Presto

24
PRESTO
HUMAN QUALITIES
IN PLAYER PIANOS
Article by an English Scientist, Written
Seven Years Ago, Suggests the Vast Prog-
ress That Has Been Made in the Mod-
ern Instrument Since That Time.
When the playerpiano first began to attract atten-
tion there was a wide difference of opinion as to how
far the musical instrument could go in matching
the expression of the human performer. One of the
English writers, who had taken special interest in
the question, decided that it was a "curious fact
that a mechanical pianoplayer can play Beethoven,
but is unable to tackle Chopin." That is the asser-
tion of Christopher W. C. Wheatley, in a letter
printed in Nature, London, June 5; 1913. Comment-
ing on Prof. G. H*. Bryan's experiments with piano-
players, described recently in these columns, Mr.
Wheatley said that all pianists recognize the differ-
ences in tone that may be produced by differences in
touch on the keyboard of a piano. He believes that
the harmonics of a note are most prominent when
the note is practically produced by pressure alone.
Pressure alone is, of course, unable to produce a
note, and a certain fractional hit is always necessary
to give the hammer the necessary momentum.
Different Now.
But that was written in 1913. Since that time the
playerpiano has greatly advanced. The reproduc-
ing pianos have been perfected and the player rolls
have been developed to match. Today the Ampico
is recognized by great musicians as a worthy rival of
the greatest pianism of the human mind and hand.
So are other great reproducing pianos whose names
come at once to mind. But the Englishman's arti-
cle has interest, nevertheless. Mr. Wheatley went
on to say—in 1913:
"As a result it seems worthy of note that varia-
tions in quality must be produced by differences in
the time the hammer is in contact with the string.
Since the sensitive fingers of a trained pianist will
be able to produce an infinite variety of pressure and
hit from the heaviest arm staccato to the merest
'caress' of a key, it is possible to produce very large
differences of quality as well as large differences in
intensity.
"My own experiences with a playerpiano have
made me well-nigh despair of its capabilities in its
present form. In spite of the instinctive control it
is certainly possible to obtain with it, its mechanical
details seem to me to fall far short of the ideal that
a musician can demand. It is, of course, practically
impossible to produce a differentiation of intensity
between notes of the same chord, and to a musical
ear it is this difference of intensity which enables dif-
ferences in quality to be detected and appreciated.
Professor Bryan seems to have been able to control
this differentiation in quality in a solo passage, and
if he can produce a mechanical arrangement which
can even approximate to the sensitiveness of a pian-
ist's lingers, he will certainly go far to make the
pianoplayer more acceptable to musicians.
What He Failed At.
9
"1 have often endeavored to make a playerpiano
play Chopin's First Ballade, but I have never yet
succeeded in overcoming the uncompromising self-
assertiveness of the mechanism. It seems to me a
curious fact that while a pianoplayer can often play
Beethoven acceptably, it fails hopelessly with
Chopin, specially in works like the ballads and noc-
turnes. I have succeeded in getting presentable per-
formances of the sonatas, and I had almost said of
the scherzos, but the lack of flexibility of the instru-
ment seems to make it impossible in music where
differences in color are so important as in the bal-
lades and nocturnes.
"Altho I have no doubt it will be possible to de-
vise a mechanical arrangement which will improve
the player in the direction I have mentioned, yet it
would seem impossible to make any mechanism suf-
ficiently sensitive to be able to produce effects such
as those which can be produced by the fingers, just
as it may be possible to produce an aeroplane which
is capable of marvelous evolutions, while it never
attains the instinctive facility of a bird."
Probably were the English reviewer to reconsider,
he would today have something quite different to
say about what the playerpiano, in its highest forms
of development, can do. But at the time his article
was written there was truth in what he said. And
by his judgments, contrasted with the attainments
of today, the industry may realize how far it has
come in the seven years which have intervened.
OORAPH
November 13, 1920.
WHY START YOUR TRADE
ALONG RIVAL ROADS?
Advertising That Does More for the Competi-
tors Than It Can Do for the Dealer
in His Home Town.
There is a kind of advertising that defeats itself.
It is the kind that just escapes being a knock and
serves to direct the reader to a look in the very
direction the advertiser desired to have obscured.
Here is a good specimen:
"Why Buy Your Piano in Kansas City? Do you
know that it costs those piano houses $70.00 to sell
every piano that goes out of their stores—saying
nothing of the cost of the instruments; the actual
cost of salesmen, high rents, and advertising of
$70.00 YOU pay. Buy here and 1 will prove to you
that I can save you just $100.00 on a piano or player-
piano. I save you the middleman's profit. I buy
direct from the factory and sell direct to you.
''I spent twenty years in one of those large piano
houses and know the above to be facts. Come in
and see the largest stock of pianos ever carried in
Fort Scott. Select one now for Christmas and we
will give you two years to pay for it."
That advertisement was in the "Sentinel" of Fort
Scott, Kansas. It was publicity work of the enter-
prising Woolsey's Music House—the "House of
Pleasant Dealings." When "whying" why draw at-
tention to the tendency of people to buy in Kansas
City? Usually there is a reason.
And why tell the public what it costs to sell
pianos? Whether the information is accurate or
not; and it is not in the case as stated in the adver-
tisement. Don't knock. Just be good and boost
business in a business way. The people will like it
better and they don't have their baseless suspicions
aroused. Verne Woolsey, of Fort Scott, is too bright
a piano man to make such mistakes.
DUTCH WANT PIANOS.
Joh. Biet, piano dealer of Amsterdam, Holland, is
using half-page advertisements
in Berlin trade papers
to advertise' his need of T '10O pianos for export."
Mr. Biet wants them at once and asks for proposi-
tions and prices.
CORPORATION
WtrBBB-G4V&%Z£ r tTB
To the Retail Trade:
\ T 7 E are now making shipments of completed phonographs from our
* * Brooklyn factories, numbers 2 and 3, and we take this method of
acquainting the trade with /*%A\NG^K o u r t r a c ^ e m a r ^ a n ^ tyP e
style of the name J%w®&&tir ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ both of which will appear
upon all phonographs ^
f a ^| ^ manutactured by us.
W e are extremely proud 1 4$LX^
/ °^ ^ e t o n a l quality and
case design which we have \ » I A /
achieved, and in o r d e r
to thoroughly protect our
^Xvj^^
dealers and ourselves as
well as the public, we have adopted this trade mark and type style
of the ^Rffiagpfop which appears in this advertisement.
PHONOGRAPH
CORPORATlONf
1662-64-66 Broadway, New York
PHILO E. REMINGTON
President
EVERETT H. HOLMES
Sales Manager
JAMES S. HOLMES
Vice-President
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