How To Repair And Refurbish Old Accordion
My respond until now has been "no" on both counts. Given the active music scene in Boston, one might expect that whatever musical instrument could exist hands repaired here. Accordions are 1 blaring exception. When mine needed emergency repair subsequently a car accident, the closest technician I found willing to take on the job was based in New Bailiwick of jersey. Despite having lived in this area for six years, I still had no idea where to send someone who needed an accordion tuned up or overhauled — but I do know, anytime, that someone will exist me.
Globe reporter A.Z. Madonna plays the accordion
Nigh general music stores don't take the kickoff clue what to exercise with an piano accordion. The Button Box in Sunderland only does warranty repairs on piano accordions, which is what I play. Some DIY repair and tuning instructions can be found online, just to the untrained heart, the innards of an piano accordion are a baffling labyrinth. Unless you know precisely what to tweak, you might finish upwards sounding worse, much worse, than earlier. Sending my Brandoni squeeze box dorsum to the factory in Castelfidardo, Italy — long considered the earth upper-case letter of the accordion — would exercise the fox, but and then I wouldn't accept an instrument for months. Could it actually be that complicated?
Yes and no. Paul Tagliamonte Jr. of West Harwich has been working on accordions since the age of 10 (he'south now 63), and says there are three essentials to the fine art of accordion maintenance. First is the know-how; second is spare parts such every bit keys, reed valves (usually leather strips), and metal rods; and tertiary is tools, though virtually of these tin't be found at your boilerplate hardware store. Tools like a prepare of bellows to exam reeds without having to put the whole instrument back together once more; a setup to melt wax at a depression enough temperature to set up reeds without called-for them; maintenance and tuning tools that look similar what a dentist might employ to scrape plaque off someone'south teeth; even a tray that indexes bass buttons to make sure they get back onto the instrument the aforementioned way they came off.
Some of Tagliamonte's tools and know-how come from his male parent, Paul Tagliamonte Sr., an accordionist and teacher who ran a series of studios under the proper name "Paul Monte" and only closed downward his Wellesley music school a few years agone when he retired at the age of 90. Some of his knowledge comes from men he calls "sometime-timers," piano accordion makers of Italian descent who first taught his father and then taught him as a teenager.
Tagliamonte has never considered himself a total-fourth dimension accordion technician; for decades, he worked at the sound technology company Bose. But later his father retired, his mother implored him to go along, and he both enjoys the piece of work and wants to be a resources for the next generation of players.
"There was a time when the only accordions I saw coming in were onetime boxes that were adequately beat up, owned by people with a lot of gray hair," he said in a phone interview. Now, he's seeing a inundation of customers in their late 20s or early on 30s (like me) who didn't take squeeze box lessons as a child, but picked upwardly the instrument later in life. I wanted to learn an musical instrument I could acquit, I loved accordion-friendly bands like Beirut and the Decemberists, and since I had taken piano lessons throughout my childhood, I already knew how to play half of the piano accordion, or and so I thought; what I initially lacked in technique I made up in blowing.
Ten years later, I'm still squeezing — mostly playing dance music from diverse parts of Europe and America — and I've learned bits and pieces virtually the instrument's strange history along the way.
The popularity of the piano accordion in America has swelled, then diminished, and then swelled over again. Every bit instruments go, it is a relatively young two centuries old. The beginning push button accordion was developed in Europe in the 1820s; the pianoforte accordion came along several years later, and when European immigrants brought their accordions to the Americas, the musical instrument found its place in vaudeville, blues, popular music, and big band jazz.
Considering piano accordions were inexpensive and portable compared to pianos, they were corking offset instruments for kids. When accordionist Sam Falcetti founded his namesake music store and schoolhouse in Western Massachusetts, it was an accordion studio kickoff; by the time he opened a tertiary location in 1963, nearly 400 students were taking accordion lessons from him and his employees.
"Information technology was more popular than the pianoforte or guitar, believe information technology or not!" exclaimed Falcetti in a phone interview.
But many young players stashed their instruments in the cupboard once rock 'n' roll took off. "My dad blames the Beatles," said Tagliamonte, who started playing equally soon every bit he could concur the instrument, just in time for Beatlemania to hit. When Tagliamonte reached inferior loftier school, the accordion was unusual at best, and he picked up the electric bass so he could play in rock bands.
Possibly it had to get out before information technology could come back in. Thanks to artists including polka parody chief "Weird Al" Yankovic, brainy rock bands like They Might Be Giants, and the exuberant bandleader Buckwheat Zydeco, the accordion stuck around long enough for children who grew up on that music — myself included — to selection upwardly the instrument, without the stigma. We're exploring its traditions and forging its futurity. Just playing the instrument and knowing its inner workings are two different animals.
At the folk instrument store House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park, Md., accordionist and technician Wendy Morrison fielded frequent inquiries nearly sometime accordions starting in the 1990s, many from people who had merely come into an squeeze box from a relative or an estate sale.
"It was a sneaky, gradual thing," said Morrison over the phone. "I knew it was coming back when I started hearing information technology in commercials."
During her time at the shop (she left in 2009), she did some small repairs — what she called "like shooting fish in a barrel stuff."
"There were some times I could fix a bass machinery," she said. "I could only give it a fiddling kick and it'd go right where it was supposed to go." For anything complex, she had to transport it somewhere else. Somewhen, she penned a lengthy layperson's guide to assessing older accordions.
Morrison surmised that Italia'south longstanding culture of insular guilds and apprenticeships led some experts to take their knowledge to the grave. "Boy, were those guys jealous about their secrets!" she said.
Just what happens when knowing those secrets is no longer a viable career path? Now, said Falcetti, the next generation isn't even picking up the profession in Castelfidardo.
Falcetti Music's Springfield shop all the same has two accordion technicians on staff. One works on acoustic instruments, and one specializes in the digital Roland 5-Accordion, which Falcetti credits every bit the reason he's still working — changing instrument sounds is every bit easy equally the printing of a button.
For Falcetti, who got his start selling accordions door to door during the tiptop of the musical instrument's popularity, the digital squeeze box represents a pathway toward the future.
"The squeeze box volition never go by the wayside. People get a lot of joy out of listening to [information technology] ," he said. But accordion repair is "kind of a dying profession . . . I don't know if it'southward going to continue in the next twoscore or fifty years."
Still, Tagliamonte is determined that many older accordions have enough of life left in them. If a customer brings in an instrument and he determines that buying another one would exist more cost-effective than repairing it, he'll tell them.
"In general, there's not likewise many cases where I'g unable to help someone," he said. "There are not many people that can heal these quondam instruments anymore, and I feel an inner obligation." Now retired, Tagliamonte plans to spend even more fourth dimension at his workbench and occasionally coaching clients through at-home accordion surgeries over the phone. He isn't thinking near education others his tricks of the trade all the same, but he has resolved to be an "erstwhile-timer" for the adjacent generation. "I will non end my life without passing the billy," he said.
At some indicate presently, he and his wife plan to spend a few weeks in Italy and make a pilgrimage to Castelfidardo, a town he has heard well-nigh all his life merely never seen himself.
A.Z. Madonna can exist reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @knitandlisten.
How To Repair And Refurbish Old Accordion,
Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/10/06/arts/how-do-you-fix-an-accordion-you-probably-dont-they-do-meet-technicians-dying-profession-keeping-instrument-alive/
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