Arabic music is based on a modified harmonic minor scale. It requires
raising the 6th tone of the scale a quarter of a tone which, when
playing a fret-less instrument like the lute (or "oud"), can be
created on-the-go (as you play along). On an instrument like the
accordion where pitches are fixed, the instrument has to be tuned
ahead of time by filing the particular reed to the required frequency.
You can therefore only have 1 scale modified, and you have to decide
ahead of time as to what scale you will be playing your songs in. For
instance, if you decided on the scale of, say, A minor, you would
raise the F a quarter of a tone. (You could also lower the F# a
quarter of a tone and that would achieve the same thing). What you
need is a key that would play a pitch that is half way between F and
F#. Since the distance between F and F# is half a tone, halfway
between is a quarter of a tone, thus the "quarter" name.
Some Arabic songs alternate (within the same song) between this scale
and normal western scales as we know them, in particular Egyptian
songs from the 30's to the 50's during the renaissance of Egyptian
music when the Tango made its way into the hearts of parts of Arab
land (Egypt & the Levant) and many songs were composed that are based
on the alternating major/minor scale particular of Argentione Tango
music. Certain songs from that era as well as some genres of Lebanese
music can be played on an unmodified accordion.
A small collection of sheet music related to songs from that era are
published in the book: "Asmahan's Secrets, Woman, War, and Song" by
Sherifa Zuhur(a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley). Asmahan
and her brother (Farid Al-Atrash) were pioneers composers/singers in
that movement. Interesting to note that the Arabic wording on the
music sheets are written backwords to correspond to the music notes
(Arabic is normally written right to left as opposed to music written
from left to right).
There are many movie clips on U-Tube of their work, especially that of
Farid, and many show an accordion player in the orchestra.
By the way, Petosa Accordions in Seattle should be aware of quarter-
tuning because they built an accordion for a certain Lebanese
accordionist that I heard playing in Cotati, CA a couple of summers
ago. He did a superb rendition of Abdelwahhab's "Ya Msafer
Wahdak" (same era). Hope this helps/Joe
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