Russian Garmon' ( button accordeon), simplified cousin of Bayan.

Russian webspace went crazy last week over a 6-month-old YouTube clip with a song that's even older, performed by an actor from Saint Petersbourg Igor Rasteryayev:



Song itself  is great, hence the sudden popularity due to a posting on dirty.ru, but I wanted to say  a few words about the instrument that Igor is using there. Lirycs and melody are subject of much more explanation themselves. Too much.

Here's some Wiki about "garmon (Russian: гармонь) is a kind of Russian button accordion, a free-reed wind instrument. A garmon has two rows of buttons on the right side, which play the notes of a diatonic scale, and at least two rows of buttons on the left side, which play the primary chords in the key of the instrument as well as its relative harmonic minor key. Many instruments have additional right-hand buttons with useful accidental notes, additional left-hand chords for playing in related keys, and a row of free-bass buttons, to facilitate playing of bass melodies.

The garmons can be of two major classes: unisonoric, meaning that each button plays the same note or chord when the bellows is being expanded as it does when compressed, and bisonoric, in which the note depends on the direction of the bellowswork. Examples of unisoniric type are livenka (ливенка, after Livny, Oryol Oblast) and Khromka (Russian: Хромка, for "chromatic"). Bisonoric garmons are, e.g., Tula accordion (Russian: Тульская гармонь, after Tula) and talyanka (тальянка, "Italian")
The garmon is also known by the names garmoshka (Russian: гармошка) and garmonika (Russian: гармоника)".

I like the sound of garmon a lot; in fact, I consider it more of a test on someone's "russiness" (yey, I can make up words just like Sara Palin and Stephen Colbert's writers) than love for vodka or banya.


I'm lazy so here is some more info from Wiki that sound right about another russian instrument:
The bayan (Ukrainian and Russian: баян) is a type of chromatic button accordion developed in Russia in the early 20th century and named after 11th-century bard Boyan. The differences in internal construction give the bayan a different tone color from Western instruments, and the bass has a much fuller sound. Because of their range and purity of tone, bayans are often the instrument of choice for accordion virtuosi who perform classical and contemporary classical music.

Sounds good.
Long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I played Bayan for five years in school and I still like how it sounds. It's less folk and more classical. An example:



Of course, I wasn't nearly as good ;-) I just wanted to show both instruments.

Well, that's it for today.