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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
JANUARY 27, 1923
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Wherein the Editor of This Player Section Indulges in His Monthly Out-
burst of More or Less Pertinent Observations on Things and Events
Which Have Gome Within His Purview During the Weeks Just Passed
" 'The time is come,' the walrus said,
'To talk of Many Things,
Of Shoes and ships and sealing-wax,
Of Cabbages and Kings;
And Why the sea is boiling-hot
And whether pigs have wings.' "
Precisely. And on the first appearance of this
section for the present year it is surely time to
talk of many things. We believe that the Wal-
rus, who on the celebrated occasion of his meet-
ing with the Carpenter on the sand made the
above observations to his companion, with his
eye on the oysters (you know your Through
the Looking Glass, of course?), was wiser than
he appears on the surface to be. The sea of our
troubles is very often boiling hot and, as to pigs
having wings, one knows pigs in human form
who have tried to make pigs of themselves in
the sacred enclosures of our industry and whose
money has certainly taken wings till they have
been fain to buy other wings for themselves
that they might hasten after it. But, after all,
the sea of our troubles can always be cooled off,
especially when we have perceived the vast
truth that it is our own hot air that usually does
most of the heating. Then there is the un-
doubted fact that if pigs have wings they can
be expected surely to fly away out of our corral
and leave the provisions to be eaten by animals
of a pleasanter nature. All of which is a rather
tangled way of saying that the year 1923 has
begun and that we have to look, to ourselves
to shape the issue as we would have it shaped.
We can make or mar our fortunes. If we re-
main narrow minded, parochial and stupid, fear-
ing to look out upon the world and preferring
to stay within the ring of our prejudices,
bigotries and fears, we shall not achieve pros-
perity. Let that be made plain. The music
industries are dealing with a public yearly grow-
ing wiser and more particular. Let us be wise
in our turn, at least as wise as our customers.
Which is a parable.
The Captains and the Kings
But we have other things to talk about if our
"many things" are to be achieved within our
space. A convention is coming to town. The
wise men and the great, the humble and the
arrogant, the captains and the kings, of the
music industries will foregather again in Chi-
cago under the hospitable roof of the Drake's
Palm Garden to deliberate upon the exacting
public questions of the trade Which prompts
one to ask for the nth time whether there will
be anything really interesting brought out
which may signify that the player-piano in-
ventor has not gone to sleep and that progress
is not stopping or even slowing down. If our
1923 convention generates one-quarter as much
enthusiasm on behalf of ways to bring the
player-piano before the people as some men in
the trade display when discoursing upon the
alleged iniquities of prohibition, there will be a
booming convention all right. It ought to be
a player convention par excellence; for this is
player year.
Wanted: Lung Testers
A writer would like to know the names of
music rolls which "use the most keys." He
wants them for testing the working of player
pianos after they have been adjusted. The
brother's language is a bit ambiguous, but his
meaning is unmistakable. He wants some of
those rolls which go all over the keyboard from
end to end and show up a player-piano till its
owners have to confess that they never knew
there was so much music in the old box. There
is a lot of good sense in this. Many years ago,
when the player-piano was young, the favorite
was the famous Kelly tester. We believe that
Uncle George Kelly, of the Aeolian Co., a pi-
oneer in pneumatic development, was the
perpetrator of this tester. It was a wonder.
After it had gone through the whole gamut of
fifty-eight or sixty-five notes, as they ran in
those days, it would burst into an extraordinary
medley of chords, runs and melodies, well put
together in fact and extremely effective. When
one was through with that there was no more
to be said, if the player had survived the test.
The tester rolls of to-day are piffling in com-
parison. Seriously, in fact, there is a real need
for just something like this, a test roll which
is melodious and effective, not merely identify-
ing each note separately, but showing off the
powers of the instrument after it has been ad-
justed. Old Bach used to pull all the stops on
a new organ when he sat down to it for the
first time, because he wished, as he would say,
to "see whether it had good lungs." Well, that
too is what the tuner-repairer chiefly wants to
know. Some of the Liszt Rhapsodies are very
good, notably the fourteenth in its middle part,
the twelfth and thirteenth. The Tannhauser
Overture is very good too in its middle part,
melodious and effective in every way. It forms
in the middle and toward the end a splendid
&m
keep on smil - i
Well, Let's Do It
Talking about cabbages and kings, let's really
make 1923 a player year. We can do it if we
want to. The way is not so hard, but there
must be no fooling about it. Perhaps the Editor
of this Section is wrong, but he suffers from the
ingrowing idea that the reproducing piano
people have the right idea and that if all of us
would follow out, in all branches of the busi-
ness, the Ampico, Duo-Art and Welte-Mignon
ideas, we should find them to apply universally.
This idea, for they are all one, may be very
simply expressed. It rests upon demonstration,
that is to say, upon telling the people exactly
what the reproducing piano will do—and how.
Some day the veil of secrecy, which is not so
thick as some innocent folks imagine, will be
dropped for good, and we shall have the "why"
given us as well as the "how." But for present
purposes let us consider ourselves lucky to have
the "how." It is this telling the people what
and how, the persistent demonstrating, that sells
the reproducing piano. It is the same method
which sells the Gulbransen, the Virtuolo, the
Schulz, the vast number of player-pianos which
are "standard-equipped." It is done, when it
is done at all, by getting the customer to sit
down to the instrument and discover indi-
vidually the beauties and the delights of per-
sonal production of music. It can be done, we
know, because it is being done. But whether in
this respect or in the other we know also that
the good work is not being done often enough
or by enough of merchants in the trade. Yet
the secret lies in just doing this, and in leaving
the price talk to the last moment, when it won't
matter anyway, because the sale will have been
made. Perfectly simple. Simply perfect. Let's
make it a player year!
-•when you're feel-in^, lone-ly, -Just keep on Srnil - in^,,—
Just Keep p on
Smiling
S
ili
oA Sunshine Song
Full of Happiness
"You cant $
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"With any FElSTsorg
test for any player-piano. But, of course, it is
long, almost at the limit of tolerance for any
ordinary player-piano and its opening is lightly
scored. The Chopin Polonaise in E, Op. 44, is a
fine example of rich thick scoring and so is any
good player arrangement of Mendelssohn's
"Fingal's Cave Overture." The objection to
most of these will, however, be to their length,
no doubt. There are some heavily scored jazz
rolls, but most of them are musically so poor
that their utility is only mechanical. They can-
not be called either, melodies or effective in the
musical sense. Perhaps some reader can make
some suggestions.