Giuliano Nardi outside Aristo's with his fisarmonica – the accordion

http://www.barganews.com/2013/10/04/music-outside-aristos-with-giuliano-nardi/

Giuliano Nardi who has featured on barganews many times over the years was once again outside Aristo’s bar in Barga Vecchia this afternoon with his fisarmonica – the accordion.

The accordion is a portable box-shaped musical instrument of the hand-held bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist.

It is played by compressing or expanding a bellows whilst pressing buttons or keys, causing valves, called pallets, to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called reeds, that vibrate to produce sound inside the body.

The instrument is sometimes considered a one-man-band as it needs no accompanying instrument. The performer normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand manual, and the accompaniment — consisting of bass and pre-set chord buttons — on the left-hand manual.