Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
JANUARY 31, 1925
THE
MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
What Is Sold With Every Player Sale
Music the Commodity Which the Retail Salesman Is Selling to the Prospective Customer in the Retail Ware-
rooms With Every Player Sale—Proper Demonstration an Essential in Selling This Basic
and Fundamental Commodity—Demonstration Not a Difficult Art
NE way or another a big truth is begin-
ning to penetrate the minds of the retail
merchants and salesmen. It is coming
gradually to be seen that music is the only com-
modity which is sold when a player-piano or
reproducing piano is bought. Everybody should
be happy at the thought that by degrees this
thing is coming to be known.
Now music can only be sold successfully by
those who are willing to learn what can be
learned and is to be known about the thing itself
and also about the medium through which it is
manifested. Unfortunately it is just here that
so much of salesmanship falls down. In what
follows a brief attempt is made to lay stress
upon one of the neglected points in player
merchandising and salesmanship, a musical
point, but a merchandising point also. This
takes the place of a more formal musical dis-
cussion this month.
To the owner of a player-piano music comes
almost ready-made. It comes, that is to say,
with its elements laid out before him, and ready
to be put together by simply operating the
treadles of the instrument. But it does not
come quite ready-made, because unless the work
of operating the treadles and the expression
levers or buttons be carried out with some skill,
the resulting tonal mixture will be rapid and
tasteless.
On the other hand, to the owner of the repro-
ducing piano, the music does come ready-made.
Whatever else may be said about it, one has
to say that it is well-rendered music. Neverthe-
less, although the routes taken are different,
owners of both kinds are headed the same way,
if music means little or nothing to them save a
medley of pleasant sound.
The Ever-Open Gate
There is one approach to music which is al-
ways open and which everyone is glad to use.
That is the approach through the gateway of
familiar music. There never was a prospect yet
who did not respond to the stimulus given by
some bit of an old familiar song or dance tune.
It comes to the familiar ear with a wealth of
memories in its train, and the moment that its
tones are heard the whole attitude toward the
prospective purchase is bound to be changed.
Every salesman should learn the great truth
that one can catch more flies with honey than
with vinegar, which, being interpreted, means
that one can get more and keener attention
from a customer through the medium of music
already liked and cherished in the memory than
through music which beats upon the ears with
an unfamiliar and noisy clangor.
Appying this idea to the reproducing piano,
we see that it works out in a very simple way.
The salesman will, in fact, always be well ad-
vised to start his demonstration with some
music which he can be reasonably sure is famil-
iar to his customer. He can begin with the
simplest of old-fashioned melodies if he choose
and if it be so that he can bring in a good
name as the player thereof he will do so much
the better. Now, as it happens, any search of
the reproducing catalogs will show that quite a
lot of good old-fashioned songs, waltz-tunes,
patriotic airs and similar pieces have been re-
corded by good pianists, sometimes by pianists
of real eminence. "Turkey in the Straw" has
been done, for instance, and done very well.
By whom? Well, that is something that may
be learned by examining the catalogs, and so
need not be mentioned here.
On the Other Hand
(hi I he other hand the salesman who is
O
starting in to sell a foot-touch player-piano
must know how to render, with superb ease and
lack of preoccupation, just these very same old
airs. By so doing, he may build up most ef-
fectively the right emotional response in his
hearer's mind. But this means playing; and
not mere pumping.
It is not hard to play the player-piano. When
one hears salesmen make absolute fools of
themselves at the treadles of the player-piano
one is compelled to suppose that these excellent
men have never yet perceived that a player-
piano really can be played well. The present
writer has met salesmen who have frankly ad-
mitted that they have never supposed the player
could possibly be played well enough to sound
like anything. They have never tried to do it
themselves. And when one asks them why they
have never tried, the answer has often been
that they never supposed this was necessary.
Yet of course it is just this which above all is
necessary. The prospect does not want indeed
to be told, or forced to believe, that the pur-
chase of a player-piano means entrance into
a long and futile task of learning to play; but
then the customer on the other hand does want
to know that the thing can be played well . . .
and by its owner, not only by an expert. Here
is the critical position in player-piano merchan-
dising.
It Is Not Hard
Yet, we repeat, it is not hard to play the
player-piano satisfactorily; nor is it hard to
teach any ordinary man or woman to do the
same thing. Ten minutes of the right sort of
instruction will go a very long way toward
putting any ordinary normal man or woman on
a road that will lead to ever better playing with
ever greater satisfaction. Here in fact is an-
other secret; that the more one practices the
more fun one has. The more one works at the
player-piano (after having once been set straight
on the right path) the better one plays and the
more one likes it. Everybody takes as a mat-
ter of course a statement like this made about
the game of golf or about the motor car. Why
should it seem to be absurd or difficult when
applied to the player-piano?
If a salesman wanted to know in one sentence
the most important secret of playing the plaver-
piano, the answer could easily be given. It
would be "play softly."
Modern player-pianos are so beautifully de-
signed and constructed that they can be played
with an ease and a satisfaction which even a
few years ago only experts could ever hope to
reach, and then only after long practice. To
play the modern player-piano softly is not at
all difficult, in fact it is superbly easy; yet there
appears to be a general belief that it is not
easy at all. Most salesmen play far too loudly.
The prospect does not want to hear how much
sound the instrument can evoke, but how musi-
cally it can be played. One old-fashioned air
like "Annie Laurie," played softly and sweetly,
will convert the must skeptical, when the noisy
reeling off of a brilliant concert study, or jazz
fantasy, simply gives the idea that the instru-
ment is a noise-maker first of all and most of
all.
"Soft and Sweet"
If one could only get that idea of soft simple
playing impressed upon the minds of salesmen,
much would have been gained, for the merchan-
dising talent is not small in our trade, and
the enthusiasm is great. What is needed is fun-
damental knowledge; and it is a bit of this fun-
damental knowledge which is here being ex-
plained and offered. It is a simple secret: Play
simple music softly to your prospect. Simple
and effective it certainly is. Yet to hear some
men play one would think it terribly difficult
and obscure.
How to do it? That is simplicity itself. It is
simply a matter of a little experiment. One
simply sees how gently one can manipulate the
treadles and still produce enough power both
to turn the music roll and to evoke sound from
the piano. One tries to see how softly one can
play, and from that point works outwards.
That is the whole secret; not the whole secret
of playing but the whole secret of that agree-
able introduction to playing which forms the
true foundation of player-piano selling.
And be it noted that this kind of playing is
the kind of playing which every man (and
still more every woman) customer will take to
at once. Ten minutes' instruction on finding
how softly one can play is worth more than
ten hours of loud arguments about technicalities
which no one understands.
Music is the foundation on which player mer-
chandising is built up, for music it is which we
sell, even though it be embodied in a structure
of steel, iron, felt, wood and leather. To play
softly, simple music is to sell successfully to
nine customers in every ten.
Pratt Read
Products
Piano Ivory
P i a n o Keys
Piano Actions
Player Actions
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at Deep River, Conn.
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