: What does chord "Co" or "Fo" etc., mean on an accordion I took accordion lessons 50 years ago, and now I'm trying to re learn everything.

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Generally this would be written as a superscript 0 like a degree mark as mentioned above. So you are looking at C° or F°. This represents a diminished 7th chord (missing the fifth). On a Stradella bass accordion, this would be the sixth row.

C° (accordion) would be the notes C, Eb, and A. Stradella bass skips the fifth in the Dominant 7th and diminished 7th chords (to keep the sound balances with the three-note major and minor chords.) The missing F# (or Gb) can be filled by the right hand.

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In the following, lowercase chord names stand for actual accordion chord buttons, uppercase names are either regular chord names or single notes.

c° is also known as cdim, the diminished chord. It's A-C-E?. The actual inversion depends on where the Stradella chord octave is located. This isn't a full diminished chord, of course, but it is nevertheless called that on the accordion. If you add the proper fifth by playing the two buttons c°+cm, you actually get the chord Cm6.

It's little-known that on accordions with just three chord rows (because of three bass rows and/or a Belgian system, or just five rows anyway) the seventh row isn't F7=E?-F-A but rather E?-A-C which is functionally indistinguishable in typical counterbass play involving the F bass button.

So if you don't have a diminished chord row, play f7 instead of c°, b?7 instead of f°, and c7 instead of g°. That will be exactly accurate.

Russian 6-row bass bayans actually put the c° chord in the same row as F, making for A-F-f-fm-f7-c° . That makes it easy to press f7 and c° with the same finger in case you need the full F7 with the fifth included.