Piano Accordion vs. Chromatic Button Accordion

January 8, 2008 12:48 PM

Accordions: Piano vs. Chromatic Button. In the long term, which is better to learn?

I'm a beginner, I'm gaining a basic proficiency on piano accordion. However, I'm drawn to the idea of switching to CBA: having any riff easily transposed could make improvising and composing much simpler. I hate the way playing in different keys feels so different on piano keyboard, it just doesn't go along with the ease of switching from key to key on the left hand.

On the other hand, I'm a bit intimidated by the way the buttons are stacked in two dimensions, it looks like it's easy to get lost on the keyboard -- especially since the keys don't look different from each other, as they do on piano. And of course I'd have to relearn the songs I know.

Has anyone here played both? How difficult is the transition?

Any thoughts as to CBA-B vs. CBA-C? I've read this for the basics, but can't find a compelling reason to choose one over the other.

(if the style of music is a factor, I'm interested in a variety of styles: tango, rock (indie/shoegazer), klezmer, jazz)

posted by rottytooth to sports, hobbies, & recreation (10 comments total)

Hmmm.... I play an English concertina (four rows of buttons) and I'll tell ya... of the many instruments I play it is the most time-consuming, practice-wise. I would totally spend time on the keys.

This group (one of my all time favorite bands) goes back and forth between the two but uses Chromatic button for their cajun stuff - which is a blast. I'm not sure why, though.

If it were me, I'd focus on keys unless you find a button box that you're absolutely in love with (this is why I ended up on English concertina. Played anglo but fell in love with a little black english one I found.)
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:57 PM on January 8, 2008

Sorry - forgot to link to the band:
Steppin' in it.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:59 PM on January 8, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is completely off topic. I don't know about accordions, but I know McCann Duet concertinas are very hard to learn to play. I had a Wheatstone Aeolian, which I think is probably the peak of the concertina maker's art. But I could never get the hang of it, and I sold it and bought a fiddle. I'm not a good fiddle player either, but I'm a better fiddler than I would ever have been a concertina player.
posted by vilcxjo_BLANKA at 1:06 PM on January 8, 2008

What about a Thummer?
posted by GPF at 2:38 PM on January 8, 2008

Bear in mind that there are different kinds of chromatic button accordions—the Russian style are completely, neutrally chromatic as described on the page you linked, but there are also Cajun-style accordions that are 'diatonic-plus'—they have all the chromatic tones, but the layout is based on the diatonic, so the transposing thing won't work out so neatly.

I've seen used Russian accordions on eBay, typically selling for a couple hundred bucks. I bought one, in fact, from some fella in New York. (not enough time to practice it tho).

And recently I saw a photo of the Kiev May Day 1986 parade—the one with the Chernobyl fallout—and a dude right in the foreground playing an accordion identical to mine. Heh.
posted by eritain at 2:54 PM on January 8, 2008

Of course, the clincher for me was that I can't reach octaves on the piano.
posted by eritain at 2:56 PM on January 8, 2008

eritain, does your chromatic have the CBA-B layout (from the link)? Do you find the chords awkward or fairly easy to play?
posted by rottytooth at 3:15 PM on January 8, 2008

B-system. I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer the awkwardness question—when I say I don't practice it, that's the truth. But I just ran through all the seventh chords from the link, and I didn't have any special trouble. The compactness of the keyboard is a big enabling factor, and that's true of both layouts.
posted by eritain at 3:22 PM on January 9, 2008

Cool, thanks for giving them a try. After looking at the keyboard layouts some more, I'm thinking B-system is the way to go. I'll likely hunt down a B-system accordion to try out.
posted by rottytooth at 7:16 PM on January 9, 2008

Found only today: Nydana's Accordion Resources has writeups comparing piano to chromatic and the two chromatics to each other. Also a chord combining chart and other nifties. I wouldn't have found it if you hadn't gotten accordions on my mind.
posted by eritain at 10:32 PM on January 10, 2008