Chemnitzer Concertina Button Layout

The overriding goal, whether you learn to read music or not, is to be able to play without constantly looking at the buttons.  For this, it's necessary to memorize the button layout.

The buttons of a Chemnitzer "104 key" should look like this.  There are a total of 28 on the right, and 24 on the left.  Add them together, you get 52 buttons - so with two tones per button from pushing and pulling: 52 + 52 = 104 "keys".

You can find the keys-to-notes layout at the Chicago Concertina Club downloads section.  Remember, though, this is the notes layout for a C concertina.  If you have a concertina of a different key, you won't be able to check your notes against a tuner or piano (as I found when trying to figure out the notes of my B-flat concertina), unless of course you transpose the notes to compensate.  See the post on concertina keys for more details.

Here is the button layout (from Chicago Concertina Club!) - showing any accidentals as sharps. (click image to enlarge).  The two images below are under the Creative Commons license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License I have modified the second image to show what I think are the similarly numbered buttons as an aid to memorization.

While it looks complicated, the notes are actually arranged in groups that should make it easier to remember.  (click image to enlarge)

Right Side:

• The 1-4 and 0, 5-9, and 10-14 keys are stacked in 3 rows.
• The 14, 15, 16 form a diagonal row, and 17, 18 another next to it
• The "slash 0" keys are arranged in pairs on each row: 
• 2/0, 1/0 on top; 4/0, 3/0 in the middle; and 6/0, 5/0 on the bottom
• The left most keys are special figures: +, *, and the coda symbol.

Left Side:

• The 1-4 and 0, 5-9, and 10-14 keys are stacked in 3 rows just like the right side (but they are reversed on your fingers)
• Above the 1-4 and 0 row is a bunch of "slash" buttons that are between each key below it
• the 1/2 button is above the 1 and 2 buttons
• the 2/3 button is above the 2 and 3 buttons
• the 3/4 button is above the 3 and 4 buttons
• the 4/0 button is above the 4 and 0 buttons
• There is only one special character: the + key, which is in the top row at the end
• There are four "slash 0" buttons that form a diamond:
• 1/0 and 0/0 in the middle (third row)
• 2/0 at the top (second row)
• 3/0 at the bottom (fourth row)