Questions about quint tuned reeds

[breezybellows]

I need some advice. What are do's and don'ts when it comes to the quint tuned reeds.


It mostly sounded good. I'm sure that I can't use this for everything. Especially when I'm playing chords with the right hand. I'm trying to picture how each interval is affected with the addition of the quint set.


major third (C+E) with quint becomes a Maj7 chord (C+E+G+B.
minor third (C+ Eb) becomes a min7 chord (C+Eb+G+Bb
Fourth (C+F) becomes sus4 chord (C+F+G+C)
fifth (C+G) becomes a open voiced Sus2 chord (CGD)


when you bring left hand notes and chords into the picture, it gets more complicated. I'm trying to find out if certain intervals need to be avoided and if there are things that can be exploited to make the songs rich.


maybe songs need to be arranged specifically for this.

I have my lesson tomorrow and I'll be discussing these with my teacher. I'll update this thread about what I find out.

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

I have a Hohner Imperator VS with quint reeds that I rarely play. I think it's a nice effect when you want a more pipe organ-like sound. I would avoid using just the high reed with the quint, as having the notes a 5th apart really does sound weird. This is the problem with those 1960s Titano Tiger accordions, where the quint is a 5th above the middle reed. When combined with middle or low reed for an interval of a 13th or 21st, a high quint sort of just enhances that overtone which is already present in the note. This accordion looks new, but make sure, when you do eventually bring it to be tuned, that the tuner tunes the quints to perfect, not equal temperament 5ths. Perfect 5ths blend very well compared with the EQ 5ths that our ears have grown accustomed to.

 

[Dingo40]

I'll be discussing these with my teacher. I'll update this thread about what I find out.

Well, both versions sounded good to me!
I myself have a very modest 1950s Scandalli 41/120 tuned LMMM with one of the Ms in quint. (I bought it because I liked the sound.)
So far, I haven't had a problem playing whatever, all reeds sounding.
What works quite well for me, personally, is to play a tune with all reeds sounding and then the repeat without the quint reed.

 

[breezybellows]

I have a Hohner Imperator VS with quint reeds that I rarely play. I think it's a nice effect when you want a more pipe organ-like sound. I would avoid using just the high reed with the quint, as having the notes a 5th apart really does sound weird. This is the problem with those 1960s Titano Tiger accordions, where the quint is a 5th above the middle reed. When combined with middle or low reed for an interval of a 13th or 21st, a high quint sort of just enhances that overtone which is already present in the note. This accordion looks new, but make sure, when you do eventually bring it to be tuned, that the tuner tunes the quints to perfect, not equal temperament 5ths. Perfect 5ths blend very well compared with the EQ 5ths that our ears have grown accustomed to.

I once bought a titano tiger and I didn't really like it. The angled keyboard also made the ergonomics weird.

I agree with your suggestion about not using only the high reed with the quint. I tried MHv and that also sounded a little weird I actually liked the sound of LMHv more than LHHv.


This is not a new accordion. It's almost 40 years old. Original owner passed away several years ago and a family member has been holding onto it after that. So I don't think that it has had any recent tuning job done. I don't hear any tuning problems.

 

[breezybellows]

Well, both versions sounded good to me!
I myself have a very modest 1950s Scandalli 41/120 tuned LMMM with one of the Ms in quint. (I bought it because I liked the sound.)
So far, I haven't had a problem playing whatever, all reeds sounding.
What works quite well for me, personally, is to play a tune with all reeds sounding and then the repeat without the quint reed.

I'm curious to hear how it sounds. Do you have a video?

 

[Dingo40]

I'm curious to hear how it sounds. Do you have a video?

I'm very sorry to be a disappointment but I'm not one of the the IT generation, nor do I have the equipment.
My technological peak was a book of logarithms. I even had trouble with the slide rule!!
I'll have to respectfully decline.

 

[dak]

The whole point of a quint reed as opposed to a fingered quint is that it is a pure (rather than a tempered) quint and does not serve as a musical interval but as a modification of timbre. So it is a mistake to think of it in terms of chords. Rather you need to reconsider your chords in terms of the changed timbre. In terms of organ stops, the main quint stops are 2⅔' and 1⅓' (the latter mostly in Mixtur); lower quint registers are mostly used to form "acoustic bass", like using 16' in connection with 10⅔' in order to hint at a nonexistent 32' fundamental. The quint reed set on your accordion definitely is not useful for acoustic bass, so by far the main use will be as a timbre modifier with reeds more than an octave below.

Using 2⅔' together only with 4' can make a bit of sense if you are coloring a sound/melody from a different instrument or left hand material with chord/arpeggio work and want to tread lightly. Then this kind of "hinting at a lower note without playing it" might be useful.

It's all about color.

 

[debra]

Every note has a first harmonic that is one octave higher and a second harmonic that is one octave plus one quint higher. When the quint register is a quint above the middle reed you should get the best sound with LMv or Lv, but as the v is one octave plus one quint it should always be used together with L for good sound. Mv just sounds weird.
It would be best (most versatile) for the quint reeds to be one quint higher than the H reeds, but when you have an accordion that already goes up to high C the highest octave (starting from D) cannot have the "required" high reeds as they are not being manufactured. (You could also not hear them very well either.) The highest reed in production is C#8 which allows accordions with the extended 47 key keyboard (low Eb to high C#) to still have a proper H reed for the highest C# but the quint above H reeds would not be possible all the way up.
I generally don't like a quint register much because to serve as a credible second harmonic (the way H serves as first harmonic of M and M as first harmonic of L) its volume should be considerably lower. The quint reeds are just too loud.

 

[Ventura]

that is my issue also.. the relative volume

with a Hammond type Drawbar Organ we could add
the "quint" or offset drawbar to where it is just right in
the overall sound, and i like it there, but i could never
control my naturally right hand chording brain on an
accordion long enough to finish a song on a Tiger
without wincing with the pain !

 

[tcabot]

How are you getting on with the quint stop, @breezybellows ?
What's it good for? What's it not good for? Is it worth the time & effort to stick a quint H row instead of regular H to give it a try?

 

[breezybellows]

that is my issue also.. the relative volume

with a Hammond type Drawbar Organ we could add
the "quint" or offset drawbar to where it is just right in
the overall sound, and i like it there, but i could never
control my naturally right hand chording brain on an
accordion long enough to finish a song on a Tiger
without wincing with the pain !

I bought a titano tiger a few years ago and I didn't really like the sound is the quint reeds. One of the reasons was because the quint was in the middle octave. This cathedral accordion has the quint in the H octave and I actually like this a lot. Also the angled keyboard on the tiger wasn't ergonomic.

 

[breezybellows]

How are you getting on with the quint stop, @breezybellows ?
What's it good for? What's it not good for? Is it worth the time & effort to stick a quint H row instead of regular H to give it a try?

I generally don't like a quint register much because to serve as a credible second harmonic (the way H serves as first harmonic of M and M as first harmonic of L) its volume should be considerably lower. The quint reeds are just too loud.

After spending a couple of weeks with the quint registers, here are my thoughts.

1) I really like the following switches LHv, LMHv, MMHv. I like LHHv to an extent. In general, adding the high octave quint to sets that are tonally distant from it (L or M) sounds really good. The LHv sounds very rich compared to the LH organ switch. I have also been using MMHv a lot when I start a song with MM and I want to transition over to something a little bit more powerful but not too strong.

2) I didn't like the following switches: MHv and HHv. These were not a great fit for songs I play. MHv did have a lot of dissonance for some of the songs that have chords in the right hand.

3) when I use LHv or MMHv I didn't see anything sound wrong for most of my free bass repertoire (even when I play multiple notes). So I think it just works for everything.

 

[kimric]

I have tuned a few of these.The trick I use is when tuning the quint reed ( use a peterson strobe tuner) is to set the tuner to the reed that the quint plays with , then play the quint reed. You will see a sort of ghost pattern on the tuning wheel turning a bit CW or CCW , tune the reed to eliminate the rotation. This will give you a perfect 5th.

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

I have tuned a few of these.The trick I use is when tuning the quint reed ( use a peterson strobe tuner) is to set the tuner to the reed that the quint plays with , then play the quint reed. You will see a sort of ghost pattern on the tuning wheel turning a bit CW or CCW , tune the reed to eliminate the rotation. This will give you a perfect 5th.

Also, I believe just setting the tuner to 440.5 standard for an A440 accordion will give you perfect 5th quints. It's worked for me, anyway.

 

[breezybellows]

Also, I believe just setting the tuner to 440.5 standard for an A440 accordion will give you perfect 5th quints. It's worked for me, anyway.

Won't using the 3/2 ratio give you a perfect fifth?

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

Won't using the 3/2 ratio give you a perfect fifth?

Yes. I realized that setting the tuner to 440.5 gave me the same number of hertz. Someone can correct me if I am mistaken, but I got perfect 5ths using this method, which is a bit quicker than doing an, albeit simple, math problem for every note. Of course, one always uses their ears when tuning, in addition to technological crutches. It's easy to hear if a 5th is imperfect, just as it's easy to hear an imperfect octave. But I'm in favor of any method that saves time. Even a few extra seconds per reed when tuning really adds up.

 

[breezybellows]

Yes. I realized that setting the tuner to 440.5 gave me the same number of hertz. Someone can correct me if I am mistaken, but I got perfect 5ths using this method, which is a bit quicker than doing an, albeit simple, math problem for every note. Of course, one always uses their ears when tuning, in addition to technological crutches. It's easy to hear if a 5th is imperfect, just as it's easy to hear an imperfect octave. But I'm in favor of any method that saves time. Even a few extra seconds per reed when tuning really adds up.

I was trying to wrap my head around how A=440.5 Hz achieved that.
If A is 440 Hz, an equal tempered E should be
440 * (e^(ln(2)/12))^7 which is 659.255113826 hz

Pure fifth should be 440 *1.5 = 660 Hz

An equal tempered E in a 440.5 Hz A should be 440.5 * (e^(ln(2)/12))^7 =
660.004267364 Hz

That's pretty close. A= 440.502848142 Hz should give you almost exactly the perfect fifth.

But I see a caveat here. This should work to set the perfect fifth for E4, but I'm not sure if it will apply for other notes (because the inconsistency between pure notes and equally tempered notes is different for different notes).

Let me see. Let's take equally tempered E4 and it's perfect fifth.
Equally tempered E4 (@A440) = 659.255113826 Hz

perfect 5th of the E4 = 659.255113826 * 1.5 = 988.882670739 Hz

B5 (@A440.5) = 881 * (e^(ln(2)/12))^2 = 988.889064561Hz


that's pretty close. Seems to work. For these two cases. Maybe it works pretty good for all notes.

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

But I see a caveat here. This should work to set the perfect fifth for E4, but I'm not sure if it will apply for other notes (because the inconsistency between pure notes and equally tempered notes is different for different notes).

Yes, but all we are concerned with here is achieving a perfect 5th with an equally tempered note. It doesn't matter whether that lower note is part of a just or ET tuning. All I can say is I ran the math against various notes throughout the range of the instrument, and it worked in theory and in practice. Any slight deviations are well within the margin of error of accordion tuning, which I find to be about .5 cents for higher notes.

 

[breezybellows]

Yes, but all we are concerned with here is achieving a perfect 5th with an equally tempered note. It doesn't matter whether that lower note is part of a just or ET tuning. All I can say is I ran the math against various notes throughout the range of the instrument, and it worked in theory and in practice. Any slight deviations are well within the margin of error of accordion tuning, which I find to be about .5 cents for higher notes.

Yes. I was thinking out aloud. Looks like it checks out.

 

[Siegmund]

If 440 works for all notes on the regular reeds, 440.5 should work for all of the quints; they all need to be 702 cents instead of 700 cents higher. Those 2 cents will be ~0.5Hz at 440 and ~1Hz at 880 and ~2Hz at 1760, but the tuner will move them all up proportionally if you change the A.