My first job today was to finish demounting the reeds from yesterday. Thankfully there wasn't much left to do so this didn't take me long.
Claudio then gave me a new job. He described it as interesting - I found it confusing! The end target is to change a diatonic accordion from diatonic to chromatic. A diatonic accordion is a small, square accordion with 2-3 rows of buttons on the right hand - it's used a lot in traditional folk music, especially in Ireland. Each button plays two different notes - one when the bellows are pulled, the other when they are pushed. We had to switch from this system to that of a normal chromatic accordion - each button has one note only and they go up in semi-tones. To put a further spanner in the works, this customer wanted quarter-tone notes in between some semi-tones - don't ask me why! Originally we understood these to be between B/C and E/F, but he later phoned to say he wanted them between Bb/B and Eb/E. So, we set about finding new sets of reeds to use, as well as extra reeds to tune to the quarter-tones. If you understood any of what I just said then you've done well!
After a salad & bread lunch I returned to work and set about changing the actual buttons on the accordion. All the buttons corresponding to the black notes of a piano had to be changed to black buttons, while the quarter-tone buttons were to be textured white ones. A finished photo will be up tomorrow, once some repairs to the wood have been completed. After, I moved onto glueing springs to old valves on an accordion.
Erica arrived just after 6 and she took me to the supermarket so I could do some food shopping. I went round next door for dinner tonight, eating pasta, followed by meat, followed by strawberries.
I've got a wonderfully seductive deep, husky voice and a sore throat at the moment so it's an early night for me.
Arrivederci x
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