Accordion and Jazz Manouche?

TenorClef

My first venture into the accordion section The accordion was it ever featured in dango's recordings? I must say i'll got a whole string of Django CD albums and i never noticed one. However the accordion has an obvious strong French flavour and you would think it would work well withiin the context of this style of gypsy jazz type music.

Any way from a point of interest to those who do play accordion, you have keys on one side and buttons on the other, and sometimes i hear terms like 16 bass or even 100 or more bass, no idea what that means but i assume to work within the frame work of jazz an accordion must be able to play jazz type chords or do you just find ways around this dilemma?

TenorClef

Ok having had another look at this forum i doubt i'll get a reply any time soon but i did see this on you tube-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnJkjgvC0nI

MichaelHorowitz

This CD features Django accompanying musette accordionists on the banjo guitar:

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Integrale
Django Reinhardt Vol.1 (1928-1934)

Presentation

Check out these recordings of Django with Gus Viseur:

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Integrale
Django Reinhardt Vol.9 (1939-1940)

H.C.Q.
Strut

Stackabones

TenorClef wrote:

Ok having had another look at this forum i doubt i'll get a reply any time soon but i did see this on you tube-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnJkjgvC0nI

Nice vid. Accordion sounds great in this music--I'd guess it harkens back to the bal-musette days.

brandoneon

Any way from a point of interest to those who do play accordion, you have keys on one side and buttons on the other, and sometimes i hear terms like 16 bass or even 100 or more bass, no idea what that means but i assume to work within the frame work of jazz an accordion must be able to play jazz type chords or do you just find ways around this dilemma?

The # of bass buttons gives you an idea of how big the squeeze box is. The # is usually in some multiple of 6, since there are six rows of buttons: 3rd, root, major chord, minor chord, 7th chord, dim chord. So if you see 120 bass, there are 20 columns of buttons, and it's a full size beast. The next size down would be 96 bass. As for making jazz chords with the bass buttons, you can easily combine buttons to make a novel chord. For instance, C minor 7 = Cminor + E flat, and B minor 7 flat 5 = B + D minor, etc.
There are plenty of great videos online of accordionists playing with a gypsy jazz band. Check out:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... as+dutronc

MichaelHorowitz

TenorClef

Ok thanks for the info, the pianist in our our band is interested in getting an accordion, would a 72 bass be appropiate as this has the 7th and dim 7th in it. Cheers, TC.