Music Trade Review

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AUGUST 27,
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
1921
Being Certain Hot-weather Contortions of the Cerebral Convolutions of the
Editor of This Player Section, Said Contortions Being Germane to the Player
Business and Germicidal to Worry, Pessimism, the Blues and Similar Ailments
Move On, Please!
It may be because this is the silly season, but
the Player Section Editor finds it very useful
this month to have the Point of View at his dis-
posal for the principal and chief purpose of rid-
ding his mentality of the effects of six weeks
of torrid weather, now happily tempered by
rains and winds. Whatever be the reason, the
Editor finds an irresistible temptation towards
a gentle dalliance with abstract and peaceful
themes, being rather heartily sick of scien-
tifically cultivated gloom. And so he finds him-
self remembering that while some of us are won-
dering when the public will once more be found
to be easy to sell the inventors and some of our
wiser competitors are taking the present oppor-
tunity to push the science and art of musical
pneumatics a step or two ahead. A very wise
business man in our line of activity might some
day go so far as to reason to himself that per-
haps one of the reasons for periodic quietness
and dullness in the player business is to be found
in the disproportion between trade progress and
public appreciation. We invent something and
promote it to the public. Public buys. We
make money. Then we go to sleep and forget it.
One day we are rudely waked by the cry
"stoppage of business." All sorts of reasons
are at once alleged for the stoppage. And so on.
But how many of us ever stop to think that one
of the reasons is that the people have exhausted 1
their interest in the thing we have been offer-
ing them and can only be reattracted by the
offer of something better?
This Is Not Optimism
This is not an optimistic paragraph. We
should decline to start being optimistic in Au-
gust anyway, even if we had not been the same
during May, June and July, not to mention
January, February, March and April. The truth
is that business is quiet and we must make the
best of it. There is no sense in pretending that
we shall all be back in 1919 next week, for we
shall not, and the sooner we all recognize that
fact the better for all of us. Yet we confess
without shame that a good deal of the stuff
which we hear about the horrors of a business
man's life gives us severe colics in the abdomi-
nal region. Does not any one remember 1907,
for heaven's sake, that year when even if you
had money in a solvent bank you could not get
it out, but had to take a piece of paper that you
might or might not be able to get some one to
exchange for cash or goods? Business men that
year knew what worry really can mean. They
had some cause for worry. But, compared with
that, we are having a picnic. What has hap-
pened? Simply that owing to the collapse of the
war-inflation, which had to come anyhow, trade,
commerce and finance are for the moment
checked. We have been sliding down-hill and
now, with the up-grade ahead of us, we are
whining because we have to fire up and run the
steam pressure back to the popping point. Of
course, it means hard work. And also it means
time! And while we are stoking up let us please
remember this: that the U. S. A. is a good bet!
This country is not heaven on earth—not yet,
quite. But it is the nearest terrestrial approach
to the celestial regions just at this time. And it
might as well be remembered that music is just
as essential to life when business is quiet as
when it is rattling. Which leads to the thought
that player-pianos are the world's greatest lit-
tle music-bringers. Which again leads to the
conclusion that now is a pretty good time to set
one's house in order against the day when pro-
duction will again be running so fast that im-
provement and refinement cannot be thought of.
Now is a good time to clean house and take stock
of our position. Which may or may not be
optimism. We hope it is not. We are rather
sick of optimism. But we think that we may
call this paragraph an exposition of common
sense. And that is a great deal better.
Destroying the Joys of Misery
Not for all the world would we destroy the
only pleasure which so many of our good 1 friends
seem to have left. We refer to the joy of being
miserable. To hang crepe is often a joy in-
expressibly subtle, and the man who was said
never to be happy save when he was miserable
has many disciples in these latter days. Where-
fore, we hesitate to impart the news that there is
a real activity among the inventors and that
new player actions are coming out one by one.
It is really too bad to print good news like this,
but then, after all, our pessimists can easily point
out that the poor devils who are putting their
time and money into adventures of the sort will
soon be short on money and long on experience.
Which, of course, will make them miserable and
sc rejoice our hearse-drivers exceedingly. Never-
theless, we insist on rc-stating the fact that in-
ventors are very busy. Within the last four
weeks we have come in contact with four new
ideas in the player line, each of them very in-
teresting, each very new and one of them posi-
tively revolutionary. We do not know what will
happen to them, but we do know that one of
them (of metal throughout) is a perfect wonder
of ingenuity, fine shop-work and careful calcu-
lation. And the fact remains, when all else is
said and done, that at least one big manufac-
turing institution, possessing reputation, capital
and facilities on a large scale, is backing this
last action to the limit. Oh, yes! We know all
about the history of metal actions. But the
metal action has to come, be it known, and when
the perfect one comes we all may as well look
out, for there will be something doing all at once
and all over.
The Same for Twenty Years
In times of ease and plenty no one cares to
philosophize. The wheels are too busy. But
when there is time to do a little thinking it is
just as well to remember that we have been
handing out pretty much the same piece of goods
for more than twenty years and that we should
not be surprised to find that the people could
do with something just a bit new. In a word,
the player-piano has not been radically improved
since the substitution of the interior for the ex-
terior action. Even the abolition of the sixty-
five-note scale in favor of the full compass did
not constitute a radical improvement. What is
getting to be badly needed is an instrument that
plays a great deal better and that does the things
in playing which the average present player does
not do. The reproducing piano will not solve
that problem. Of course, unless we get some
notable improvements in the expressive capac-
ity of the player-piano the reproducing piano
will take its place entirely. But that will mean
simply that we shall have to go back and popu-
larize the straight upright again. For the re-
producer satisfies the appreciative sense in
music, but it cannot satisfy the productive sense.
And the productive is just as powerful. It was
the productive sense which was first satisfied by
the early piano player. That present type of in-
strument has run on in one form or another
tor twenty years, but it needs to be vastly im-
proved. For if it is not improved it may cease
to satisfy. And that will mean that half the
demand for player-pianos will also cease. For
(Continued on page 6)
A Sweet-as- Su§ar Fox-Trot
WEETHEART
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