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Educational Value of National Player-
Piano Playing Contest
Tuners in Chicago Convention Demonstrate the High Interest Value of Such a Contest and Its Possibilities
for Giving the Average Player-Piano Owner and the Public at Large a Correct Idea
of the Music-Producing Qualities of That Instrument
w
J ITH or without excuse this article is
about a national player-piano playing
contest.
When Mennie, Lawrence and Gutsohn, of the
Standard Pneumatic interests, thought to try
out the tuners at the Chicago convention this
Summer, to see how much these technical men
knew about the musical side of the player-piano,
they started something. Quite probably they
actually started something much bigger than
they could ever have imagined. For the re-
sults of fhis contest were very, in fact extraor-
dinarily, interesting and significant. Small as
the thing was, comparatively speaking, it was
nevertheless completely representative.
It
showed, on a small scale, the whole scene, and
showed it faithfully.
And the first thing it showed is that tuners
are interested in the player-piano and like to
play it. About this there is not the slightest
question. The contestants expressed their views
freely. One and all agreed that their customers,
the mothers, fathers, boys and girls, in whose
homes are player-pianos periodically in need of
tuning and mechanical adjustment, are generally
almost wholly ignorant of the simple art of play-
ing their instruments. They said, these tuners,
that because of this and of the requests con-
stantly coming from customers for more knowl-
edge of the art of playing, they had tried to
master that art themselves.
Public is Not Dumb
And so the second thing the contest showed
was that the public, the buying and using pub-
lic, is not the lot of dumb-bells it is said to be
by some dealers who yet pride themselves on
their business good sense. The tuner, who gets
at these people in their own family circle and
hears all the community scandal at eacli house
in turn, finds himself taken as a confidant and
accepted as an independent and impartial ex-
pert. His opinion is asked on every technical
or musical point. When he has tuned and ad-
justed a player-piano he usually wishes to test it
out musically to see how well he can play it, un-
less he is not interested, as most tuners are, in
music. At once and just so soon as he sits
down and begins to play (so runs the iterated
and reiterated story wherever tuners are gath-
ered together), the family comes in, eager to
hear how it is done and to wonder why they
cannot do the same. And the wise tuner, there
and then, imparts a few bits of simple informa-
tion. Information which, though simple, is al-
ways welcome and often totally novel to those
who receive it. No one at the store ever told
them one word about playing. It is incredible
but it is true.
The public, then, is interested in playing.
Moreover, the public is interested in prizes and
contests. Dealers pooh-poohed the piano play-
ing contest until some brave men had gone
ahead and actually put it on. Then, of course,
they cried that they had always believed in the
same thing, although unfortunately they had
been too busy to undertake the task themselves.
So it will be with a player-piano playing con-
test. The Review began to talk about this three
years ago, before even the piano playing con-
test idea had been thought out; and The Re-
view remains of the opinion it then expressed;
namely that on a doubtless smaller, but still
vastly important, scale, the people, young and
old, would respond to an invitation to take part
in a regional player-piano playing contest; and
that the effect upon the sales of player-pianos,
of holding such a contest, would be extraor-
dinarily stimulating and healthy.
Waiting to Hear
For thousands of men and women are waiting
to hear for themselves that the player-piano can
really be played well by any one who cares to
take the slight trouble necessary to acquire the
correct principles. A contest, local, regional and
finally national, constitutes by far the most
practical and effective propaganda to this end.
It would certainly attract an immense amount
of attention, it would stimulate an unheard-of
amount of interest in the player-piano and it
would bring out a quite unexpected showing of
playing talent.
Principles and Rules
Certain basic principles should be accepted, it
seems, as precedent to any successful contest.
1.—There should be no monopoly. Whether
the thing is to be done locally, regionally or
nationally, all the important makes of instru-
ment must be available, and each contestant
must be permitted to choose that one upon
which lie or she may prefer to play. Possibly
it would be better to make the unit of choice
player action instead of piano, simply saying to
each contestant in effect "choose the player
mechanism which is identical with or nearest to
your own."
2.—There should be two classes, professional
and amateur, the first to include all merchants,
salesmen, player experts, tuners or others con-
nected with the radio; the second all others.
3.—The pieces to be played in the preliminary
or elimination rounds should be selected by
each contestant from three sets of a dozen
pieces each, previously chosen and published by
a board of competent judges according to the
principles laid down below. Each contestant
should be asked to play all or part, at the dis-
cretion of the judges, of the three pieces selected
by him or her. The marks awarded should be
based on the performance of each separately and
the total marking be the sum of the individual
markings.
4.—The pieces selected for the preliminaries
should be in three groups, respectively intended
to give contestants the best possible chance to
exhibit, (1) quality of tone they can produce;
(2) their ability in melodic, harmonic and rhyth-
mic phrasing and (3) their general musical in-
telligence. The same principles should govern
the selection of pieces for the semi-finals and
finals, allowing only for the obvious need of hav-
ing the tests more and more rigid as the end
approaches.
5.—At the finals each contestant should be
asked to play three pieces selected by the
judges, the same three for each contestant.
These might be, for instance, the G minor
Organ Fantasy of Bach in Liszt's arrangement,
Chopin's Third Ballade, and the slow movement
from Rachmaninoff's Second pianoforte con-
cert. Or there might be two sets, one for the
professionals and one for the amateurs.
New Basis for National Piano Playing Contest
(Continued from page 4)
at an approximate cost of $7,500 per page per five can be used. This will give us a total
issue, the cost would be practically the com- thirty-two week campaign. Now, if our weekly
bined manufacturers' and dealers' appropriation. circulation is 26,250,000, our thirty-two week
The circulation of the Post is claimed to be campaign would have a total circulation of
in excess of 2,000,000 copies weekly, or an 840,000,000 as compared with slightly over
annual circulation of approximately 100,000,000 1000,000,000 circulation of the admitted best paid
copies. Now, let us consider the advertising- advertising medium.
Financing Plan
through the contest idea.
The financing is suggested as follows: If the
Select fifty cities throughout the United
States as suggested above. For the first half of manufacturers are successful in securing the
the school year we will use but one-half of $200,000 annually, and should they care to de-
the number—twenty-five. The average circula- vote this money to piano promotion through
tion, according to the newspaper rate and data the contest idea, we would appropriate an aver-
service of each newspaper in our fifty largest age of $4,000 to each of the fifty contest cities.
cities, is in excess of 1,500,000 copies daily. If The dealers would be required to match the
you will multiplify 1,500,000 by twenty-five you manufacturers dollars for dollar. This would
will find that with twenty-five contests running allow an average of $8,000 for each contest in
simultaneously we would have a daily circula- each of the fifty cities. I believe that this
tion of 3,750,000; again multiplify the result by would simplify the raising of the dealers' fund
seven and you will find that the weekly circula- as the money would be spent in the community
tion would be in excess of 26,000,000 copies. In in which it was raised, and in addition another
four weeks we would accomplish under the con- $4,000 of outside capital would be invested in
test plan the annual circulation of a paid adver- piano promotion.
It has never been my privilege to be con-
tising plan.
Paid advertising is a wonderful sales stim- nected with any movement that is so universally
ulator, and there is no question of its effect. accepted as the promotion of music. We have
But I am equally certain that we will all agree a proposition that no one can turn down. In
the reader news copy of interest to all is a fact, it is a thought that everyone is anxious
to be identified with. I am in sympathy with
much quicker and more effective means of
stimulating interest in any theory or practice any plan that would tend to promote the piano,
than one hundred times the amount of paid and I am offering this idea to the manufac-
advertising copy. Front-page publicity cannot turers who have put themselves on record to
spend $200,000 annually of their own money to
be bought.
This campaign as outlined can be carried out stimulate the use of the piano. The dealer is
for the first half of the year in twenty-five of likewise solicited, and I believe that the figures
any of the fifty cities mentioned, and for the cited in the foregoing and the .Detroit demon-
second half of the year the remaining twenty- stration will convince all that the plan works.
5