term "accordion" was first used in 1829 by Cyrill Demian when he patented his instrument in Vienna, Austria, though the instrument itself was invented earlier by Friedrich Buschmann in 1822 under a different name.

Edited November 22 by Matt Heumann
text addition

[David Barnert]

7 hours ago, alex_holden said:

I would say they are cousins. They have some similarities and a common ancestor, and arguably one of them is more familiar to the general public. Calling a concertina a type of accordion is like calling a double bass a type of guitar, or a pipe organ a type of piano.

 

This has been my thought process for years. I hadn’t thought of the double bass/guitar or pipe organ/piano examples, but I have often said that the relationship between a concertina and an accordion is like the relationship between a banjo and a violin.

[Johanna]

From where I sit, no, a concertina is not an accordion.  But "a concertina is like an accordion" is close enough to being true, and goes a long enough way toward satisfying curious passersby who want to know what this thing is that I'm playing, that that's what I'll reach for as a first-level explanation.

 

If they ask what the differences are, I'll explain that each one of the buttons plays only one note, unlike on (most) accordions, where at least some of the buttons play chords.  I can play chords, but I have to build them up from the individual notes.

 

If they still want to know more, I'll get into the EC's left-right alternating pitch layout that only an English physicist could have come up with.  That's usually enough for them to conclude that I'm actually crazy, and they let me get back to playing.

[RAc]

Being a stubborn and incurable believer that music is not for the eye but the ear (and other, mostly internal, body parts), I propose the following Turing test 2.x: If a sufficient sample of averagely trained listeners is not able to tell a significant difference in instrumentation between two renditions of solo free reed instruments, they are the same, no matter whether, say, 80% of insiders insist in given them different names.

 

(Of course, if you used this test on music professionals, you would get significantly different results as someone who spent his lifetime playing one of these instruments could very likely not only tell instrument types apart but also manufacturers, model years and very likely the players, making each taxanomy meaningless).

 

Btw. I'd hesitate to give a melodeon the same name as a piano accordeon, so even the term "accordeon" is fairly greyish (or, more aptly, colorful). 

 

[Ryan Galamb]

When people ask how similar my Anglo concertina is to an accordion, I tell them, "It's about as similar to an accordion as a guitar is to the violin." Not a perfect analogy, but it efficiently communicates "completely different" to folks of all musical experience levels.

 

If they keep asking questions after that (90% of people don't), then I tell them it's more like a harmonica in how it's tuned. I make a show of pushing one button on the left hand and go in and out showing how two different pitches can come from that button. (I also hold the air button down so the in/out is obvious/visible.)

 

Then if they're still interested, I show them a C chord and reverse direction to show them the Dm chord.

 

If the conversation is still going, then they're usually taking the lead with a million questions (often trying to figure out if they should get one themselves!)

 

---

 

Typically, the in depth conversations happen when I'm playing while roaming between pitches/stages at a festival, or when I'm wrapping up anyway. (People who are musical enough to ask a million questions are usually pretty respectful.)

 

And often enough, after I take the time to answer someone's questions, they'll tip rather generously. (Not that I expect them to or mind if they don't. But it is nice and shows me just how much it means to people when I take the time to answer their questions. If 5-10 minutes of my time can make someone's day, that's easy math.)

 

---

 

Special mention: When people say, "Nice accordion!" I just smile and say, "Thanks!" It happens so often, and I really don't mind what they call it as long as they're having a good time!

[hjcjones]

The taxonomy of instruments is usually based on how they are sounded and how they are constructed.  So you have strings, which can be subdivided according to whether they are plucked, bowed or struck, and then further subdivisions.  

 

"Aerophones" encompasses all wind instruments, but we are interested in a specific category where the sound is produced by air passing over free reeds, whether blown or pumped by bellows. This includes instruments like the sheng, mouth organ and melodica as well concertinas and accordions. Concertinas can be distinguished from accordions because they have keys operating parallel to the bellows travel. whereas accordions have keys operating perpendicular to the bellows travel. "Concertina" includes bandeons and similar types as well as the ones we are familiar with.

 

Don't think "accordion" is defined by the piano accordion, although that is probably most familiar. The melodeon is a diatonic button accordion, and is often called that ("melodeon" is an even vaguer term than accordion, and can mean very different things in different places).

[wschruba]

I had this discussion a month or so ago with a few people of interested character, and relayed that, though it WORKS like an accordion, it is not...much in the same way an organ (or even better, a harpsichord) is not a piano.

 

Much like the organ and harpsichord, even though it has a chromatic keyboard (or chromatic note availability), it is a diatonic instrument, because the keys of the intended repertoire of a given instrument only spans 1-4 steps on the circle of fifths, and the farther you range, the worse it sounds.  To me, this is the test of whether or not an instrument is related: can they play all the repertoire with no issues?

 

As for the non-musically inclined, a simple, "it's similar in function, but different in execution, like a sports car versus a Land Cruiser" is usually enough to answer their curiosity.  Those who care about what makes it different get the full explanation: it has hand-cut reeds set into vented shoes, which create a different sound profile versus an accordion.  I can explain to various people who might understand a given instrument how it relates to the Sheng, Harmonica, Melodeon (pump organ), Harmonium, or Regal.

[Luke Hillman]

"Squeezebox." Since I play accordions and concertinas, often at the same gig, that's the word I use to refer to both. And having both on hand is helpful to explain the difference when folks want to talk about one or the other.

 

... Of course, for tariff purposes,  if I were attempting to get a concertina into the US right now, I'd happily concede that it is, in fact, a piano accordion.

Edited November 22 by Luke Hillman

[wes williams]

I don't know about the USA, but in Britain the saturday editions of many popular national newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s contained adverts for piano accordions (many from Bell Accordions, in Surbiton) so that kind of squeeze box quickly became the normal name for anything similar (Brian Hayden went to Bells for his first melodeon).

[Anglo-Irishman]

Deliberately trying to forget all I ever knew about concertinas, accordeons, etc., I would imagine that the main difference that an uninitiated person would notice between both types of instrument would be the straps. The accordion has shoulder-straps, the concertina has handstraps (or thumbstraps).

So we could say that a concertina is a hand-held accordeon, whereas an accordeon is a strap-on concertina ...

 

[davidevr]

The concertina and the accordion in produce a similar sound if you play a single note, even more of you compare a 1 register accordeon note to a single note on a hybrid concertina. However the overall sound of the instrument played realistically and well is very different. in ITM the two instruments have completely different characters: I’d argue the concertina sounds more like an Uillean pipe than an accordion. 
On the other hand if you compare a monster piano accordion (the ones used in Italy or eastern Europe) to a button accordion , you will also find completely different sounds, style of playing etc.

So honestly I don’t know.

To me a concertina and an accordion look and sound completely different, so different they even make a vey nice duet pairing when played together. However I am not sure how much difference the uninitiated listener might find…

 

[Roger Hare]

1 hour ago, davidevr said:

...I’d argue the concertina sounds more like an Uillean pipe than an accordion....

I can see/hear where you're coming from with that. Several years ago (2020?), working with EasyABC, I used 'Tango Accordion' (with 'Flute' as 2nd voice drone) to try and emulate Uillean pipes in 'Water Under The Keel' from the suite 'The Brendan Voyages'.

 

I used MIDI 'Tango Accordion' because IMHO it sounds more like a concertina than 'Concertina' - if you see what I mean.

 

It was just an experiment, for a bit of fun. It wasn't an unqualified success, but it wasn't too bad. Of course, that was before we had sampled Uillean pipes, courtesy of ME (Using the Uilleann Pipes in the documentation).

 

Not sure I'd put Uillean Pipes and Concertina in the same taxonomic classification though - same genus different species maybe?

Edited November 24 by Roger Hare