Svaras for the Stradella bass layout on the accordion
The Stradella Bass system is a button board layout for the left hand(or bass) on the accordion. The layout is quite intuitive, which makes it easy to play the bass accompaniment for any song.
The notes for the layout are typically described with absolute pitch.
For someone who is familiar with the Sargam notation used in Indian/Asian music, it is bit difficult to read and ‘translate’ the absolute pitches to Sargam notes.
In this post, I’ll show you how to assign Sargam notes to the Stradella layout.
The Stradella Bass has 6 rows of notes, the top 2 are single notes and the bottom four are chords.
Let’s consider the note Sa/Shadaj (highlighted in red) which plays a single note, while the rows below it play chords.
The diagonal line links notes such that
- The single note would play Sa
- The rows below that S G P (Shuddha Ga) and S g P (Komal Ga) chords, which correspond to Major and Minor chords
- The layout is arranged so that each of the 12 notes could be in the Sa position. If the note is a C, then the chords below are C-Major and C-minor.
The row below (to the left of Sa) has the Shuddha Ma (Perfect fourth)
And the chords correspond to M D S and M d S (Komal Dha).
The diagonal lines for the Sa, Ma and Pa (that are adjacent to each other) give access to all the notes in an octave except for Tivra Ma and Komal Re.
- S, m and P are accessible as notes
- g, G, d, D, n and N are accessible as chords.
- Which leaves out Tivra Ma and Komal Re, which are a couple of rows further away.
Hope this helps!
