Thank you for the link. There wasn't much info about the accordion in the thread so hopefully CCPDX can give us some information on the reeds and tuning.
I always appreciate your perspective on this forum. Are you a B/C accordion player? You referenced doing master classes with Joe Burke.
Ha, I should be clear that it was Joe himself who called the classes I took "master" classes--that's far from a description by me of my own level. I started on PA after struggling with De Cuervains Syndrome as a novice ITM fiddler and going for accordion after liking accordion on itm recordings, plus a suggestion from a musician friend that I'd get on with PA having had some years of piano as a kid/teenager. And I did take to PA, started playing tango, klezmer, lots of wonderful stuff. But re Irish got interested in bisonoric box due to ITM and spent years studying and playing B/C for quite a while. Before shifting to Anglo concertina after falling in love with it in County Clare--also due to the fact that Anglo has more "magic notes" falling in both directions giving expanded phrasing choices, while the "semitone" 2-rows used in ITM only have two "magic notes."
I play both bisonoric and unisonoric concertina, but for accordion have been largely small PAs and CBAs for over a decade now. The reason being that I came full circle and got to feeling there was little point in putting up with the limits and frustrations (for some) of 2-row bisonoric unless you're going to play true one-row-melodeon push-pull style. Not sure I'm describing it coherently enough, but on semitone 2-row boxes, a certain number of keys will finger and phrase old-school back-and-forth push-pull style like a one-row melodeon or harmonica. Concertina players call this "playing on the rows" or "playing along the rows." Whereas, a certain number of keys will phrase on a 2-row semitone box playing "across the rows" using your "magic notes" for longer phrases before a bellows change, imparting a smoother, more fluid and flowing phrasing.
Well, on a B/C box, the keys that phrase "across the rows" in a smooth, fluid way are those most often used in a large majority of ITM sessions and other settings. This is often incorrectly called "B/C style" when it's really "across the rows style." Conversely, on a C#/D semitone 2-row, those common session keys finger and phrase "on the row" push-pull style--on the D row. Often inaccurately called "C#/D style."
I didn't know or understand any of this when taking on B/C box. But it eventually kind of came to me that this fluid sound often heard on B/C is pretty darn close to the phrasing and sound of a unisonoric PA or CBA, and small unisonorics would do ITM beautifully with all scale notes available on the bass side and the option of choosing direction for any melody note. ITM phrasing does have a fluid end of the spectrum, such as the "long bow" fiddlers of Clare and East Galway. I realized that was the sound for me, but without the inconveniences of 2-row bisonorics.
Of course, it's possible to be so smooth you are no longer in the idiom---very common with classical players new to ITM on any instrument, for example. Hopefully my B/C years are helpful in that area--I believe a number of ITM PA players spend or have spent time with bisonorics.
