Pseudo-musette tuning?

[KiwiSqueezer]

Please excuse my ignorance: this may be a very, very silly question... In a LMH accordion, is the H reed set ever (or can it be) tuned appropriately sharp to produce a musette-like effect when the M & H reeds speak?

 

[Dingo40]

In a LMH accordion, is the H reed set ever (or can it be) tuned appropriately sharp to produce a musette-like effect when the M & H reeds speak?

If so, I've never heard of it!

 

[colinm]

Yes, but it will not be very “musette like”

 

[JerryPH]

You do not want to do that. It takes a MINIMUM of 2 reeds to make a musette sound. In a LMH, you would have to play all 3 reeds or the LM or MH to get some kind of musette, and it won't sound very good. You need a LMM or MM. The best musettes that I have heard to date are MMM or, believe it or not, MMMH, found only on 5 reed accordions. My Beltuna has the MMM, its awesome, and my Gola has the MMMH... different, but very sweet too

 

[JeffJetton]

Yes, but it will not be very “musette like”

Yup. I am not a physicist, so this could all be totally wrong, but...

The characteristic warble of the MM register is due to the "beating" effect of frequencies that are very close, but not exactly the same. This causes the peaks and valleys of the wave forms produced by each reed to go in and out of sync with each other.

Now the sound produced by each reed is not really single, pure frequency, but rather a stack of frequencies at certain multiples of the fundamental one. We say that, for example, A is tuned to 440 Hz, but that's just the lowest, fundamental frequency. What actually comes out when you play the note is a 440 Hz tone plus a quieter 880 Hz tone, an even quieter 1320 Hz tone, etc. An MM musette will have each of these frequencies from the one reed beating against its partner frequency in the other reed.

If you had an M reed with a detuned H reed and played an A, you wouldn't get any beating at the fundamental 440 Hz frequency, since only the M reed would be producing it. It wouldn't kick in until you got up to the 880 Hz level, as the quieter overtone (second harmonic) of the M reed beats with the fundamental of the H reed. Then the M reed's 1320 Hz tone (third harmonic) would again be all by itself, beating with nothing, since the next harmonic of the H reed wouldn't occur until around1760 Hz. And so on, up the harmonic spectrum.

 

[debra]

When the L, M and H reeds are a bit out of tune (and differently out of tune) you do indeed hear some tremolo in LM, MH and LMH. To me it just sounds like "the accordion is out of tune" but some people actually like that out of tune sound. I wouldn't call it pseudo-musette. But it is at least a bit of tremolo.

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

This is similar to something that Pancordion tried, though it never took off. I've come across a couple of their LMH accordions with two registers that open the middle and high slides half way, resulting in a detuned effect. I initially thought the register mechanism was broken but finally determined that it was by design. I'm guessing it never caught on because, to most ears, including mine, it sounds like the accordion is simply out of tune. I also dubbed it "pseudo-musette", as you can see in this demo video from 2018.

 

[96Bass]

There is a reed combination that is common on many accordions that gives you the L reed with a sharp tuned M reed. Often called “sax”.

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

There is a reed combination that is common on many accordions that gives you the L reed with a sharp tuned M reed. Often called “sax”.

So named by someone with a low opinion of saxophones.