120-single contact buttons accordion bass section to MIDI construction:

For years I used to play the piano accordion and since I own the Yamaha Tyros 3, missed the convenience of playing the accordion bass section, for it's so much easier than learning to play manual basses + chords. That's why I thought to connect an old accordion bass section to MIDI and (surprise...) I just finished successfully wiring up my 120-button (with single contacts) Farfisa accordion bass section to MIDI.

Result: It's amazingly compact; i.e. smaller than a normal accordion bass section: measuring a mere 80mm x 80mm x 400mm and the single contact buttons make ea. button even lighter to press than a regular, mechanical accordion bass section buttons!
Here's why: ...on a mechanical bass each button has to open 3 to 4 air flaps and with additional spring contacts the buttons are getting harder to press, whereas mine sounds 4 to 5 chord notes via a single button press!

Jeez, that was a crazy job, for I had to wire each chord combination!! - It took me about 3 weeks to get it wired up and working. Yes, it looks pretty messy, but at least it works and sounds truly great. I'm excited about the result! For easy wiring, I made myself a wiring tool: from a thin tube and yarn spool, using Philips 0.09mm polyurethaned copper wire.
The thing I like most on it is that it offers accordion players the chance to combine manual and Yamaha styles accompaniment. Actually, it can be used as an accompaniment for all MIDI instruments.
Now I am able to randomly, manually enrich and vary the bass + chords as to make the great sounding Yamaha styles automatic accompaniment sounding far more natural/ less automatic.
Since I was unable to attach the project details, I uploaded them here: https://app.box.com/s/994hzfqhsnjksguqa22t

My last challenge regarding this MIDI accordion bass & chord accompaniment is to recreate that typical accordion "bellow shake", which at the same time controls volume and tremolo variations, like on an accordion. That creates emotional presents! The foot pedal delivers not quite the same... (unless one is able to benefit from Parkinson's etc.)

I did some testing and discovered that connecting a cable to the 10K potentiometer in my Yamaha's MFC10 (Midi-Foot controller) allows me to operate this foot controller's circuitry via an LDR with a LED on the 120-button box.
My basic idea was to place the whole bass button box onto soft springs, but then I discovered that its horizontal movements need to be vertically stable as to operate with the LDR-LED control.
Also to firmly control the box movements a leather strap or rigid bar above the hand is needed to hold the hand onto the buttons during the up and down movements. That's one of the reasons why accordions have a leather strap on the bass side.

Now I'm about to finish the whole project. The spring mount is already made. All I need now is to test and create the shutter between LDR & LED and decide, whether to mount a leather belt or a rigid bar...
Next, I'm going to build a wooden, removable 4-layer JANKO keyboard on top of my Tyros's zebra piano keyboard.
I already invented and designed a WYSIWYG JANKO notation for it, in which even the team of the new Terpstra Keyboard is interested in.

Saludos de...
Joh K. Drinda from St'go de Chile

 

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