Free Bass accordions?

[Alans]

I am taking lessons on a stradella accordion. I am wondering how difficult would it be to learn on a fee bass accordion and if anyone knows aproximately how much they cost?

 

[dunlustin]

I began learning CBA on a small Free Bass (Weltmeister) and enjoyed it enough to buy a slightly better (used) one.
My main reason ( apart from curiosity) was that it was a fairly cheap way to start on CBA. (About £1000 new from Thomann - less for B grade)
As it is a mirror image of the Right hand I didn't find it too confusing.
To be honest, I have let I drop a bit in favour of Stradella but I found it worth doing and will go back to it.
Caution: Most Freebass are convertors and quite expensive - out of my price range as an experiment.
If you tire of it, do not expect to sell it on easily - not much of a market out there it seems.

 

[JerryPH]

Near impossible to say how much. So much depends on name, condition and style of free bass... You have the converter system which turns a 120 bass into a free bass or an all out free bass which is 185 bass with 3 dedicated rows to the free bass.

Now, I own a Hohner Morino VI N 185 button free bass and have some obvious preferences (predjudices... lol).

How hard is it to learn? Well if you are a piano accordion player, a small way to look at it would be like starting over completely from scratch on the right hand except it is on the left. The right hand stays unchanged and the left plays 3 rows of a chromatic button accordion (in a manner of speaking) using my system. I am not familiar with the layout of the converter system, never tried it. In short, it's a helluva challenge, but you can literally play piano music and even do things that a piano cannot, like play the same notes on the left and right hand (there is an overlap of range). If you play a CBA, it is a touch easier, but still not a walk in the park, but I believe that anyone can learn anything, if they want to

I think it is a wonderful system, but use it a lot less now than when I was in my conservatory days. I hope to eventually touch on it more in the future. In terms of popularity... I would rate it in the very rare class compared to stradella. Not many out there, but the few that are you will see they are mostly classical music stylists.

 

[Alans]

Thanks JerryPH, I was actually interested in the free bass because I would like to do my conservatory exams one day and you are required to only play free bass past grade six. I can't remember if I asked you this, but how far did you get in your conservatory
exams in your Harvey's days? Also I'm going to Montreal this summer and wonder if you've ever been to the accordion store on Jean Talon east? I am thinking of visiting it. One last question and sorry to get so off-topic but since I have you on the line....you said
you had packed your accordions away in a closet for years...did you manage to keep all of your sheet music and books for those years?

 

[Alans]

the free bass also appeals to me because I am slowly learning the piano right now and also taking lessons, and the idea of being able to pick up a piece of sheet music and play the score on the accordion is really exciting for me. My eventual goal is to be able to
play classical accordion music.

 

[KLR]

Giulietti built accordions with just 3 rows of free bass, much lighter/smaller than converters or 185 bass monsters like the Morino. These were student models, I believe, Giulietti were marketing instruments for beginners, trying to popularize the free bass or 'bassetti' system as they called it. I've seen those on eBay for about $600.

 

[Alans]

I took the plunge and bought a free bass converter for a good price from a dealer in Philadelphia. They have video demonstrations of their instruments and I trust the owner as I bought my stradella from them four years ago. They also probably have one of the largest online catalogues of sheet music. The store is called Liberty Bellows. I paid more than I can afford now but...
It is a Titano Palmer instrument. Does anyone know anything about these models?

 

[Alans]

Can anyone explain the difference between a chromatic free bass accordion and a quint free bass accordion?

 

[JerryPH]

1. ...how far did you get in your conservatory exams in your Harveys days?
2. wonder if youve ever been to the accordion store on Jean Talon east?
3. ...did you manage to keep all of your sheet music and books for those years?

1. I never took any exams, though I was encouraged to do so. Sad, long story. Judging by talking to other people and their opinions at the conservatory, I would have been ready to pass the first 5-7 exams depending on whom I spoke to.

2. You might mean Italmelodie. If so, I went there a couple times a loooooong time ago, did not have a good experience, never went back. Likely more the fault of the person I was dealing with more than the store. If you plan on dropping by, and you have the time, contact me and lets meet for coffee somewhere!

3. I religiously took care of all my music for thr longest of time. I then moved to Texas, lived there, fell in love, married, divoriced 2 years later and left. Turns out that a lot of my stuff went missing through no fault of my own and I have less than a 1/4 of the music I had back before then. Suffice to say someone enjoyed putting my music books in a BBQ and burning it just to be mean. I almost cried at the loss when I found out.

The stuff I have today are mostly things that I had left in Canada and that my parents wanted to, but never sent to me. If they had, I would have likely had but one small box left over from everything. For that I am grateful that they never sent to me. Mostly Czech and German folk music from the 30s to the 60s, a couple of books from Palmer Hughes a couple exercise books and a couple books from the conservatory days that I did not take with me due to lack of space. Even the accordions stayed in Canada.

 

[Alans]

That is some story JerryPH..I know how you must have felt about the lost music. I'm sure you per used online sites and except for Palmer Hughes everything is out of print now. The only accordion sheet music that is readily available are the millions of Mel bay books.what a loss all of that wonderful sheet music. But again it sounds like your parents were/are wonderful people. As I mentioned above,the two best sites for ordering sheet music today is Liberty bellows,they have tons of books and also deal through Amazon. The other best dealer is Busso Deffner music. Somehow they acquired all of the rights to Veronese accordion music and they sell it at a reasonable price. The only caveat is that almost anything you buy from them is a coloured photocopy of the originals so even though they don't advertise this,you aren't getting the authentic book. I guess they do this because the originals are so delicate and rare now. But they have a huge catalogue of classical works. I bought an aria from Tosca from them and that is the type of thing you can't find anywhere in North America anymore.much of the sheet music ,the original copies are frayed.

Thanks for the friendly Montreal offer to meet up when I am there in July. But he'll coffee? I want a good Montreal smoked meat!

 

[Alans]

I also checked out Archambault's site,it is ok,not great.

 

[JerryPH]

Things must have changed over the years. If they did not have something, they had ways of getting it for you quickly. If thats changed, then I feel bad because there were never that many places to get good music in this area.

Today thats less of an issue, thanks to the internet. Besides, there have to be way more and possibly better options in and around the GTA today anyway.

 

[AccordionUprising]

Can anyone explain the difference between a chromatic free bass accordion and a quint free bass accordion?

Various manufacturers have promoted different free-bass (single-note bass) systems over the years.

Heres two descriptive links talking about different kinds:
http://nydana.se/accordion.html#freebasscompared
http://squeezehead.com/keyboard-layouts/basses/INFO.html

Giuliettis bassetti-style free-bass may be more common. It has three or four rows laid out like the chromatic button accordions common in Europe.

Titanos (?) quint system expanded on the two bass-rows already on a stradella accordion. It added more single-note rows continuing the circle-of-fifths layout so stradella players could learn it more easily.

 

[JerryPH]

Great links (except that the joemacerollo.com site was down), i learned a lot, thank-you for posting.

 

[dunlustin]

The Quint Bass takes the Stradella bass layout ( ie not the chords) and extends it across the remaining rows giving about 3 octaves. (See R Galliano and his Victoria)
The commonest FB has a right hand CBA mirror image layout (No thumb to speak of).
Sooner or later someone will suggest you get a used Roland where you can explore virtually all the FB layouts at the flick of a menu.

 

[Glenn]

Sooner or later someone will suggest you get a used Roland where you can explore virtually all the FB layouts at the flick of a menu.

Indeed I will :lol:
However, one drawback is that as there are quite a few to chose from I cannot settle on the one I think best for me.
If only I had less choice

 

[JerryPH]

I didn't know that the converter was the most popular, but in comes my opinionated choice with a few reasons why.

The Roland cannot do both at the same time, Stradella and Free Bass, without taking the time to switch settings. Same for any converter system. I recall playing with a guy that had an Excelsior converter Free Bass setup and often he had to pause to hit a register to get to the deeper octaves and back again while we played Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I not only did not have to do this with the 185 bass as I had the full range available to me at all times. I could also "cheat" several chords with a single finger while he had to use all 4 fingers to make the same chord or hit a register to leave the Free Bass section and go to the Stradella system and back again, adding yet more pauses to the flow of the music.

While more complex and with added weight (and likely added cost), there are some clear advantages to having 3 extra rows of buttons. Nydana's page mentions some more valid reasons for having the deepest notes closer "to the chin". I would have to say that the best layout, best range availability and best efficiency looks to be the C-system used in a 3 additional row setup where the lowest notes are at the top and go higher as one moves the left hand closer to the floor while playing, the same direction like either a button or piano accordion flows and having immediate availability to both types of bass systems without needing to change via register or menu system choice.

My choice is in no way scientific, but is heavily biased because I simply spent a lot of time with this setup and saw the challenges others had with certain key musical pieces that I did not have using my setup. The Quint I found in theory the most difficult just from one simple perspective, ease with which to make a simple 4-note C-major chord on the system of Free Bass that my accordion had vs trying to do the same by just placing the fingers on the same notes of the PDF layout. An extension of this is the ease with which to do a simple 2 octave scale on either system, the complexity seems very different between them both with the edge going to the chromatic 3-row system, at least to my eyes.

That said, it has clearly been shown that good musicians can master any system and do well with it.

 

[KLR]

Thanks for sharing your insights, Jerry, always good to hear from someone who's really tried everything. Have always found free bass fascinating, coming from playing piano and guitar the Stradella seems a bit restrictive at times.

There's also the Moschino free bass system, we had a thread about that with contributions from a very good player, George Secor. He put a few things up on YouTube recently if you're interested. Also, I disconnected the root and fifth notes from a 4x12 48 bass accordion once, arriving at yet another free bass system, and one you can set up on your own, for the intrepid.

 

[JerryPH]

Yes, please post links, I enjoy hearing others and learning. As far as having tried everything, not even close!

 

[kimric]

I have a couple of free bass models in the shop right now, a little student Giulietti for $450 and a monster Bugari Bayan converter model. Weltmeister has a couple of student models but they really cut back on the variety last August during the reorganization. http://www.smythesaccordioncenter.com/piano--chromatic-accordions.html