El Acordeón Vallenato

My Corona III R

Acordeonero in training, Eddy Orion

Corona III Acordeoneros

My favorite songs with accordion

Introduction:

It's an instrument you have to love to be able to play it. The logic is far more hidden in comparation with a piano accordion. The fact that the same button on the draw produces another tone than on the push, is really tiresome at the beginning. Once on the road of learning you will found out that this kind of accordion is very comfortable to play Vallenato and Cumbia. To play the songs the same way on a piano accordion is a lot more difficult. Of course the piano accordion has other advantages, to name one; you'll only need one accordion to play in all the tonalities and keys. With the button accordion you'll be limited to play easy in just three scales, therefore a lot of accordion players take more than one accordion with them, in different scales. Transpose within a song could be a nightmare on a button accordion, unless you have time to change accordions quickly...

The first Hohner factory stands in Germany and this kind of accordion is originally German. This instrument arrived at the North Colombian coast at the end of the 18th century. Colombia has ever had a good relationship with Germany. However the Colombians have an averagely higher pitched voice than the Germans and therefore they started to modificate the accordion. To tune the accordion at a higher pitch it's enough to just shorten the reeds a little. Since every irregularity results in a difference of pitch, the accordions which reeds where shortened manually, usually weren't tuned very tight. These accordions sounds much more "floating" then before de tuning. This is how the authentic sound of the Vallenato Accordion was created.

The authentic Corona III was tuned in G-C-F (Sol Do Fa), the majority of the Vallenato Accordions are tuned in Bb-Eb-Ab (Si bemol, Mi bemol, La bemol), the "cinco letras", or the "five characters", for the five characters in the German name for this tuning, B-Eb-Ab.
In Germany the "Bb" (Si bemol) is called "B", the "B" (Si) they call "H". Today you can find Corona III's in these tunings: F-Bb-Eb, G-C-F, A-D-G y Bb-Eb-Ab.
If you want to find out in which tone a Hohner Corona is tuned, take a look here

Keys:

Latin:	Do	Re	Mi	Fa	Sol	La	Si	Do
International:	C	D	E	F	G	A	B	C
Germany:	C	D	E	F	G	A	H	C

Technically the international way is the most logic way, I hope that one day this will be adapted in the whole world so that the music will be more easily exchanged between the nationalities.