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REVIEW
THE
VOL. LXXXI. No. 4
Published Every Saturday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 383 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. Jily 25, 1925
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Tuners' Annual Meeting Becomes the
Technical Forum of Trade
Annual Gathering of Association in Detroit From August 3 to 6, Inclusive, Shows More Than Ever
the Growing Tendency in the Piano Industry to Consider This Gathering an Opportunity
for the Presentation and Discussion of the Latest Technical Advances Achieved
I T H I N a few days after this issue of
The Review has reached its readers,
what has come to be the annual great tech-
nical exposition of the music industries will
open in Detroit for a four days' run, in con-
nection with the annual convention of National
Association of Piano Tuners. In calling the exhib-
its which are now regularly made at this conven-
tion, "the great annual technical exposition,"
we are not indulging in any mere rhetorical
gesture. Rather, we are stating what has come
to be a generally acknowledged fact. We are
stating at the same time one of the outstanding
problems of the music business, a problem
which is becoming each day larger and more
difficult, and a problem also to the magnitude
of which the manufacturing end of the music
industries is certainly by now well awake.
This is of course the oft-stated problem of
the organization of technical service.
Some might call it a waste of time to disease
this problem once more, and indeed it would
be a waste of time if the retail end of the
trade could be said to have a clear realization
of the issues involved. Unhappily, it does not
appear that the rank and file of the retailers
fully realize their own relation to the facts, or
the responsibility which, without their fairly
knowing it, has been gradually gathering over
them, until now it appears as a cloud threat-
ening thunder, lightning and tornadoes against
their prosperity. It is then certainly not a
waste of time to talk about this important
matter.
Why do manufacturers of player actions ex-
hibit their wares at the tuners' convention?
Especially, why are these displays wholly tech-
nical in nature, showing the inside and outside
of every part? Why do these manufacturers
send out their best experts to attend the ex-
hibits? Plainly, because the visitors to the con-
vention comprise the cream of the men who out
in the field are charged with the duty of caring
for these elaborate mechanisms, and who, for
reasons obvious to all, have not yet as a body
had any fair opportunity to become technically
expert in this trying work.
It is in the hope of giving at least some tech-
nical information to as many as possible of
these men at one time that these technical dis-
plays are made.
They are very valuable displays; in fact they
are invaluable. It is hard to see to-day how
W
the industry could get along without this op-
portunity, alas all too brief, to bring the latest
ideas in technical achievement from the fac-
tories into contact with the biggest and best
of the outside technical men, the tuners. Yet
TJ^VERY year the annual gathering of the
MJ National Association of Piano Tuners
assumes more and more the characteristic
of a great technical exposition of the latest
developments of the piano factories of the
United States. The gathering has come to
be a meeting essential to the great prob-
lem of technical service which is constantly
reaching greater proportions and to which
it is necessary that a solution be discovered.
Factory men and field men meet there, the
two classes which have this problem in their
power to solve.—Editor.
the very fact that this occasion is utilized so
eagerly, by the player manufacturer at least,
is itself indication of the existence of a condi-
tion of affairs which no one can pretend to be
desirable and which in fact we should be justi-
fied in calling wholly undesirable and unfor-
tunate.
A Struggle for Life
In other words, whilst the makers of pianos,
of piano actions, of tuners' tools and of similar
articles, find their own reasons for making dis-
plays of a technical nature, in the obvious gen-
eral interests of the tuners in all matters re-
lating to construction and technique, the player
men, and especially the reproducing action men,
are in reality here staging one of the divisions
of what is in reality a struggle for life. For
the service question is becoming so important as
to rank in influence with the sales question.
In fact it may be asked in all seriousness
whether service is not quite as important as
sales, quite as important and at the same time
much worse organized.
This is a serious matter. Let no one be fool
enough to think that the day of the player-
piano or of the reproducing piano is past.
Any one who is idiotic enough to think that is
idiotic enough to think anything. What is, of
course, the basis of all such superficial and falst
thinking is the undoubted fact that piano sales,
pneumatic as well as straight, are plainly not
keeping up with the increase of population and,
purchasing power. But this only points to the
unorganized state of the industry. It points
to the fact that we are selling prices and
terms, floor lamps, scarfs, and benches; instead
of selling "music and the power to produce it"
(which is the basis of player-piano sales), or
"music as the masters play it" (which is the
basis of the reproducing piano sales).
Day is Only Dawning
No, the day of the pneumatic art is not over,
for it has hardly yet dawned. What is for us
to realize, however, is that while we have been
worrying about methods of selling, we have
been building up all around us a vast and now
dangerous problem. We have been devoting
all our time and attention to selling elaborate
and costly pieces of delicate machinery. These
creations of the industry's ingenuity and talent
are far more wonderful than was the old-time
piano, and they meet the needs of the day as
that old instrument never could have; but they
also create a service problem which never ex-
isted until they came along.
The straight player-piano to-day does not
involve an elaborate service problem, for its
difficulties are pretty well understood by now
and the points to be mastered are but few.
Still even so there is a player-piano service
problem, for there are many, very many, tuners
still in the dark about all pneumatics. And
when we consider the reproducing piano we
have to confess that we have hardly yet so much
as made a start towards tackling the question
in a large way.
Put briefly, that question is: How to take care
of the reproducing piano in the home, whether
that home be in New York City or in the
furthest corner of Arizona, in Maine or in New
Mexico, in Tennessee or in Alaska. That is
the question, and a very difficult question it is
too.
Tuners Do Their Best
The tuners are showing up well in the crisis.
They are showing themselves anxious to co-
operate, anxious to acquire knowledge, ready
to go to any reasonable amount of trouble to
obtain it. But there is one point, and one very
acute point, which somehow must be settled be-
(Continued on page 4)