Toy Accordion

I aquired the little toy that inspired this instrument while walking on the lakeside of a pretty lake near where I live, on a quiet sunday.
It is quite common to find some flea markets there and you can find stacks of weird, interesting things, as well as useful tools or total garbage: it’s hard to find the right category for this particular item to fit.
That day I went for a stroll later than usual and when I stepped in the market, with vendors of various kind lined up through the sides of the narrow avenue, most of the sellers were tidying up their banquets and putting everything back in their vans.
The toy accordion gave me a look from a dusty cardboard box, mixed carelessly with an old pair of roller skates, some non-functioning rangefinder cameras and other unidentifiable memorabilia, sitting on concrete and waiting to get put back in the messy trunk of a rusty truck.
The vendor seemed pretty busy but the outer green shell caught my eye so, while taking the small accordion up, I asked:
“Does it play?”
“Sure, like heaven” said the vendor.
I play a note. It played, indeed.
Since the asked price was ridiculously low, it was more than enough to take it home with me!

Once in my studio and taking a little more meticulosly look at it, I noticed it was in pretty bad conditions and the keyboard, despite having a functioning chromatic layout, was in fact diatonic.
After a couple pulls for testing the keys, the bellow itself started showing multiple cracks and started blowing air from every hole that cut through as I played.
I just thought to put it on a shelf as its design is quite nice but then an idea struck in my head: it was time for taping that pearloid mess of an instrument up!
Did you know they called the celluloid material of the hull “Mother of Toilet seat” in the US? I certainly didn’t.
With the help of masking tape and thin paper, I fixed every hole I found on the bellow until the instrument started playing again.
This model of Stradellina accordion was clearly intended as a musical toy, as its diatonic reeds suggest, and falls quite short if compared to any other model made in the town of famous makers, Stradella, both in sound and playability-wise.
Anyway, it would’ve been a shame to just leave it on display and never use it in my music because of the few, detuned notes it produces so, with the magic of sampling and editing, the Toy Accordion instrument for Decent Sampler came to life to give this old heirloom a chance to shine.
Recorded in a quiet recording booth, with 414-style microphones for a warm yet detailed sound.

The preset is quite simple and sports 10 original samples, stretched to fit 4 octaves and has onboard programmable envelope, filters and effects for designing a wide variety of sounds, from a plain miniature accordion to organic pads, chords stabs and airy leads.

Thanks for downloading, have fun with it!