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THE
MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
THE POINT OF VIEW (Continued from page 5).
cultured are not often the people who actually buy'
players, but they largely influence those who do,
and therefore should be catered to.
The method of direct invitation by mail appeals
to me as the most effective in getting into the
recital room those who are wanted. Personal in-
vitations, of the most inviting sort, if I may use
the expression, are the best of all. The task of
getting the audience together is one of the most
important of all. When they are assembled it is
up to the player-pianist to produce the right sort
of effect upon them, and this can only be done by a
man who knows his business. It is my experience
that the player-pianist must be ready and able to
meet any and all demands in musical taste and it is
therefore essential that he be a musician as well as
simply a player man.
Incidentally I might remark that the player busi-
ness is full of business men, salesmen, mechanics
and plain ordinary player men; but there are
scarcely any musicians in it. If there were more
of the latter the player business would increase in
size, in importance and in prosperity. It is strange
that the men who know most about what the
player is built to do are the men who are never
consulted.
The dealer certainly' ought to undertake sys-
tematic exploitation through the recital, but this
will not be done so long as it is possible to sell
the greater number of players without such means.
But the time is coming when the dealer will have
to use better methods of interesting the public and
will have to give them more than he is giving them
now. He will have to create a more genuine re-
spect for the player, and until he does this he will
never sell players rightly, although at the present
moment he may be able to get rid of them easily
enough. It is simply the truth to say that the
public are becoming better and better educated as
to the meaning of music and as to its possibilities
as an accomplishment and are beginning to de-
mand more. The easy assumption that nobody
knows anything about it cannot any longer be made
truthfully. Generally speaking, people are getting
to want better things, and this condition I attribute
to the player as much as, if not more than, to any-
thing else.
To sum the matter up then, I believe in the re-
cital as an advertising and selling factor. I believe
it to be the best means of advertising and sales;
provided that it be rightly conceived, rightly car-
ried out and rightly followed up. And I have tried
here to give you some ideas as to what I mean by
the use of the word RIGHTLY.
Views of Wm. Braid White, Practical Mechanical Player Expert, On This
Interesting Topic.
Probably player recitals are not direct pro-
ducers ; in the sense that people do not, generally
speaking, stop in the store after the affair and
proceed to buy player-pianos. But in another
sense they are .direct producers, seeing that they
produce prestige to the dealer, publicity to the
player-piano and pleasure to the public. In my
opinion, there is no sales and advertising method
so generally efficient as the recital, provided it be
well done, and provided every detail be carefully
thought out and carried out in advance. The re-
cital is simply an expansion of the demonstration.
It is a demonstration to a lot of people under
particularly comfortable circumstances. Carry it
out well and it is the best selling scheme known
to the player business.
As for these methods of handling, as suggested
in the second question, I lay special stress upon
creating an atmosphere of exclusiveness, comfort
and informality. To do the thing systematically,
the audiences should be classified as far as pos-
sible. Recitals ought to be given as matinee affairs
for shopping women, as after-school affairs for
children and students, and as evening affairs foi
the general public. But in every case there should
be an absence of formality, an attempt to make
the affair intelligible, and a choice of material
rightly graded to the capacity of the audience. My
own method is to turn all recitals into lecture
recitals, talking to the audience, explaining the
music, talking about the player-piano and its possi-
bilities (according to the needs of the particular
audience, of course) and generally making the
thing as interesting and novel an entertainment
as may be possible. And I want to say unreserv-
edly that anybody who thinks for a moment thar
people want to hear rag-time at player recitals is
mistaken. I believe in giving programs of the
very best, and then in explaining and making in-
teresting what is played. This not only holds the
audience, but also makes them want to come again.
Not only is this true, but the player-pianist
should be able to say to his audience something
interesting about the player-piano; not the cheap
sort of hot-air of which we hear too much, but
the simple truth. It is simply instructive to hear
the views of people, gossiping after a player-
recital, when nothing has been explained to them.
It- simply means that most of them go home with
entirely wrong ideas about the whole thing, gen-
erally with the notion that everything is very mys-
William
B. White.
terious and that the player-pianist must be a God-
given genius to learn to play a player-piano
a: all well.
As for advertising, I certainly believe that the
private invitation method should be pursued,
coupled with newspaper advertising in which the
public are invited to write or call for tickets. It
is important to get the names and addresses of
all who come to hear, if this be possible. Every
listener is a prospect.
Musical taste? Surely it is being improved all
the time by such worry as this. I know this to
be true in my own experience, and I have made
some experiments in this line more advanced, I
think, than anyone else has. In a recent series
of recitals which I have been giving in an Indiana
city, for example, people have been coming to
hear who declared -that they had never been inter-
ested in any music outside of the popular hits of
the day until something of the meaning of art was
explained to them at these concerts. Others
have been converted to a belief in the player-piano
and others again have bought who had had no
such intention at first. I know that musical taste
can be, and should .be, improved by systematic
recital work; provided, once more, that the man
at the wheel knows his business. Contrariwise, 1
think that a badly conducted, dreary, slip-shod
player recital is the worst advertisement in the
world.
From all I have said it may be taken as certain
that I believe dealers could do absolutely nothing
better than undertake continued, persistent and
systematic recital work. It will pay as no other
publicity method can.
KIMBALL RECITALS IN SUPERIOR.
Monthly Musicales in Wisconsin City Attract
Large Audiences and Result in Sales—Piano
Trio on Kimball Grand, Upright and Player-
Piano Feature of a Recent Program—Re-
citals to Be Continued Throughout Season.
(Special to The Review.)
SUPERIOR, WIS., December 22.—The second of the
monthly 1 recitals being held under the auspices of
the local branch of the W. W. Kimball Co., of
which I. R. Hartman is manager, took place in the
banquet hall of the Hotel Superior and proved a
decided success from both an artistic and material
standpoint, for the large audience was most en-
thusiastic over the entire program. Both the Kim-
ball player-piano and the Kimball Miniature grand
were featured with excellent effect in solos and
accompaniments for several excellent artists, and
were used together in the duet "Peer Gynt Suite"
by Grieg. A particularly interesting number was a
piano trio, "Charge of the Uhlans," by Bohm, in
which three artists presided at the Kimball Min-
ature grand, the Kimball player-piano and the Kim-
ball upright piano, Style 45, respectively. The
number, prefectly rendered, provoked marked en-
thusiasm on the part of the audience.
•The Kimball recitals being held this winter are
the first of the kind ever held in Superior, and as
there are many music lovers in the city the attend-
ance is very large. The practical results in the
matter of prospects and sales of Kimball instru-
ments are also proving very satisfactory, thus
demonstrating the value of recitals.
HAMMER REST RAIL DEVICE.
(Special to The Review.)
WASHINGTON, D. C, December 26.—Emil Swan-
son, Steger, 111., has assigned to Steger & Sons
Piano Manufacturing Co., same place, patent No.
1,082,369, for a Hammer-Rest-Rail-Aperating De-
vice for Player-Pianos, the purpose of which is to
provide an improved construction of the devices
for producing soft pedal effect in a player-piano
by the movement of the hammer rest rail under
the control of the operator by means of push but-
tons or keys which control pneumatic devices for
moving the hammer rest hail.
The Master Player-Piano
is now equipped with an
AUTOMATIC TRACKING DEVICE
Which guarantees absolutely correct tracking of even the most imperfect music rolls
W I N T E R & CO., 220 Southern Boulevard, New York City