The Bandoneon - User Manual

The Bandoneón is a type of concertina popular in Argentina and Uruguay. It plays an essential role in the orquesta típica, the tango orchestra. This particular Bandoneón is a vintage “Premier” with a sweet and expressive sound and was recorded in Buenos Aires, Argentina by the renowned composer Guillermo Guareschi. Guillermo Guareschi is a flim composer from Argentina, he has been scoring films since 1994. His unique style and contemporary techniques makes him a sought after composer in his country. History channel hired him to write the music for the 200th anniversary of Latin America. He has written the music for many movies and prime time series including the successful TV series "Los Simuladores", "Montecristo", "Hermanos "Hermanos y Detectives" the blockbuster feature film "Tiempo de Valientes" (nominated "Cóndor de Plata" for Best Score) Musica en Espera (nominated "Cóndor de Plata" for Best Score) Ciega a Citas Citas and the apocalyptic apocalyptic thriller: Phase 7, now released worldwide. With orchestral works such as "Esferas" and "Random Walk", written for full symphonic orchestra, Guillermo is recognized as a rising ri sing contemporary composer in Argentina. Graduated from Berklee College of Music with honours, he specialized in film scoring and orchestration. He then moved to Los Angeles where he won several scholarships and the prestigious BMI Film Scoring Competition award in 1995. Guillermo is currently working for movies and television and writing music for orchestra. He works from Buenos Aires for local and American projects. Page 1

Recording Process Four microphones were used to captured the instrument.... One Neumann was in charge of register for the left hand where all the bass notes are generated plus an additional ribbon microphone that handled the very low frequencies with precision. The right hand was captured by a modified SE A5600 II tube microphone and an AKG microphone was set to record the natural high roof ambience of the recording studio. All the microphones were connected to vintage Telefunken pre-amplifiers that delivered the signal directly to the computer without any console or black box in the chain. The sound of the instrument re-filling with air has also been carefully captured and so has the sound of the buttons being pressed. The recordings were all made at 24 bits 48Khz with no up-sampling or down-sampling at all. Each note was sampled with 3 velocity layers (Piano, Mezzo-Forte, Forte). Lots of interesting articulations were also recorded in detail and each style is playable on it’s own or with other articulations. We recorded: Effects Saltos Repetition Half Tone Tremolo Whole Tone Tremolo Short Notes Long Notes Staccato Tremolo

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The Interface

Utilising the full power of Kontakt's Scripting Engine we have crafted a fully bespoke user interface to give you complete control over various parameters and articulations. Controls include: The volume of the air sound (3 x Round Robin) The volume of the keyclick (6 x Round Robin left hand / 7 x Round Robin right hand) Fine Tuning from -100 to +100 cent. Drag and select user control for 5 different convolution reverbs The volume of the reverb mix from zero to drenched. Stereo Spread control knob Buttons to toggle the various articulation styles on or off  (Explanations for each control can be found on the following pages)

Right click any control on the front panel interface to assign a midi cc control number. If you have an external midi controller you can control the parameters in real-time as you are playing. You can also automate the cc’s in your sequencer to record and dynamically alter parameters in your compositions.

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Controls Main Notes Toward the bottom right hand side of the interface you will see a button labelled ‘Main Notes’. By default this button is turned on. It toggles the main instrument notes on and off so if you turn this button off you won’t hear any notes. If you just want to play with some of the other articulations individually then you can turn this off and turn each of the other switches on in turn.

Main Notes Off

Main Notes On

Articulations Each articulation can be soloed or played with other parts by toggling it’s control. When you turn an articulation on the keyboard display in Kontakt will change colour to display which notes contain the samples for the corresponding articulation.

Articulations Off

Articulations On

Fine Tuning You will find a finetuning control for delicate control if you need to bring the tuning in line with other instruments in your composition.

Finetune -100cent

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Finetune (ctrl+click to centre)

Finetune +100cent

Reverb Included in the instrument are 5 convolution reverb styles which can be selected on-the-fly by simply dragging up or down on the reverb name. The overall blend of the reverb can be controlled using the Reverb Mix knob.

Reverb Mix Off 

Reverb Mix Subtle

Fully Drenched

Click and drag to select from 5 beautiful reverb styles

Air Volume The Bandoneon needs to refill with air as it is played and we have captured this sound and created a control to give you direct access to the volume. Every 10 notes played on the keyboard will trigger the sound of the instrument being filled with air. The air sound will differ each time on a 3 x Round Robin rotation. By moving the Air Vol knob you can adjust the volume of this sound

Air Volume Off

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Air Volume Subtle

Air Volume Full

Clicks Volume A distinctive feature of the Bandoneon is the clicking sound of the keys as they are pressed. This is a characteristic we didn’t want to miss so we sampled a total of 13 click noises and provided them in a Round Robin sequence. The volume of the clicks can be controlled with the ‘Click Vol’ knob.

Clicks Vol Off

Clicks Vol Subtle

Click Vol Max

Spread To help with the process of aligning the sound in your mix we included a Spread control that adjusts the stereo spread of the overall instrument sound. If the knob is central the sound will be centred naturally within the stereo image. Move the control to the left to pan the instrument and reduce spread. Move far left for a mono image. Move the control to the right to extend the stereo spread and pan to the right. You will notice that as the stereo spread increased the overall volume of the instrument will increase. To compensate for this you will notice that the main instrument volume will move to keep the instrument volume constant as the knob is turned.

Left align / mono

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Natural spread (ctrl+click to centre)

Right align

Image Gallery

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