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Author Topic: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?  (Read 20181 times)

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Fsamuel

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #60 on: February 22, 2013, 06:22:40 PM »

I started out on a two reed Morgane but found it too shrill when playing in the upper half,so i didn't! I now have a Mori and use the MM in the lower half and the LMM in the upper. What i haven't cracked is how to smoothly switch out the L mid tune as the Mori needs two actions of the top switch to bring in the MM, hit it once and i get just the M. Somebody will probably be able to put me straight!
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Steve C.

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #61 on: February 22, 2013, 06:34:32 PM »

Bert, I was thinking, generally, that the less hardware mounted on a vibrating surface the better (?)
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Andrew Wigglesworth

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #62 on: February 22, 2013, 06:46:56 PM »

Bert, I was thinking, generally, that the less hardware mounted on a vibrating surface the better (?)

Melodeons don't have soundboards' so if it made a difference, that wouldn't be the reason.

YorkieKen

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #63 on: February 22, 2013, 07:09:02 PM »

The newest bass mechanism looks a lot less labor intensive to construct.
Compared to my "old" G/C Tommy from the late 80's there have been other obvious cost-cutting measures on today's model -- for example, the fretsaw-cut curved veneer-on-aluminium treble end grille (beautiful and strong but must have been a pig to make) looks to have been replaced by a flat (laser-cut?) wooden one.

And if the overall size has also increased a little bit (has it?) this might be to remove some of the cutaway shenanigans needed (for example, in the bellows frames to avoid reed blocks) -- the old ones weren't quite such a mad cram-everything-in-to-the smallest-possible-space-regardless-of-difficulty exercise as a Preciosa, but not that far off..

Just noticed my Tommy ( 1979 ) has an aluminium grille like you describe Ian. I've just had the bass end plate off and it has the 'L' shaped pallets as mentioned by Lester. I have the thirds taped off, and I think it sounds great...just to my liking  :||: 
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boxer

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #64 on: February 22, 2013, 11:21:43 PM »

Interesting stuff about quint tuned Tommys.  My B/C Tommy was built in 2001

as I don't play basses to mean 'owt, they're not an issue, but it's interesting to learn that Castagnari are up there "improving" specs along with the best of them. 

My earlier reference to messing up the breathing in LMM was not about running out of air, but more about getting bellows pressure right up and back down again in the space of a single eighth note, to place a rhythmic stress on it.  In MM the Tommy is as crisp as could be.  In LMM, you just can't get the same hit.  I suspect this isn't a Tommy thing, and would apply to any LMM box. 
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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #65 on: February 22, 2013, 11:53:24 PM »

My earlier reference to messing up the breathing in LMM was not about running out of air, but more about getting bellows pressure right up and back down again in the space of a single eighth note, to place a rhythmic stress on it.  In MM the Tommy is as crisp as could be.  In LMM, you just can't get the same hit.  I suspect this isn't a Tommy thing, and would apply to any LMM box.
Hmm....
Not my experience. Having owned a D/G Tommy for many years, IMHO it was capable of as beautifully crisp and loud attack on LMM as on MM. Similarly with my current LMM Sander and Lilium.
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boxer

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #66 on: February 23, 2013, 08:19:03 PM »

Well....

perhaps the effect of the low reed is more pronounced when the instrument is played without basses (as is my habit on B/C)

who cares?  the Tommy's MM sound is astonishing enough to compensate for any reservation I may mistakenly have about the effect of the low reeds

viva castagnari
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Steve C.

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #67 on: February 24, 2013, 01:20:06 PM »

If melodeons don't have soundboards, what are the treble reeds on a Lilly mounted on?
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Theo

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #68 on: February 24, 2013, 01:24:26 PM »

If melodeons don't have soundboards, what are the treble reeds on a Lilly mounted on?

In Italy they call it the fondo, in France I believe it is called 'la table' in England we just bicker about what it should not be called. :'(
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Andy Simpson

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #69 on: February 24, 2013, 01:40:21 PM »

The term "soundboard" is a misnomer relating to accordions as it does not have anything like the same function as the soundboard on a guitar or piano. In fact, it needs to work pretty much the opposite way and be rigid with as little vibration as possible.

...but it's at least widely understood what it refers to and is better than English-speakers calling it a "fondo", which is not a special term that describes it's function better but rather a generic one from Italian with many appropriate equivalents in English and using it in the context of an English language discussion is a bit like insisting on referring to your front door as a "porta" but all others as "doors".  ;D
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Graham Spencer

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #70 on: February 24, 2013, 02:44:50 PM »

If melodeons don't have soundboards, what are the treble reeds on a Lilly mounted on?

PLEASE let's not go there again.......... ::)
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Chris Ryall

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #71 on: February 24, 2013, 02:47:52 PM »

I was an early adopter of "melodeonista" here.  Such is the speed of the twittersphere that both the OED and iPhone spellchecker seem to recognise it!

We share perhaps the most accretive language going, and as a 1st language speaker I again exercise my right to adopt fondo fondo into my mother tongue as (yet) another new English word. 

I'll continue to use soundboard more generically for flat bits of musical wood, with holes in. But I like that absence of a confusing "sound" syllable; we are all clear that this is not what this particular bit of kindling is about  ;)

So that's done then.

note to OED please file new loanword
                    Suggest you put it in somewhere between "ennui" and "gestalt"  8)
« Last Edit: February 24, 2013, 02:54:26 PM by Chris Ryall »
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Andy Simpson

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #72 on: February 24, 2013, 03:20:59 PM »

There are many good and useful loanwords, especially ones that have captured intangible qualities that are extremely clumsy or impossible to render in English, but I don't think that fondo is one of them. When you consider the original meaning and context it makes no sense to use it as a specialised technical term, it doesn't express something that many English words can't already and, IMO, looks very pretentious. My opposition to fondo isn't because it's a loanword, it's because it's a stupid loanword. :D

All this fondo business is the linguistic equivalent of how the Belgians managed to successfully market what was to them an unremarkable lower-mid market lager as a premium "reassuringly expensive" brand in the UK...
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Adam-T

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #73 on: February 24, 2013, 03:54:36 PM »

I always called it the Palletboard in the PA only days before I started posting on Melnet - that name doesn`t suggest it has sound changing properties and describes its function ..

There`s nothing wrong with "Fondo" , English contains a number of French words and more are added all the time and Musical terms are littered with Italian words (a lot of which are used pretentiously) so another isn`t going to hurt, it`s not a "soundboard" in the traditional sense and the term Palletboard doesn`t seem to have migrated over to Melodeonland so what do we call it then ?
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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #74 on: February 24, 2013, 03:57:56 PM »

The only thing wrong with 'fondo' in my opinion is that I have an inextricable link forged in my brain that it refers to something put inside a chocolate!
...... I can't get away from it!
Q
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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #75 on: February 24, 2013, 04:02:51 PM »

Get your drift Andy, good loanword = schadenfreude, bad loanword = jus.... (:)
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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #76 on: February 24, 2013, 04:10:22 PM »

You won't stop me I'm afraid 8)   As a possible diversion from chewing over the well macerated cud of this particular definiens yet again, may I suggest another..

   It should be "theftword" rather than "loanword"  ;)

   .. Discuss  :|glug
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Owen Woods

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #77 on: February 24, 2013, 04:12:43 PM »

Bert, I was thinking, generally, that the less hardware mounted on a vibrating surface the better (?)

Ah, that's more excusable (if still wrong). When I read your post I thought that you were referring to the mechanism vibrating, which would be very odd!

As others have said, resonance of the palletboard (my preferred term) on a melodeon is a Bad Thing. The palletboard absorbs some vibration from the reed, along with the blocks, the casing and all sorts of other things, and this together gives the instrument some of its characteristic tone. But vibration of these parts is a strictly "passive" form of colouration, rather than an "active" sound generation, like in a violin or piano.

I wrote about this once: http://ukebert.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/when-thinking-about-instruments/

I think that the L reeds in an LMM instrument with MM selected act rather like tuned mass dampers, absorbing energy from the air or the palletboard/blocks. Ways of mitigating this would be to have the L reeds facing away from all other reeds and varnishing all surface.
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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #78 on: February 24, 2013, 04:43:19 PM »

Fondo? Don't you melt cheese in one and then dip bread in it   ;)

Gary P Chapin

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Re: Why You Chose a Two or Three Voice?
« Reply #79 on: February 24, 2013, 05:38:51 PM »

... act rather like tuned mass dampers, absorbing energy from the air ...

Can't we do something about that by realigning the deflector dish and reversing the polarity of the neutron flow?
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