I’m a big fan of accordions, so I knew I had to have this. I was nonetheless perturbed by a perusal of the liner notes:
The album’s got some weird programming (‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ AND ‘Je T’aime’ on the same record?), but two tracks amused me enough to rip and here they are:
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Theme)
Wheels
Many musicians who’ve gone over to electronics have tended to use them for either novelty or bizarre effects. Not so Mike Timoney; he displays restraint, discretion and impeccable taste.If you’re a regular reader of this site, you can imagine how my heart sank.
Turns out Timoney is an accordion prodigy who, when he saw this Leslie-speaker-clad beast, had to have one — at a cost of over £2,000.I mean, look at some of this kit:
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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Theme)
Wheels
1 Comments & Queries:
Interesting post. I recently became interested in the Cordovox after perusing vintage accordions on eBay. Cordovoxes were acoustic accordions that also were fitted to be electronic organs, but required a heavy cable to connect to the sound generator/speaker. The acoustic part of the accordion (reeds, bellows) were top quality, and the Cordovox can be played as a simple acoustic accordion without the electronics.
So far, looking on eBay, it appears that it's fairly rare to find one with the requisite electronics too.
Hohner made a competing product called the Electravox, but I don't believe it has a bellows or reeds.
Nowadays, Roland makes something called the FR-7X which is the heir to the Cordovox. It's a fully electronic accordion, but has a real bellows and sensors to read the musician's bellows movements which then feed into the sound generation bits. It can be played very expressively.
Here's a YouTube video with someone playing the same music (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) on an FR-7x
Regards,
Kim G
Boston, MA
Where we are awaiting the delivery of a FR-7X ourselves.
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