The many different accordion types can make the world of Button Accordions and Melodeons confusing. Information can be hard to come by. The sheer variety of these instruments can be very daunting. Some of the advice and bias towards certain variants can throw you as well. To help make some sense of this we will try to explain some of these here.
There are some resources out there and among the best is the www.melodeon.net forum which is well worth a browse
What is a button accordion?
A button accordion is just that, an accordion with buttons instead of piano type keys. “Button accordion” however covers many different categories of boxes which we will try to explain here. There are almost as many unique boxes out there as there are players so this is a pretty general and high level explanation. Click on the links for a brief summary of each of the button accordion types.
Accordion Types
- One row diatonic button Accordion or Melodeon (e.g Hohner HA114 . including cajun quebecois etc)
- Two row Diatonic Button Accordion or Melodeon (e.g Hohner Pokerwork including 2 1/2 row)
- Club Accordion (eg Hohner Cub IIB)
- Three row Diatonic Button Accordion (e.g Hohner Corona)
- Two row Chromatic Button Accordion (e.g Hohner Double Ray small)
- Chromatic Button Accordion (full size)