[David Hart]

Brilliant, thanks. I wouldn’t have guessed that my error would be searching the UK site rather than the German one 🙂

[David Hart]

It was my understanding that the only reason all these terms exist is because Hohner still have a trademark over ‘melodica’. Much like in the world of those UFO-like, hand-played metal percussion instruments that were called ‘hang’ by the people who invented them, who were fiercely proprietorial about the term when other people developed similar instruments (and yet, from what I’ve read, also resentful when the community of people who play those things coalesced on ‘handpan’ as the generic term for the hang and its imitators – it strikes me that you can’t reasonably have it both ways).

So I will keep on using ‘melodica’ as the generic term, unless and until something better comes along. Though I’m not quite sure where the borders lie. Does the 3-row chromatic Accordina count? I’d say probably. The Claviola? Maybe. The Harmonetta? Probably not. It’s a slippery slope 🙂

[David Hart]

If you can rig up a bellows strapped to one arm, with a tube leading to a bag as in bagpipe under the other arm, with its output tube connected to the mouthpiece, then that would look very impressive. But in reality, I’d have thought you’d be as well to just use an accordion on single-reed setting. If you can get one with a cassotto, that might get you a slightly more melodica-ish sound.

[David Hart]

That’s a beautiful-looking thing.

For what it’s worth, my wish-list for the ultimate melodica-type instrument would be roughly as follows:
– Available in 6-row button format (ideally including Janko layout, which is a whole lot more intuitive than the C system or B system, even if it does sacrifice some of the compactness – and I’ve always been baffled by why only the Serbians have the foresight to insist that their button accordions have 6 rows, thus allowing you to play any note with either a finger or the thumb without having to bunch your hand up)
– Equipped with two sets of reeds tuned an octave apart such that you can switch smoothly and gradually, or instantaneously, between low, low+high and high
– Fitted with a rigid but repositionable gooseneck mouthpiece like the Hammond 44 (but less breakable)
– Playable on both blow and draw
– Equipped with wah-wah grille as MelodicaMe suggests
– Equipped with some system to hold a high note as a drone without having to keep your pinkie on the key, and thus imitate the sound of the khaen. Come on, I can’t be the only melodica player who tries to imitate the sound of the khaen a lot, can I?
– And as a super extra-unrealistic fantasy, some sort of system like what the Blues Box people are building – an easy way to pitch bend without having to have an extremely fine key pressure variation.

Of course, such a beast with all those features would probably either be so heavy as to be unplayable, or have to be built of ultra-light high-tech materials and thus the plaything of the 1%, but surely <i>some</i> of those features could be workable. Especially if they’re already building ones with <i>some</i> duplicate rows of buttons.

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