Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
APRIL 28, 1923
THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
9
Technical Service and Reproducer
Reproducing Piano Has Revived the Old Problem Which Confronted the Advent of the Player-Piano—The
Part of the Tuner in Maintaining This Comparatively New Instrument—Co-operation of
Manufacturers Needed in This Field by Furnishing Accurate Information
That important movement in the pneumatic
branch of the music industries, which has be-
come known as the reproducing piano move-
ment, has already introduced in a new and seri-
ous phase a problem which has always been to
the front since the player-piano first became im-
portant. This is the problem of technical serv-
ice.
For a number of years now it has been real-
ized that the whole question of caring lor the
foot-played player-piano is, in the last resort,
up to the tuners. All sorts of compromises with
this state of affairs have been tried, but it has
in the end been recognized that this is a question
to be solved by the individual tuner, who is
inevitably driven to make himself responsible
for the player-pianos in the community he
serves. Tuners who have not understood player
mechanism have always been obliged to acquire
the needed understanding; nor can any tuner,
whether employed or independent, adequately
serve his clientele in default of possessing pneu-
matic knowledge and experience.
Player Service Filled by Tuners
As a natural result of this inevitable drift of
the tuner toward the player-piano the problem
of technical service in this particular branch
of the music industries has ceased to be acute.
It is now generally taken for granted that all
recognized tuners shall understand player-
mechanism, at least to the extent of ability to
care for all the ordinary ills of the foot-played
player-piano. Much of the recent progress of
this instrument would have been impossible if
the ability of the body of tuners to provide the
needed technical service had not been so
rapidly developed and so thoroughly put into
use.
The music industries thus owe to the tuners
a debt which ought to be generously recognized;
more especially as they have now to call upon
the same men for a technical service more
complicated still. The automatic expression
player-piano, in all its forms, is upon us. From
the coin-operated upright piano to the reproduc-
ing'grand at three thousand dollars or more we
see around us in increasing numbers these new
developments of the pneumatic principle, and
it becomes daily more evident that the problem
of providing technical service to take care of
them will be complex in the highest degree.
Up to the Tuners
Ultimately, indeed, the solution of the prob-
lem will be up to the tuners again. Only these
men can tackle it, because only they have a
large and immediate interest in the service needs
of the piano-owning part of the community. It
would be useless to try to eliminate them, even
if this were desirable, which it is not. They
are the natural sources of technical service abil-
ity, and they will inevitably be found taking
their natural places.
But it must be remembered tnat when the
tuners undertake to acquire' a lot more knowl-
edge and experience about a new and somewhat
complex development of musical pneumatics
they do this because they feel they must be
up to date, must be able to render to their cus-
tomers adequate service; in short, they feel just
as much in honor obligated to become repro-
ducing piano experts as a physician feels to be
abreast of the latest theories and practices of
his art.
Tuner's Interest Professional
Yet this spirit is scarcely at all commercial,
for it is evident that the tuners, speaking gen-
erally, might go on for quite a long time with-
out bothering their heads about new knowledge,
seeing that the number of reproducing pianos is
as yet not very great, while the extra prices
which may be charged for work on them will
only just barely compensate for the extra time.
It is a fact not always realized by persons out-
side the ranks of the fraternity that the tuner's
earnings, even in the most favorable circum-
stances, are strictly limited by the length of his
available working day, and that the state of
public appreciation is too low to permit his
charging a price per hour actually commensu-
rate with the amount of skill and experience he
has to have to be able to do his intricate and
varied work in a masterly fashion. The tuner,
in short, by acquiring, as he is already beginning
to acquire, the ability to handle the reproducing
piano, is making the industry his debtor in one
more important way.
No private scheme of education, no matter
how comprehensive, will suffice to teach all the
tuners who are desirous of acquiring the needed
knowledge. They will, however, find their own
ways and means. Far more important than to
•worry over the "school" question is to furnish
to the tuners out in the field accurate informa-
tion as to the peculiarities of all the well-known
and popular automatic expression action. Every
man who understands the principles of pneu-
matics as carried out in the foot-played player-
piano can be depended upon to acquire all
needed knowledge of the reproducing piano, just
as soon as he is provided with the necessary
technical literature. It is true, indeed, that a
certain quantity of such literature already exists.
The writer has before him three handbooks or
manuals published for the guidance of techni-
cians and dealing with as many reproducing
pianos. They are excellent specimens of their
kind, although perhaps unnecessarily complex
and in their explanatory sections obscure. Still,
it is certain that these booklets are invaluable
to the tuners, and a great many more like them
are needed.
What N. A. P . T. Can Do
What is even more needed is co-operation be-
tween tuners and manufacturers. At the forth-
coming convention the leaders of the player in-
dustry will have the opportunity, should any
of them care to take advantage of it, to meet
the leaders of the National Association of Piano
Tuners and discuss with them how best to bring
the individual independent tuner out in the field,
into contact with the technical details of the re-
producing piano. The important question will
not be as to any scheme for bringing tuners to
a school in any one center; magnificent and ef-
fective as such a plan can be. On the contrary,
it will be a question of how to provide written
helps and in general of how to go to the indi-
vidal instead of asking him to leave his com-
munity and his work.
STEINWAY GRAND ON RED STAR STEAMER "BELGENLAND'
One of the features of the equipment of the
magnificent new 27,000-ton Red Star liner, "The
Felgenland," which has recently been put into
service between Southampton, Cherbourg and
New York, is a Style O Steinway & Sons grand
piano, with an elaborately and specially designed
case in walnut, decorated in the style of Louis
XVI, which has been installed in the music
room of the new liner.
The Steinway grand was built at the Park
Royal factory of Steinway & Sons, London,
England, and was placed on board "The Belgen-
land" while she was at Antwerp preparing for
her maiden voyage,