Accordion Bass

[Jeannine Lander]

TheStradella Bass System (sometimes called[1] standard bass) is a buttonboard layout equipped on the bass side of many accordions, which uses columns of buttons arranged in a circle of fifths; this places the principal major chords of a key (I, IV and V) in three adjacent columns.

The name is from Stradella, a town and commune of the Oltrep Pavese in the Province of Pavia in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, once an important center for the production of accordions. [citation needed]

In modern accordions, each chord button sounds three individual pitches. Early accordions sounded four pitches for the seventh and diminished chords.[3] Modern Stradella systems omit the 5th from these two chords,[2] allowing for more versatility. For example, an augmented seventh chord can be created by using the dominant seventh chord button and adding an augmented 5th from the right-hand manual or from one of the bass or counterbass buttons.

In most Russian layouts the diminished seventh chord row is moved by one button[4] (so, for example, the C diminished seventh chord is where the F diminished seventh would be in a standard Stradella layout), so it is more easily reached with the forefinger.

Within this convention, the written octave for bass and chord notes is arbitrary. The Stradella system does not have buttons for higher and lower octaves. Different accordions contain sets of reeds in different octaves, which may also be activated or muted by the accordion's register switches. For example:

Bass notes to be played on the major third (counterbass) row are often indicated by repurposed "tenuto" lines below the notes (as in the E bass note in the example above), or underlined note names or numbers.

Larger and more expensive accordions may have as many as seven register switches on the bass side, controlling which reed ranks play and thus the octaves and voicing of the bass notes and chords, similar in concept to the treble register switches on the keyboard side.[2] Smaller or simpler accordions may have no bass switches, or a single switch that toggles two settings.

Versions with 25 columns of buttons, such as on the Russian Tula Bayan, also exist, ranging from E to C , which can play the same reeds, despite there being accordions that can play lower than E1, and potentially as low as C1.[citation needed]

The 120 bass layout has 2 columns of single bass notes (roots and counter basses) and 4 columns of chords (Major, minor, Dominant 7th, and diminished 7th) in all keys. Compared to the smaller model (the 96 bass layout), it has 4 extra rows, for a total of 20 rows. Full size 120 bass accordions are the most flexible offering features not found on smaller instruments, this is why they are the most used accordions by professional accordionists.

The charts of those extended chords that can be built combining a chord with a counter bass or with a bass note, show both positions: counter basses are circled in blue, and basses are circled in green.

Let's face it, that thing that makes the accordion so easy to start playing, the fixed oom cha cha, or oom cha oom cha bass line is not the most musical sound to listen to for 64 bars on end. The good news is that playing those hackneyed patterns always remains useful but should be regarded as only the basis if you are to play really musically.

I have just been reminded that the accordion bass sounding embarrassingly loud in comparison to the right hand melody is proobably the number one fear of accordionists, particularly relative newcomers to the instrument.

Basic accordion playing is characterised mainly by matching movements in the left and rioght hand - melody note is accompanied by one chord or bass note etc. This works but if continued for long becomes stodgy and uninteresting.

Several quick notes in one hand accompanied by one long note in the other hand is more interesting to listen to, or even when one hand stops to let the other hand shine through, - common politeness, and lets your purple passages be heard and appreciated!

An easy to spot example of this is where a tune starts in the course of the previous bar in quavers (eighth notes) such as The Shadow of your Smile. The accompaniment pattern of course is not played until the word Smile.

Notice that melody starts very nearly at the beginning of the bar, only half a beat late, but the principle still applies. In fact this type of long preceding run is most effective as a device to delay the rhythm pattern, whether in 4/4. latin tempos (Quando quando) or Waltz.

This does not apply when the bar is complete, even if it starts with a run of notes (Die Fleidermaus for example starts on the first beat of the bar so with that tune you would be playing the bass pattern from the beginning)

Who wants to hear the bass section doing exactly the same things 32 or 64 times in a row? Obviously it needs to be varied so here are some methods once you are confident of the feel and tempo of your music

Some of these ideas are dealt with in more detail elsewhere in the website - but obviously not all 95 of them! By all means please let me know which ones you would like me to try to cover more fully, maybe with written music, audio or even video examples as I find time to do so.

NOTE: Different colours and fonts are used in the ideas list below to make the individual items stand out - the ones shown lightly in black can be just as important as items in bold red, etc. It is just my attempt to make it easier to read by separating the different ideas visually.

Your usual basic waltz rhythm is played as N K K and your basic four beats in a bar is played as N K N K right? With the 4 beat version your second N may possibly be the alternative bass note. I think we can all agree on that!

N K K joining the first and second beats N-K N-K , (I have used a hyphen there to indicate legato smoothing to the next note - you might even overlap them slightly, it will add a lot of tone to your sound and sound nice too)

N K N is Good for linking on to the next phrase of melody (as in a fourth or eighth bar) The second N willl be a different note than the first, most probably the dominant (the button above in the same row, suc as G for a C chord)

Also you can use just notes of course as runs with these examples N N N or NNN N or N N NN or N NN N or even NN NN NN all of which being a bit more noticeable are good for leading strongly towards the next phrase or set of four or eight bars.

This is a Four Bar sequence. Those modern auto-play keyboards mostly can only manage two different bars before they endlessly repeat (unless you take your hands away from the keyboard to press buttons on the control board).

Fourth bar has just notes on the 3rd an 4th beats, most likely in the order alternate note back to key note. This makes an unobtrusive but effective lead in towards the next bar, the beginning of the next phrase.

EVEN THIS CAN BE ANNOYING IF REPEATED BLINDLY ON MORE THAN TWO OR THREE SUCCESSIVE 4 BAR PHRASES - You can always come back to it later and bear in mind you go on to a middle eight or chorus with a different emphasis it will sound good with a contrasting treatment.

There are two places where I more or less broke the rules here, but for musical reasons. On the first complete bar there are three beats and three notes, usually undesirable but play the third beat late (on the last quaver of the bar) and it lightens it because they are no longer hammering away at the same time.

This is only a basic version of the way I would play it, to highlight mainly the places where I would simplify or augment the bass part, to avoid conflict between the parts or add interest and flow to the music.

Playing More Bass Note Runs is dealt with in the Bass Tricks page but Maybe you can almost treat this, aside from the lower pitch as an alternative to playing Free Bass, particularly if you do not have it on your accordion!

But there may be more to it than that. It has for example been stated that Some accordions choose their bass notes from C to B and exceptionally some, such as my Victoria put the break from A to G#.

So I carefully checked my Victoria and found by listening first to the deeper registers and then the higher registers that the drop back to the lower octave took place after B on one pitch of reeds and on G# on another.

MORE 16-32 BAR SONG ARRANGEMENTS WILL FOLLOW TO SHOW HOW TO AVOID THE MONOTONY OF ONE BAR RHYTHM ACCOMNPANIMENT, TANGO, BEGUINE, CHA CHA, SWING PROBABLY - KEEP RETURNING TO THIS WEBSITE!

I am planning to learn accordion and I am very much a beginner to the music world. I am wondering how accordion bass buttons are arranged. Is it possible to generate all different sets of chords using bass button or can we make a fixed set of chords ? What are the different types of bass button arrangements ?

A stradella accordion is more complicated. The largest, 120-button type looks the same as a free bass: 6 rows that are 20 buttons long. The first two rows (closest to the bellows) are the counterbass and bass rows respectively. Both rows produce single notes that traverse the circle of fifths, but the counterbass row is a major third above the corresponding button in the bass row. The C button in the bass row near the center is specially marked with a bump so you can find it by feel. Immediately above this C button is an F, then a Bb, etc. Immediately below this C button is a G then a D, etc. In the counterbass row right next to that bass row C button is an E. Going up from that E in the counterbass row gives you A, then D etc. and below gives you B and F# etc.

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