The Atzarin Accordion

Hello everybody! Today I announce a new project. A little while back I wrote a post on Accordion Classification, which mentioned that there had never been a “Bisonoric, Chromatic Button Accordion”. It did however mention two such systems, the Loomes Chromatic and the Atzarin System.

Sebastian, the man behind the Atzarin system saw this post and emailed me, saying that he was intending to have a limited run of Atzarin Accordions built and would I be interested in reviewing one. I, of course, said yes please.

For those of you who don’t know, the Atzarin system is based on the diminished scale, like the Chromatic Button Accordion. Unlike the CBA though, it is bisonoric, making different notes in each direction of the bellows. The layout is below.  I couldn’t be bothered to put on the Stradella Bass and the one that I have has more buttons on the treble side.

I’ll leave it to a further post to talk about the system itself, but interested readers will doubtless be able to start working out patterns. I will note that like the Loomes layout, the fingering is the same over every octave but unlike the Loomes,  it has reversals for all 12 notes.

What is the advantage of the Atzarin system over a CBA? This is Sebastian’s explanation, but it is one of the things I will be trying to find out. I’ll also be looking at how easy it is to get to grips with the system and how natural the fingering really feels. Finally I’ll be looking at the physical instrument itself.

In fact that will be my first port of call. My next post on this subject will be an Inside and Out on the accordion that I have, so people get an idea of what they would be getting for their money. And hopefully by then I’ll have learned a few tunes on it so you can hear how it sounds.

This is an exciting project for me, because it is an opportunity to try something completely new. I hope that you will join me.