The Reprouducing Piano. ..What! It can have Babies?

No, not really no.

But it’s birth was one of proper recorded live music…

In Part 18 we met the player-piano-player family of instruments.

We learned that many felt that the largest and final fault of these instruments was that they were not actually fully automatic, as the player had to control the tempo and interpret what the tempo should be at any moment in the song. It also could not properly replay the subtle dynamic shading’s of master players.

There was another camp of Players that believed that controlling the tempo, interpreting the flow of the music, much like a conductor is the art of playing these instruments.

Non the less, it is true to say that the scrolls that were created, for many, many years, were created by transcribing or translating the musical notation into a system of perforated holes. (holy music anyone?)

While music notation is an incredibly accurate way of recording the mechanics, the mathematics of the music, the map is not the territory.

It cannot describe the dynamics, the soul of the music that is created through slight fluctuations of tempo and dynamics of struck notes.

This type of problem appeared again many decades later, with the invention of sequencers, drum machines and sound generators.
The technology did not fully mature until it could swing the notes, strike the individual tones with slight changes and differences, put a human soul style into the artificial output.

Then what is a Reproducing Piano?  It’s a Piano that can play back or be able to reproduce the performance of a human playing on it or another piano. It effectively records the performance as the changes in notes, tempo and dynamics.

Something to keep in mind, is that Player-Piaono-Players were not seen as passive instruments. These were approached as an accessible interactive musical

instrument that were easier to play than any previous music instrument. While the Organette can really be considered the first truly domestic passive automatic instrument but was seen more as a novelty.

This mindset is important to note, because it explains why and how the Reproducing Piano came about more or less as a byproduct or accident.
The earliest versions came about in order to speed up production.

As it was often a very laborious and time consuming job to create the master scroll or stencils, early attempts to notate the scrolls live during a performance we’re mainly created as a way of speeding up the process of creating the music rolls. Even when the master players sat down to record onto these scroll masters, they were often just used as masters and would then be copied by hand (with small variation in where the holes were being created.

The earliest methods, were more used for automatic musical notating that could be used to create a stencil to be cut out by hand afterward.

This should not be under looked, this in fact was probably the first automatic method to record improvisation! (think of of it as a the Protools!)

The First technological breakthrough was the invention of real time perforating machines around 1894. The accuracy of recording the notes was truly amazing when compared to even midi as pianola.org explains;

“ but as early as 1894 there were real-time perforating machines in the USA which could instantly produce rolls from the playing of pianists. George Howlett Davis, an American engineer who worked for a while in the 1890s for the Automaton Piano Company of New York, patented at least two designs for perforating machines, which could be operated from a piano keyboard. In a British patent which he applied for in 1900, he speaks of working to an accuracy of 2,200 perforations per minute, roughly 1/37th of a second. Given that player pianos can reproduce complicated music with many notes simultaneously, this is not so much worse than our present-day MIDI, which, if it is subjected to the twenty-note chords sometimes played by duettists, can only manage 1/50th of a second.”

But this still did not record the pacing and dynamics faithfully as the master.

It was in 1904 that an Instrument Called the ‘Mignon Artistic Player Piano’ came into the world.  Invented by Edwin Welt and Karl Bockisch

for the company Michael Welt and Sohne. This German Company was known through out the world for producing beautiful Orchestrons.

It seems that the ‘mignon’ developed out of the technology they used to record the music rolls for automatic organs.

What we know for sure is that they developed an ‘experimental’ piano playing recording device, this device was able to record a piano performance and then through the use of the Mignon Player Piano automatically play it back reproducing the notes, tempo, dynamics, phrasing and pedaling – thus the first reproducing Piano was born.

It was also an unusual thing to behold, as it was not really a piano player, or player piano. It lacked a keyboard and was often described as looking like an ornate sideboard.

Even though mechanically it was a piano, and that other Reproducing Pianos that followed contained keyboards, I believe the ethos of the Welte-Mignon was telling, this instrument was not meant to be played upon. This was a playback instrument, and the companies aim was to record for playback the performances of the finest Piano players alive.

In fact, the excellent Pianola.org has some recordings of just this click here.

The musical capabilities of this new invention brought the attention of many great pianists, and garnered a well-deserved respect very quickly indeed.
One of it’s great recording features was it’s ability to use electric contacts floating on mercury to record the notes played, thus keeping the feel of the keys light for these maestros to record on.

It wasn’t long before the Mignon mechanism was also installed on Steinway’s and Feurich pianos (this time with Keyboard).

Although there were many other competitors that entered the reproducing market, we’re just going to concentrate on one other, the Aeolian Companies reproducing piano the Duo-art.

The Duo-art hit the market 9 years after the Welte-Mignon, this is quite significant given that the Aeolian Company were by far the biggest player (pun intended) in the Player Piano market.

The reason for this tardiness?
Well my initial thoughts were that the chief engineer had dropped his keys behind the piano, and You know how hard it is to get them back out again..

But apparently I was way, way off. (go figure?)

Pianola.org suggests that reasons were 2 in number.

1) A belief that this technology would not take off, because Pianola players wanted to create their own interpretations of this music, rather than sit and listen passively.

2) The developmental/experimental department was occupied with an unfortunate failure -  A synchronized phonograph and player piano.

This once again shows their emphasis on the interactive over the passive.

Unlike the Welte-Mignon, the Duo-Art’s recording process didn’t automatically record the players tempo and dynamics straight from the keys, instead a musical producer would man 2 dials beside the piano that would control the speed and dynamics recorded live onto the perforating machine.
Once a few copies were made, they would be re run the through the machine as a live performance where the producer, the player or the composer himself could control these variations until satisfied with the performance. In some ways the recordings on the Duo-Art can be seen as studio albums, and the Welte-Mignon that of live albums.

Even though it was the phonograph that in the end would later dominate the playback market, their recordings were scratchy and dull at best and required the user to replace the needle itself quite often.

Even to this day, there is something magical about hearing an instrument re-produce live a recording that was captured at another time and place.

Many believe that there is no better substitute to a live performance of  a master Pianist.

The player-piano-player family still survives somewhat today. The music scroll versions mainly due to the it’s rare owners loving care and careful restoration. Thanks to modern technologies like midi, they can be used to interpret live performance or even previously recorded, or notated, and then sent to a perforating machine.

There are new digital technologies that are available for both the player pianos and piano players, proving that the art – the medium still has something going for it. I believe that that while the piano is envogue these instrument’s will also be around.

We’ll soon be devoting a post to these modern versions in our technology section, so watch out for that.

The fall from mass popularity heralded a new way that modern society related to music, this was reflected in the advertising of the day.

Adverts for Player Pianos and Piano Players always had the people in the picture participating in the experience; suddenly these people were passive, concentrating on the performance.

It’s interesting to note that the active participating in the music has made a come back through computer games and hand held’s.
Games such as the Guitar Hero and Rockband Franchises, allow people to get involved with the music they have previously loved only from a passive listening or active dancing state.

Sure games likes these are seen as a novelty now, but they’re  immensely popular, who knows what new developments are in store for us in the future?

Speaking of the Future, Merry Christmas Everyone and Happy New Year!!!

We start a brand new thread to our tale next chapter Click here for part 20. The Attack of the Automatons!

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CLICK HERE for the INDEX of History Of Electronic Music