a frivolous waste of money

Just bought my third accordion.

In my defense, this one fits a niche that was missing from my collection: it's a chromatic button accordion.



For the uninitiated – there are several types of accordion:
- the diatonic accordion (small, and good for fast Irish tunes)
- the piano accordion (an accordion, but with a piano stuck on the side)
- the chromatic button accordion (fancy and kinda awesome)

I love my two piano accordions, but they've always felt a bit odd to me. Like a piecemeal instrument, where someone has gone "We need something to play the melody. Here's an instrument we can copy." The CBA, on the other hand, has clearly been designed to be exactly what it is. It's an instrument where I want to geek out over the layout of the keys, as much as anything else.

Said layout:
Going left to right, diagonally, the notes increase by semitones.
Going right to left, diagonally, the notes increase by tones.

This means that you can transpose a melody by moving your hands to a different starting note and then playing precisely the same hand pattern as before, because all the keys work the same way. It's clever.



So, anyway, I bought this totally-not-superfluous instrument for a great deal of money (but barely anything in accordion prices), and am now figuring out how on earth one plays the damn thing.

Wish me luck!