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[Graham Spencer]

Hi all

I've got a Saltarelle 3-row in for some tuning work, and it has a keyboard layout that took me a bit by surprise. It's a 3-row; now ADG would make perfect sense to me, but this one is GDA. The outside (G) row is 4th-button start with low notes, the middle (D) row is 4th-button start with accidentals at the chin end, and the inside (A) row is 3rd-button start. Anyone else come across this configuration?

Cheers
Graham

[triskel]

Very curious!

Could it have been converted from G/C/B?

[Lester]

Daft question - is it a 10/11/10 keyboard and if so are the reed blocks in the right way round?

[Grape Ape]

That was my first thought, but I didn't feel smart enough to say so.
 I have never heard of a GDA layout before and can't imagine how that would work for playing across the rows, but there are of course many things I haven't heard of before...

[Graham Spencer]

Daft question - is it a 10/11/10 keyboard and if so are the reed blocks in the right way round?

Actually it's 11-12-11, but the principle's the same. I see exactly where you're coming from, but it must be as intended because the lowest pitched row is on the outside and the highest n the inside. It really threw me when I picked it up to see what needed doing to it! Obviously it's always been like that and its owner has no problems with it as he  plays Irish reels, jigs and polkas at lightning speed on it. 

No idea what model it is - I'll try posting a picture. It's finished in red lacquer and has the "geometric S" on the bellows and a chrome grille.

Cheers
Graham 

[triskel]

Daft question - is it a 10/11/10 keyboard and if so are the reed blocks in the right way round?

Actually it's 11-12-11, but the principle's the same. I see exactly where you're coming from, but it must be as intended because the lowest pitched row is on the outside and the highest n the inside.

In which case the 3rd-button start on the inside (A) row corresponds with the set-up on a G/C/B - which is why I suggested that possibility. Either it started out as one, or it's what they were thinking in terms of when they made it.

[richard.fleming]

GPS  - How about asking the client?

[Graham Spencer]

GPS  - How about asking the client?

I did,when he handed me the box!  Belonging to an Irish player, I'd assumed it was going to be BCC# or something similar, but he said"No, it's D and G and something-or-other;I learned on a 1-row and never touched the BC system".

Its spec is much like a Laurentides,but its casework is very different.....

Cheers
Graham

[triskel]

... and something-or-other ...

  That reminds me of plenty of older box players that I've encountered, and sometimes mention, who've been playing for maybe 60 years and still don't even know what key their accordions are in...

I learned on a 1-row and never touched the BC system".

So he's using it as 3 single-row melodeons and not crossing rows by the sound of it, and hence the odd G/D/A set-up isn't an issue for him, but none of this actually explains how it came to be made this way... 

[Winston Smith]

"So he's using it as 3 single-row melodeons"

I wonder why that sounds familiar?

[richard.fleming]

In continuation of Triskel''s last post,  I used to meet players from Mayo and suchlike places who explained how to play the BC box by saying that you played the tunes on the inside row mainly but you 'mixed in a few notes from the other row' if you needed to. That was the extent of their music theory, I think. Good players too.

[george garside]

60 years ago me and a mate both bought 2 row boxes  which we played on one row or t'other and which sounded fine as long as we were both on the same row!   We hadn't  a clue as to what the rows were tuned in!   It took a couple of years or more before we realised that they were BC  and quite a bit longer before we realised that  all sorts of other keys were there for the asking

george

[boxer]

I think they were a lot more perceptive than the apparent naivety of their statement might suggest.  The B/C's keyboard is the very essence of logicality to a theorist, with all the "white" notes on the inside row and all the "black" notes (plus a couple of whites) on the outside.

When it actually comes to playing the thing, logicality isn't worth a damn at the speed you have to fire notes out.  By the time you've worked out from first principles, and on the fly, how to sharpen or flatten a given "white" note, the tune's over.  It's only endless repetitive practice that puts the tunes under your fingers without need for conscious thought, and the guys from Mayo summed up perfectly how it feels to me when I'm playing a tune that I've learned that way.