How the Keys Work in an Accordion

Video Transcript

"AMANDA CLAIRE: So, hopefully, you can see those little holes opening and closing. Actually, I'll do something else here. Now, I'm going to flick the reed bank selector switch and you saw a whole line of these closed up. That basically means, look at how this is built. It means what I have one button pushed that means both banks of reeds will be played. So, that's basically two different octaves of reeds, one of which is on one side of this kind of giant harmonica and one of which is on the other side. But then, you can't see it. Remember that reed bank selector switch, now I'm clicking it and now only one set of reeds is going to be active now, okay. Now, you see these little holes opening and closing there, that's because I'm pushing the little keys on it and if we just sort of look over it this kind of electric organ here, basically the same thing is happening. Little clapper like this on the other side of that hole and every time you press a key, it opens that hole so that air can flow over the reed. So, the main reason I wanted to show you this is just so you can sort of demystify what's going on inside of an accordion. We could take this one out, too, and sort of see just basically the same thing we saw here. And the only reason you would really want to do this would be if certain reeds weren't working, and you just want to kind of go and figure out which reed it is, and they'd clear out the debris here, whatever is not making it vibrate."