Introduction:

A musical instrument played by stretching and squeezing with the hands to work a central bellows that blows air over metal reeds, the melody and chords being sounded by buttons or keys. The oldest name for this group of instruments is harmonika, from the Greek harmonikos, meaning harmonic, musical. Today, native versions of the name accordion are more common.

Details

Accordion: portable free reed instrument with a bellow.
Bellow: part that controls the air which makes the reed vibrate.
Bass register: buttons that plays the bass notes.
Bass button: system that transmits air from the bellow to the reeds, which produce the sound.
Treble keyboard: button that plays the treble notes.
Grill: place where circulate air and sound.
Treble register: buttons that plays the treble notes.

Configuration and Types

Accordions have many configurations and types. What may be technically possible to do with one accordion could be impossible with another:

• Some accordions are bisonoric, producing different pitches depending on the direction of bellows movement
• Others are unisonoric and produce the same pitch in both directions
• Some use a chromatic buttonboard for the right-hand manual
• Others use a diatonic buttonboard for the right-hand manual
• Yet others use a piano-style musical keyboard for the right-hand manual
• Some can play in different registers
• Craftsmen and technicians may tune the same registers differently, "personalizing" the end result, such as an organ technician might voice a particular instrument

The accordion's basic form is believed to have been invented in Berlin in 1822 by Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann. According to Russian researchers, the earliest known simple accordions were made in Tula, Russia by Timofey Vorontsov from 1820, and Ivan Sizov from 1830. By the 1880s, the list included Oryol, Ryazan, Moscow, Tver, Vologda, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, Simbirsk and others, and many of these places created their own varieties of the instrument.

The accordion is one of several European inventions of the early 19th century that used free reeds driven by a bellows. An instrument called accordion was first patented in 1829 by Cyrill Demian, of Armenian origin, in Vienna.