Hello! My name is Leandro La Piana, and in this article I will tell you the history of this project.

Since I was born in 1992 (in Buenos Aires, Argentina) I have always been surrounded by musicians, whether in my family, in the church, and even in my group of friends, so music has always been part of my vocabulary

But it wasn't until the year 2005, that at the age of 13, I played an accordion for the first time, and from that moment the desire to know everything about this instrument was born within me.

In the year 2006 I was lucky that a family member gave me an unused accordion, and I was able to start practicing with my own accordion.

The following year, I learned about computing, and I discovered that there were many similarities between accordion and PC keyboard layout.

Then in the year 2008 the first version was born,it was called «Bajos del Acordeón» only available for Windows XP, but as its name indicated, it only had the left hand section of a piano accordion, the bass.

A year later, I developed version 2.0 of the same software, which was called “Accordion’s Bass” which included the right hand of the piano, and throughout that year I developed the chromatic button accordion, 3-row diatonic, and 2-row diatonic simulators.

This version quickly reached more than 100,000 downloads, so I understood that I was helping many people to know or learn this instrument and that I should continue improving the software.

The first thing I did was migrate it to web format, since the desktop version was only available for Windows XP, and Windows 7, Linux and Mac users could not use it.

Then AccordionVirtual.com was born (previously called AccordionBass.com), where a web version of the original simulator was developed, with the same accordions, but with a completely renewed aesthetic, improved sounds, and 2 new instruments: the bandoneon and the accordion. two rows in the Roque Gonzales system (used for Argentine chamamé).

In the year 2021, the possibility of creating a user within the site was added, and in this way, be part of a community full of musicians of different accordions, styles and countries.

Today this website is visited by more than 200,000 users from 147 different countries, united by one thing, the passion for the accordion

Collaborators

The reality is that on this journey I was not alone, throughout all these years there were many people who in one way or another were close to the project.

During the year 2012, Victor Caldera (Mexico) – musician – was providing information and ideas for the realization of the diatonic simulator. This was very useful since he had never seen, much less played, an instrument of this style.

On the other hand, since 2019 (and until now), Elber Montiel (Colombia) – music teacher and entrepreneur – contributed the sounds of the vallenato accordion, along with countless ideas to continue improving the project from his didactic and educational point of view. He also helped the application become a useful tool for both beginners and professionals, bringing this application to an even larger audience.

In the year 2020, Yanina Corvalán – professional bandoneon player – provided materials of fundamental importance to completely improve the Bandoneon simulator: the background image and the sounds of all the keys, recorded with a professional microphone.

In the same year Carlos Melgarejo – accordion student – provided the necessary information to add the Roque Gonzales system to the two-row simulator, which is widely used in Chamamé (Argentine musical style).

It should be noted that in addition to these people, there is always the help of a huge community, which in order to improve an application made for themselves, the accordionists, contributed ideas, suggestions, and comments, which filled me with motivation to continue building this project.

So it only remains to thank all these people who were marked in the history of this project, and mainly to God for allowing us all to cross paths to create AcordeonVirtual.com.