Player Piano
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A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using
MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined, as the improvement in
phonograph A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the
stock market crash of 1929 The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...
virtually wiped out production.


History

In 1896,
Edwin S. Votey Edwin Scott Votey (June 8, 1856 – January 21, 1931) was an American businessman, inventor, industrial designer, and manufacturer of pianos and organs. He worked in the organ field all his adult life and had over twenty patents. He invented or ...
invented the first practical pneumatic piano player, called the Pianola. This mechanism came into widespread use in the 20th century, and was all-pneumatic, with foot-operated bellows providing a source of vacuum needed to operate a pneumatic motor, driving the take-up spool, while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two pneumatic stages, to sufficient strength to strike a
note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...
.


1900–1910

Votey advertised the Pianola widely, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements. It was sold initially for $250. Other, cheaper makes were launched. A standard 65-note format evolved, with rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes. By 1903, the
Aeolian Company The Aeolian Company was a musical-instrument making firm whose products included player organs, pianos, sheet music, records and phonographs. Founded in 1887, it was at one point the world's largest such firm. During the mid 20th century, it surp ...
had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month. Many companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly consisting of light, religious or classical music,
ragtime music Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...
did feature, but not commonly. Melville Clark, introduced two key features to the player piano, the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard. By the end of the decade, the piano player device was obsolete, as was the 65-note format. This caused issues for many small manufacturers, who had spent their capital on setting up 65-note player operations, and the result was rapid consolidation in the industry. A new full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in
Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...
in 1908, the so-called Buffalo Convention. This kept the 11-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch. This meant that any player could now play any make of roll. This consensus was key to avoiding a costly
format war A format war is a competition between similar but mutually incompatible technical standards that compete for the same market, such as for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political an ...
, which plagued almost every other form of entertainment media that followed roll music. While the player piano matured in America, an inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which would reproduce all the aspects of the performance automatically, so that his machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist were sitting at the piano keyboard. Known as a Reproducing Piano, this device, the
Welte-Mignon M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York was a manufacturer of orchestrions, organs and reproducing pianos, established in Vöhrenbach by Michael Welte (1807–1880) in 1832. Overview From 1832 until 1932, the firm produced mechanical musi ...
, was launched in 1904. It created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll, allowing owners of player pianos to experience such a performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it. Aeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the latter being an invention "bringing out the melody clearly above the accompaniment."''New York Sun'', 14 March 1909. With sales growing rapidly, and the instruments themselves relatively mature, this decade saw a wider variety of rolls become available. Two major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll. * Hand-played rolls introduced
musical phrasing Musical phrasing is the method by which a musician shapes a sequence of notes in a passage of music to allow expression, much like when speaking English a phrase may be written identically but may be spoken differently, and is named for the i ...
into the rolls, so that player pianists did not have to introduce it through the use of tempo controls something that few owners ever felt much inclination to do. * Word rolls, featured printed lyrics in the margins, making it simple to use players to accompany singing in the home, a very popular activity in the years before radio and disc recordings became widely available. The other major advance was the arrival in America of two major commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano: the
Ampico American Piano Company (Ampico) was an American piano manufacturer formed in 1908 through the merger of Wm. Knabe & Co., Chickering & Sons, and Foster-Armstrong. They later purchased the Mason & Hamlin piano company as their flagship piano. The ...
(from 1911 but fully 're-enacting' by 1916) and the Duo-Art (1914). Artrio-Angelus also introduced a reproducing player from 1916. When World War I came in 1914, German patents were seized in the US. In England, Aeolian had a huge factory and sales network, so easily outsold the Ampico. Other makers of Reproducing systems were successful in Europe: Hupfeld Meisterspiel DEA (1907) and Philipps Duca (c 1909). Hupfeld perfected an 88 note reproducing system, the Triphonola, in 1919 It is estimated that around 5% of players sold were Reproducing Pianos. In America by the end of the decade, the new 'jazz age' and the rise of the fox-trot confirmed the player piano as the instrument of popular music, with classical music increasingly relegated to the reproducing piano. Most American roll companies stopped offering large classical catalogs before 1920, and abandoned 'instrumental' rolls (those without words) within a few years. In England, where the Aeolian Company continued to find success selling classical material, as well as customers willing to contribute to performances by following directions printed on the rolls and operate the hand and foot controls. Sydney Grew, in his manual ''The Art of the Piano Player'', published in London in 1922, said that "it takes about three years to make a good player-pianist of a man of woman of average musical intelligence. It takes about seven years to make a good pianist, or organist, or singer". Word rolls never became the norm in England, always being charged at a 20% premium over non-word rolls. As a result, post-World War I American and British roll collections look very different.


1950–present

During the early 1950s, a number of collectors began to collect player pianos and all the other instruments of the 1920s and earlier. Among them was Frank Holland, who formed his collection while working in Canada. On returning to England, he located a number of like-minded enthusiasts and started to hold meetings at his house in west London. In 1959 this was formalized as 'The Player Piano Group'. By the early 1960s, Frank Holland had formed the British Piano Museum (now the Musical Museum) in Brentford. In America, another collector was Harvey Roehl, who was so enthused by the players that in 1961 he published a book called ''Player Piano Treasury''. This sold by the tens of thousands, and was followed by books on how to rebuild and restore these instruments. Roehl's Vestal Press was a major driving force in raising awareness of the player piano within the general population. Other societies worldwide were formed to preserve and study all aspects of mechanical music, such as the Musical Box Society International (MBSI) and the
Automatic Musical Instruments Collector's Association The Automatic Musical Instruments Collector's Association (AMICA) was formed in 1963 by a group of collectors in the San Francisco area, committed to the preservation, restoration and enjoyment of vintage mechanical musical instruments that play ...
(AMICA) in the USA. In 1961, Max Kortlander died of a heart attack, and QRS was run by his wife until she sold the company to Ramsi Tick in 1966, who focussed on limiting losses rather than widening profits. QRS's presence ensured that owners of newly awakened players could purchase rolls of the latest titles, so ensuring that the instrument remained current, not just a historical curiosity. The revival of interest in player pianos in the 1960s, lead to the production of player pianos to start again. Aeolian revived the Pianola, albeit this time in a small spinet piano suited to post-war housing. Other manufacturers followed, and production has continued intermittently ever since. QRS today offers a traditional player piano in its Story and Clark piano. In recent years, there has been greater focus on full rebuilding as original instruments. Early enthusiasts could often get by with limited patching, but the repair requirements have slowly risen, although to this day it is possible to find original 1920s instruments that still work.


Types

While there are many minor differences between manufacturers, a player piano is a piano that contains a manually controlled pneumatically operating piano player mechanism. It is intended that the operator manually manipulates the control levers in order to produce a musical performance. Various aids to the human operator were developed: ; Split stack control: These instruments (the vast majority of all player pianos) have the pneumatic player mechanism divided into two approximately equal halves. The operator can lower the volume of either half of the keyboard independently of the other in order to create musical effects. ; Theme control: These instruments have peripheral pneumatic hardware systems fitted which, when used in conjunction with special music rolls, are able to highlight those notes in the score which are intended to be accented away from those whose volume it is desired to subdue. Basic theme pianos subdue all notes and release full power to only those notes which are aligned with special music roll "theme" perforations. Subtler systems (such as Hupfeld's "Solodant" and Aeolian's "Themodist") have a graduated theme control where the background subdued level and the foreground melody level are both controllable. The nature of the mechanism is such that where a chord occurs notes to be emphasised have to be advanced slightly away from their neighbors in order for the mechanism to identify them. ; Isolated theme: The hardware of these pianos is able to pick out the melody notes away from their background accompaniment within the entire range of the keyboard without the necessity for breaking up chords i.e. a software workaround. Manufacturers of these systems were the UK "Dalian" and "Kastonome" and the US "Solo Carola". ; Expression player : The hardware of these pianos is able to generate a broad general musical dynamic from roll coding. The pneumatic stack operates at fixed pre-set tension levels depending on the coding giving a general effect of musical dynamics. Examples of this system are "Recordo" and "Empeco" ; Reproducing pianos: These are fully automated versions of the player piano requiring no human manual control in order to produce the illusion of a live musical performance. This is achieved by the utilization of music rolls where tempo mapping is fully incorporated into the music rolls i.e. the note lengths of a live performance have been captured. The volume dynamics are created by peripheral pneumatic expression accessories under control of system-specific music roll coding. This obviates the need for human manipulation of the manual dynamic control levers. Typically an electric motor provides power to remove the human operator from the necessity to provide motive power by treadling. Most reproducing pianos are capable of manual over-ride operation, and many are constructed for dual functionality both as regular player pianos and also as reproducing pianos. Numerous companies made these utilizing different technology. The first successful instrument was called the "Mignon" launched by Welte in 1904.


Music rolls

Music roll A music roll is a storage medium used to operate a mechanical musical instrument. They are used for the player piano, mechanical organ, electronic carillon and various types of orchestrion. The vast majority of music rolls are made of paper. Othe ...
s for pneumatic player pianos, often known as piano rolls, consist of a continuous sheet of paper rolled on to a spool. The spool fits into the player piano spool box whereupon the free end of the music sheet is hooked onto the take-up spool which will unwind the roll at an even pace across the reading mechanism (the "
tracker bar Tracker may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Tracker (''G.I. Joe''), in the ''G.I. Joe'' universe * Tracker (''PAW Patrol''), in the animated television series ''PAW Patrol'' * Tracker Cameron, in the television series ' ...
") The music score to be played is programmed onto the paper by means of perforations. Different player systems have different perforation sizes, channel layouts and spool fittings though the majority conform to one or two predominant formats latterly adopted as the industry standard. Music is programmed via a number of methods. # the music is marked out on master stencil on a purely metronomic basis direct from the printed sheet music with the player-pianists being left to create their own music performance # the music stencil is created metronomically via a piano-keyboard operated punch machine # a live performance is played onto a special piano connected to an electronically operated marking mechanism, and a physical stencil is produced from this live output, either as-is or after some general regularisation of tempo where necessary # modern computer software and
MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
software can be used to create piano roll stencils for operating modern-day perforating machines and create new titles. The player piano sold globally in its heyday, and music rolls were manufactured extensively in the US, as well as most European countries, South America, Australia and New Zealand. A large number of titles from all manufacturers survive to this day, and rolls still turn up regularly in large quantities. It was reported that the last remaining mass producer of piano rolls in the world, QRS Music, temporarily halted production of the rolls on December 31, 2008. However, QRS Music still list themselves as the only roll manufacturer remaining, and claim to have 45,000 titles available with "new titles being added on a regular basis". The Musical Museum in Brentford, London, England houses a nationally significant collection of piano rolls, with over 20,000 rolls, as well as an extensive collection of instruments which may be seen and heard.


Modern implementations

Later developments of the reproducing piano include the use of
magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
and
floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
s, rather than piano rolls, to record and play back the music; and, in the case of one instrument made by
Bösendorfer Bösendorfer (L. Bösendorfer Klavierfabrik GmbH) is an Austrian piano manufacturer and, since 2008, a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha Corporation. Bösendorfer is unusual in that it produces 97- and 92- key models in addition to instrum ...
,
computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
assisted playback. In 1982,
Yamaha Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest musical instrument manufacturing company. The former motorcycle div ...
introduced the " Piano Player", which was the first mass-produced, commercially available reproducing piano that was capable of digitally capturing and reproducing a piano performance using floppy disk as a storage medium. The Piano Player was replaced in 1987 by the Yamaha
Disklavier Disklavier is a brand of reproducing pianos manufactured by Yamaha Corporation. The first Disklavier was introduced in the United States in 1987. The typical Disklavier is a real acoustic piano outfitted with electronic sensors for recording and ...
and since 1998, the Disklavier PRO models are capable of capturing and reproducing "high-resolution" piano performances of up to 1024 velocity levels and 256 increments of positional pedaling using Yamaha's proprietary XP (Extended Precision) MIDI specification. Almost all modern player pianos use
MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...
to interface with computer equipment. Most modern player pianos come with an electronic device that can record and playback MIDI files on floppy disks and/or
CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...
s, and a MIDI interface that enables computers to drive the piano directly for more advanced operations. The MIDI files can trigger
electromechanical solenoid file:Solenoid-1.png, upright=1.20, An illustration of a solenoid file:VFPt Solenoid correct2.svg, upright=1.20, Magnetic field created by a seven-loop solenoid (cross-sectional view) described using field lines A solenoid () is a type of electrom ...
s, which use electric current to drive small mechanical plungers mounted to the key action inside the piano. Live performance or computer generated music can be recorded in MIDI file format for accurate reproduction later on such instruments. MIDI files containing converted antique piano-rolls can be purchased on the Internet. , several player piano conversion kits are available (PianoDisc, PNOmation, etc.), allowing the owners of normal pianos to convert them into computer controlled instruments. The conversion process usually involves cutting open the bottom of the piano to install mechanical parts under the keyboard, although one organization—Logos Foundation—has manufactured a portable, external kit. A new player piano conversion kit was introduced in 2007-08 by Wayne Stahnke, the inventor of the Bösendorfer SE reproducing system, called the "LX".
Steinway Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway (), is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in Manhattan by German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth led to the opening of a ...
now manufactures a player piano based on Wayne Stahnke's Live Performance LX system. Live Performance Model LX, was sold to Steinway in 2014 and re-branded as Spirio. In contrast to other piano brands, a recording option was not originally available in Steinway Spirio pianos. However, in 2019 Steinway introduced the Spirio , r, which is capable of both reproducing and recording piano music for later playback.
Edelweiss EDELWEISS (Expérience pour DEtecter Les WIMPs En Site Souterrain) is a dark matter search experiment located at the Modane Underground Laboratory in France. The experiment uses cryogenic detectors, measuring both the phonon and ionization signal ...
is a British music upcomer on the player piano market offering totally bespoke pianos, available in luxury department store
Harrods Harrods Limited is a department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It is currently owned by the state of Qatar via its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. The Harrods brand also applies to other ...
since 2017 and according to the ''
Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...
''
YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
channel 'How to Spend it', Edelweiss is "regarded as the most upmarket of today's breed of the self-playing piano".


Comparison to electric pianos

A player piano is neither an electric piano,
electronic piano An electronic piano is a keyboard instrument designed to simulate the timbre of a piano (and sometimes a harpsichord or an organ) using analog circuitry. "Electronic Piano" was also the trade name used for Wurlitzer's popular line of electric ...
, nor a
digital piano A digital piano is a type of electronic keyboard instrument designed to serve primarily as an alternative to the traditional acoustic piano, both in how it feels to play and in the sound it produces. Digital pianos use either synthesized emulat ...
. The distinction between these instruments lies in the way sounds are produced. A player piano is an acoustic piano where the sound is produced by hammer strikes on the piano strings. Electrical or electronic components are limited to moving the keys or hammers mimicking the actions of a person; no sound is produced from electrically amplified audio.


See also

*
Mechanical organ A mechanical organ is an organ that is self-playing, rather than played by a musician. For example, the barrel organ is activated either by a person turning a crank, or by clockwork driven by weights or springs. Usually, mechanical organs are pip ...
*
Punched tape Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program loop Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage ...
*
Virtual piano A virtual piano is an application (software) designed to simulate playing a piano on a computer. The virtual piano is played using a keyboard and/or mouse and typically comes with many features found on a digital piano. Virtual player piano softwa ...
* ''
Circus Galop ''Circus Galop'' is a piece written for player pianos by Marc-André Hamelin. It was composed between the years 1991 and 1994 and it is dedicated to Beatrix and Jürgen Hocker, piano roll makers. Its duration is approximately 4–5 minutes. Scores ...
'', a piano piece specifically designed for the player piano *
Conlon Nancarrow Samuel Conlon Nancarrow (; October 27, 1912 – August 10, 1997) was an American- Mexican composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. Nancarrow is best remembered for his ''Studies for Player Piano'', being one of the firs ...
, a significant composer for the player piano


References


Further reading

* Grew, Sydney.
The Art of the Player Piano: A text book for student and teacher
' (1922) * Reblitz, Arthur A. ''Player Piano Servicing and Rebuilding''. Lanham, Maryland: Vestal Press, 1985. * Reblitz, Arthur A. ''The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments''. Woodsville, New Hampshire: Mechanical Music Press, 2001. * White, William Braid. ''Regulation and Repair of Piano and Player Mechanism together with Tuning as Science and Art''. New York: Edward Lyman Bill, 1909.


External links


The Pianola Forum
The Pianola Forum
The Pianola Institute
London, England {{Authority control Mechanical musical instruments Piano Pneumatics Articles containing video clips