The Stradella Bass System is a buttonboard layout equipped on the bass side of many accordions, which uses columns of buttons arranged in a circle of fifths; this places the principal major chords of a key in three adjacent columns.
96-button Stradella bass layout on an accordion. C is in the middle of the root note row.
Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type. The essential characteristic of the accordion is to combine in one instrument a melody section, also called the diskant, usually on the right-hand keyboard, with an accompaniment or Basso continuo functionality on the left-hand. The musician normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand side, and the accompaniment on bass or pre-set chord buttons on the left-hand side. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist.
A piano accordion (top) and a button accordion (bottom)
An accordionist
Eight-key bisonoric diatonic accordion (c. 1830)
The first pages in Adolf Müller's accordion book