Definition of
Accordion
He accordion it’s a instrument of music which is part of the group of wind instruments. It has a bellows closed by boxes at its ends, which house different keys or keys.
In the box that is held with the right hand, the accordion has a fingerboard that can have buttons (in the case of the chromatic accordion) or keys similar to those of the piano (in the so-called piano accordion). With the left hand, the musician can touch other buttons that serve to chords for accompaniment and for bass sounds.
Unlike other wind instruments, the accordion does not require the person blow to make the sound. The accordion has a mechanism that, when the performer closes or opens it, allows air to pass through its structure and drive various reeds. The keys make it possible to choose what type of sound is obtained.
The origins of the accordion go back to the first decades of the XIX century. The development of him made that, with the time, similar instruments arose although with different characteristics. In this framework, it is common for many people to confuse the accordion with the bandoneon or with the concertina.
One of the reasons why this confusion occurs revolves around the relative complexity of the accordion compared to other instruments, especially in regards to its design: given that a large part of its keys they are hidden under the hands of the musician, the public cannot appreciate the instrument in its entirety, and it is common for them to ignore certain basic details of its structure, something that does not happen with the piano or the violin, for example.
Regarding the bandoneon, it is another wind instrument, from the group of free reeds, which is related to the concertina (defined in the next paragraph). Its appearance is rectangular and its doorbell it is very distinctive: whoever has had the opportunity to listen to these three instruments does not usually confuse the sound they produce. Interestingly, the original term in German is written bandonionand it was in the Río de la Plata where the Yo was replaced by a andalthough in everyday speech people tend to pronounce it as a Yo.
The concertina, for its part, is also a free reed instrument, and its creation has two important milestones: its first appearance took place in 1829, but almost two decades later a new version was published. patent with certain improvements in its design. It usually has a series of buttons at each of its two ends, which are pressed in different directions from those of the accordion: on the concertina they are parallel to the bellows, while on the accordion they are perpendicular.
Although some say that to play the accordion it is necessary to have advanced musical knowledge, there are also those who invite anyone who is curious about the instrument to venture into learning. The type of accordion most used by beginners is the pianomentioned above.
The accordion is currently used in a large number of musical genres, such as the Meringuethe cumbiahe call me and the cueca. The Mexican Julieta Venegas is one of the most popular accordionists. In Argentina, “Chango” Spasiuk and Antonio Tarrago Ros are two outstanding musicians who play the accordion.
It should be noted that, according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), in some countries the concept of accordion is used to name the grades that a student hides in an assessment in order to access the information without the teacher seeing it. Accordion, in this case, is synonymous with chop either machetedepending on the region.