Special forms of bass allocation
Bass systems of the accordion have been developed in many variations over time.
historical development
The three essential basic forms were already to be found in the diatonic instruments in 1833. Adolf Müller's school for accordion describes how it was built by Cyrill Demian in Vienna .
At that time were built:
- A row of treble keys, purely an accompanying instrument, it only had chords in a diatonic arrangement.
- Two rows of treble keys, diatonic instrument with two diatonic and alternating accompanying basses.
- Two rows of treble keys with the first row diatonic and the second row with semitones, and on the bass side eight monotone melody basses.
As a result, these approaches were expanded, they resulted in many variants of monochrome and alternating key arrangements.
The base
The circle of fifths has always played an important role, the keys were arranged either horizontally or vertically in fifths. In many cases, the other rows were shifted by half a key, as on the treble side.
- An early variant that uses a coupling mechanism are the chromatic basses of the Schwyzerörgeli .
This type of arrangement was built into instruments as early as 1870 without mechanical coupling. Melody bass arrangements were also built, these systems only found widespread use in the 1930s.
- The Schrammelharmonika has a very different key assignment for the basses .
The arrangement of the keys is the same as in the concertina on the bass floor, it has relatively few keys, the basic bass and the accompaniment are grouped into two groups. All basses are alternating, although the treble is chromatic. All companions are only made with two tones. Therefore, a complete accompanying chord is only possible by combining two buttons. So for accompaniment, a basic bass button and an accompaniment button are pressed to form a chord. This playing technique is very demanding, but allows a variety of combinations with very few buttons.
Modern times
For chromatic instruments, Stradella bass , melody bass or converter bass are used almost exclusively today . It is only recently that the use of basic basses, similar to other bass instruments (such as bass violin), has become fashionable. Therefore, in simpler diatonic instruments, attempts were made to increase the number of built-in basic basses.
- The bass key assignment of the simple Harmoschka also offers the possibility of using more basic basses.