by Peter Berryman
WHAT ABOUT THE BUTTONS, our most frequently asked accordion question.
With an accordionist in the band, gradually I'm learning the answer to that most popular of accordion questions, "So what's with all those buttons?" Here's my understanding of it:
Observed from the perspective of the audience, a typical piano-accordion has an abbreviated piano keyboard on the left side of its bellows and a field of buttons on the right. The accordionist facing you plays the melody on the piano-keys with her right hand and the bass and rhythm on the buttons with her left hand.
There are many accordion designs and sizes. But the button arrangement I am looking at, standard with most piano-accordions, consists of fifteen or twenty horizontal rows, with six buttons in each row.
That's a lot of buttons. But not to worry because there is a secret trick to all this: every row of six buttons is identical. The rows are in different keys, but the relationship of the buttons to one another is the same in every row.
Here's a description of the six buttons in any given row. I'll use the common practice of numbering the notes of the scale from one to seven. In other words, do=1, re=2, mi=3, fa=4, so=5, la=6, and ti=7.
Starting at the left side, the FIRST button is actually NOTE 3 of the scale.
The SECOND button from the left is NOTE 1 of the scale. This note is also called the TONIC note of the key.
Now, we get to the chord buttons. The THIRD button from the left is the MAJOR CHORD button. This plays the notes 1, 3, and 5 simultaneously.
The FOURTH button from the left is the SEVENTH CHORD button. This is a misleading name, because it plays the 1, 3, and 5 notes, plus the FLATTED seven note, a half-step down from the actual seven note. This isn't just an accordion thing; a SEVENTH CHORD is always taken to mean a chord with the flatted seven note in it. Who knows how THAT developed.
The FIFTH button from the left is the MINOR CHORD button, and plays the notes 1, 3-flatted, and 5.
The last button plays the DIMINISHED CHORD, with the notes 1, 3-flatted, 5-flatted, and 6.
So, to use the C row as an example, the leftmost button is E, the second button is C, the third button is the chord C major, the fourth button is the chord called C seventh, the fifth button is the chord C minor, and the last button is C diminished.
As I said earlier, each row represents a different key. So what about the arrangement of the rows, relative to each other? Here's a digression that may help explain the setup:
Many if not most melodies can be played using three particular chords. These are called the TONIC, the SUBDOMINANT, and the DOMINANT chords, which are built upon the FIRST (TONIC) note, the FOURTH (SUBDOMINANT) note, and the FIFTH (DOMINANT) note of the scale, respectively. The TONIC chord is the MAJOR, or 1-chord, of the key you're in. In the key of C, the TONIC chord is C major. The SUBDOMINANT chord is the 4-chord of the key you're in; it's based upon note 4. In the key of C, the SUBDOMINANT chord is F (count up: C is one, D is two, E is three, F is four). The DOMINANT chord is the 5-chord of the key you're in; it's based upon note 5. In C, the dominant chord is G. Musicians often refer to these chords by the number of the note they are built upon: the "one chord", the "four chord", and the "five chord." Using no more than these three chords, you can play anything from You Are My Sunshine to Rock Around The Clock.
Now, with this in mind, you would think it made sense to put the FOUR-CHORD row and the FIVE-CHORD row near to the ONE-CHORD row, so you wouldn't have to move your hand around to play most songs. As a matter of fact, that is exactly how the rows are arranged! Each row is based on the DOMINANT note of the row below it. And the way things work out, this also means that each row is the SUBDOMINANT of the one above it! Since each row consists of the same button arrangement, and each row has its dominant row above it and its subdominant row below it, to change a song's key you only need to move your hand up or down; the fingering stays the same. It's like moving a capo on a guitar.
The only really odd button is the leftmost one of each row: the third-note button. As far as I can figure out, this note was placed there because in this position, it makes the playing of certain bass runs, which walk you up or down from one chord to the next, much easier to play. As you glean from the diagram, in the key of C you can play all the notes in the C scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B), without reaching further afield from the tonic (C) than two buttons. If that third-note button were not there, the next available E-button would be quite a stretch.
I'm out of room. I hope this episode didn't create more confusion than it cleared up, but if it did, I have an accordionist in the band (as I may have mentioned), and will be glad to bombard her with your questions, as I have bombarded her with mine. Thanks to Lou Berryman for expert advice.