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The
accordion is a portable box-shaped
musical instrument of the hand-held
bellows-driven
free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a
squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an
accordionist.
It is played by compressing or expanding a
bellows whilst pressing buttons or
keys, causing
valves,called
pallets, to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called
reeds, that vibrate to produce sound inside the body.
[notes 1]
The instrument is sometimes considered a
one-man-band as it needs no accompanying instrument. The performer normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand
manual, and the
accompaniment — consisting of bass and pre-set chord buttons — on the left-hand manual.
The accordion is often used in
folk music in
Europe,
North America and
South America. It is commonly associated with
busking.
Some popular music acts also make use of the instrument. Additionally, the accordion is sometimes used in both solo and orchestra performances of
classical music.
The oldest name for this group of instruments is actually
harmonika, from the Greek
harmonikos, meaning
harmonic, musical. Today, native versions of the name
accordion are more common. These names are a reference to the type of accordion
patented by Cyrill Demian, which concerned “automatically coupled chords on the bass side”
[2].
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