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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
11
The Possible Future Development of the Player Along Lines of Musical
Expression a Matter for Serious Consideration—The Importance and
Desirability of Personal Control—The Possibilities of Note Isolation.
To what extent can the player mechanism be
developed further along lines of musical expres-
sion? What is to be its future as a method
for playing the piano? These questions are by no
nuans so academic as they may appear, for the
entire future of the trade is bound up with them.
It will be not only valuable, but exceedingly in-
teresting, therefore, to look into these matters.
Everybody who looks at the player business as
it exists to-day knows, without a doubt, that the
ordinary player-[ iano is not meeting with the suc-
cess that might naturally b.: supposed to belong
to it of right. Why otherwise is there this sud-
den desperate desire to put forth electrically-
driven players? Is it not because the dealers find
that such players sell more easily? And why do
they? Is it not because the playing of the ordinary
foot-pumped player really well is so entirely diffi-
cult, not to say often even impossible, that the
public has become tired of trying and is turning
to the talking machine as a substitute?
Now, we might as well say at the beginning
that the talking machine will never in our opinion
supplant the player-piano. The thing that keeps
the player-piano alive is its measure of susceptibil-
ity to personal control. Variety is the spice of
life and the essence of musical enjoyment. No
method of recording, ever yet devised or ever
likely to be devised, can overcome one's natural
repulsion from the repetition of the same interpre-
tations, over and over again always perfect, but
always the same. Even to know that we can got
several different interpretations of the same work
by different artists is but a mitigatory knowl-
edge, for we soon realize that an artist never plays
a work the same way exactly twice running, and
that what annoys us is the having to hear, not
the constant variety of living idea, but the repeti-
tion of a number of perfect models, always per-
fect, but like all models, fixed.
Thus, we may just as well make up our minds
that the player-piano business will be very likely
to end where it b:gan, with the personally con-
trolled player. The point we wish to make here,
however, is that such a player must also be a
player in which the measure of personal control
has been immensely widened. Let us see how far
this possibility is likely to be realized.
Importance of Personal Control.
Let us begin by remarking that when we speak
of personal control we do not necessarily imply
foot-pumping of the bellows. We mean personal
control in any manner and after any principle that
may prove to be the most suitable.
Anybody who is able to think can see at once
that the biggest need at the present moment is
for a practical method of isolating individual notes
for accent. Of course, we all know that there are
methods for accenting individual notes by means
of specially cut rolls, but we are not now dis-
cussing such as these, admirable as they are. We
are not discussing any sort of thing as yet in anv
way on the market. Our idea is simply that no
matter how much has been done in the direction
of furthering personal control over the individual
note, there is one much bigger thing to be done
yet. That is to give this control without recourse
to special rolls, and with such freedom that the
pcdipulator can accent any and all notes that he
wants to accent, without any limitation arising
through the nature of the roll or of the machine,
and quite irrespective of whether the score really
calls for the proposed accentuation or not. In
other words, the need is for complete and unre-
strained freedom of note-isolation.
Now if it be objected—as of course it will—
that this improvement, while it may more or less
easily be made, is of no importance in that no-
body wants to do these things, the plain answer
is that it is of importance so long as certainly
some day somebody will want to do them. In
fact, of course, it is true that there are people
right now who want to have the freedom we have
described, and until they have it will not at all
be satisfied with the player-piano. To be more
accurate, the moment that there is a machine made
that will enable you and me to pick out what
notes we please, no matter what roll we may be
using, when we please and as" often as we please,
then the player-piano will cease to be a mere
imitator and will have become a genuine and com-
plete musical instrument. There is no use in dis-
guising the fact nor in saying that it cannot be
made practical. There is no use in saying that
people will not take the trouble to master the
pedipulation of such an instrument. The suffi-
cient answer to all this is that no one has a right
to say anything at all about it until the idea has
been tried. How do we know that if player-
pianos in general were fitted with actual single-
note accent control they would not sell much more
easily than they now can be said to sell? Is it not
true, to put the matter mildly, that the indiffer-
ence of the public arises as much from disgust
with failure to get anything from the ordinary
player by reason of its limitations as from any
other cause? Is it not true that there are hun-
dreds of thousands of more or less intelligent
music-lovers who will not have an ordinary player,
but would have an improved one? And is it not
likewise and finally true that the public will fol-
low any duly appointed bell-wether, and so that,
if the player were on the right track to-day in-
stead of being astray, the public would follow the
lead of the intelligent, who would then take it up?
How the Thing Is Going to Be Done.
How is the thing going to be done? Well, this
is not a technical article, so we shall not disclose
any one of the at least three different methods
that can be used even now without any funda-
mental change in the player mechanism. Suffice
it to say that it can be done and even has been
done with no more change in appearance outward-
ly than is occasioned by adding of a pointer in
front of the roll and an extra lever on the key-slip.
But if note-isolation is one thing, it is not all.
WRIGHT
Salms Offices at
437 5th Ave., New York
Gearge H. Beverly. Manager d Sale*
If you ask a musician what in his candid opinion
constitute the musical defects of the player-piano,
he will, if he is a sensible man, reply that these
are two in number: (1) impossibility of accent- ,
ing individual notes, one or more at a time, at
will, and (2) impossibility of treating the left
hand part separately from the right.
Allowing that it is possible to treat separate
notes separately at will, let us also remember that
this still leaves the other parts of the piano un-
accounted for. If, on the one hand, we do the
accenting by altering the hammer throw, then we
leave the dynamics of all the rest of piano at one
level with the iso^ted note at another. Any
change in pumping, of course, sends the whole thing
up or down evenly, with the isolated note stick-
ing out at the same proportionate dynamic dis-
tance above the others. Plainly there is more •>•-
needed than this. What we obviously want is to
be able to treat the right-hand part in its various
elements all by itself, and the left hand part in
its elements all by itself. Can it be done?
Securing Real Piano Playing.
'"'he answer is that it can be done; nay, has been
done. True, the idea is not on the market, and
perhaps nev.T will be. Yet it has been proved
not only that a player can be built in which the
melody part can be treated exactly to suit the per-
former, but also that the other accompanying
I arts can be treated quite separately in such a way
that each stands out with perfect distinctness. To
put the matter concretely, it has already been
shown that a fugue can be rendered in, say, four
voices, so that each voice in its turn sticks out
distinctly and at a different degree of force
amongst all the others, while the outlying voices
rise and fall, not necessarily with the leading voice,
but each with its own degree of force appropriate
to it. This is real piano playing.
Of course, all this sounds fearfully complicated,
but in reality it need not be any more so than the
manipulation of some of the other devices now on
the market, at least there is no special reason for
supposing that it need be. The point we are trying
to make is simply that there are two certain and
definite aims for us to look forward to. Here
they have been set forth; on the general principle
that if these two be gained, the player will have
com° into its own.
We are not going to tell how it ought to be
done and can be done, or even how it has been
done. We are simply saying that these two things
finally must be done; the sooner the better. When
we get them, we can come to the musical and in-
telligent world saying, "Here is something of
which we need not for a moment be ashamed,
which will do what we have been claiming and
which will really play as well as does the pianist
who plays on the keyboard."
These two lin^s of endeavor, the isolation of
melody notes and the entirely separate treatment
of accompaniments, must be the aim of the next
development in player-piano invention.
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