The bandoneón plays an essential role in the orquesta tipica. Its German inventor, Heinrich Band, originally intended the instrument for religious music; for churches that could not afford organs. The bandoneón is played by holding the instrument between both hands and either pushing in or pulling out the instrument while simultaneously pressing one or more buttons with the fingers. It is considered part of the concertina family of instruments rather than the accordion family. In the concertina family the direction of button movement is parallel with the direction of bellows movement, whereas in the accordion family the direction of button or key movement is perpendicular to the bellows movement.

Unlike the piano accordion, the bandoneón does not have keys but has buttons on both sides. Additionally the notes produced on push and pull are different. This means that each keyboard has actually two layouts - one for the opening notes, and one for the closing notes. Since the right and left hand layouts are also different, this adds up to four different keyboard layouts.

None of these keyboard layouts is structured to facilitate playing scale passages of notes. Instead the structure is designed to aid the playing of chords, which makes sense when one considers the origin of the instrument. For a beginning player, certain runs and musical forms can be difficult, but to an experienced player they come quite naturally.

With its arrival in Argentina around 1870, the bandoneón was adopted by those wishing to incorporate it into the Milonga music which requires a very fast player indeed.