Slovenian Accordions

by

Jim Allen

Here are a couple of keyboad layouts for Slovenian diatonic button accordions. These were furnished to me by another person, who had received them from someone else. I have never played one of these instruments, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the layouts. I welcome any comments or corrections.

The layout follows the same system as most three-row boxes, with the major triad, Do-Mi-So-Do on the push stroke and Re-Fa-La-Ti on the pull. On the lower end of each row, the So also plays on the pull stroke, as does the low So on most one-row melodeons. This replaces the La in that octave, but the La can be obtained by playing the Re on the next row out. Also at the very low end the low Re is found by jumping the rows.

This arrangement offers an improvement over the Hohner-style tuning by extending the low range, particularly of the higher-pitched rows. It takes some row-jumping, but that's not difficult to learn.

The blank keys on the ends of some of the rows are not on the instrument. They are there to make the web browser move the rows to the right or left so they will line up like they do on the instrument.

The diagrams I received included four-button helper rows. I am not comfortable about putting them here because they do not have all the keys needed to make an instrument fully chromatic.

C-F-Bb

F	A	C	F	A	C	F	A	C	F	A
----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----
Bb	C	E	G	Bb	D	E	G	Bb	D	E

E	G	C	E	G	C	E	G	C	E	G	-
----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----
G	B	D	F	A	B	D	F	A	B	D	-

Bb-Eb-Ab

Eb	G	Bb	Eb	G	Bb	Eb	G	Bb	Eb	G
----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----
Ab	Bb	D	F	Ab	C	D	F	Ab	C	D

D	F	Bb	D	F	Bb	D	F	Bb	D	F	-
----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----	----
F	A	C	Eb	G	A	C	Eb	G	A	C	-