Music Trade Review

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PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 28, 1918
There Is a Definite Need For Some Means Whereby the Members of the
Player Industry Can Become Better Educated Along Technical Lines, and a
Suggestion Is Offered As to One Method of [Providing Such Instruction
We have frequently remarked in these col-
umns that the question of technical education is
one of supreme importance to the trade. Our
remarks have, perhaps, become almost weari-
some through constant repetition, though the
truth refuses to be downed. Despite the best
intended efforts of manufacturers; despite car-
loads of literature; despite the best efforts of
trade papers, of Boards of Education, and of
special institutions such as the Danquard School
in New York, the fact remains that the great
mass of so-called practical men in the trade are
still badly in need both of technical knowledge
and working experience concerning the regula-
tion, maintenance and repair of pneumatic and
piano-playing mechanisms.
Technically Trained Men Wanted
In spite of the fact that the output of new
instruments for this year is being decidedly cut
down; despite the undoubted difficulty which
dealers will have this year in obtaining instru-
ments to sell, the country contains some hun-
dreds of thousands of player-pianos of all sorts,
ages and makes, ranging from the forty-four-
note relics of the last century to the reproducing
grand player-pianos of the last two years. If we
should find it necessary to stop the manufactur-
ing of new player-pianos for the next year or
more, we should still need trained practical men.
There is no possible way of avoiding the
dilemma save the simple, buit apparently little
understood, idea of working out a scheme of
nation-wide technical education.
The Need for Knowledge
We offer absolutely no apology for bringing
up the subject again. Indleed, in the present
condition of the trade, with young men being
called to the service in increasing numbers and
with an enormous quantity of old instruments
going from bad to worse on this very account,
it is even more necessary to-day than it was two
years ago that manufacturers be urged, before
it is too late, to take some action which will
save the industry from the unfortunate influ-
ence sure to be exerted upon the public by the
impending total ruin of so many expensive in-
struments. The fewer men there are to look
after them, the better should those men be
trained. At this very moment the Y. M. C. A.
is obtaining as many players and player-pianos
as it can for its overseas work. These instru-
ments are not being looked after; and so far as
the writer has been able to find out from inquir-
ies which he has made, there appears to be very
little chance that they will be looked after dur-
ing the period of the war. This is a most la-
mentable state of affairs, of course, but in spite
of the fact that a great many piano tuners have
been taken into the service, there is very little
reason to believe that more than an insignifi-
cant minority of them would be capable of ren-
dering first-rate service to the player-pianos at
the various camps or aboard ship. This, of
course, is solely through lack of the necessary
practical knowledge. In all the circumstances, it
would scarcely seem necessary to reiterate the
so-often-made statement that the trade is miss-
ing a great opportunity and committing a great
wrong by neglecting this essential question.
Practical Hints of an Unusual Kind
Now let us ask ourselves once more, in a prac-
tical way, what might perhaps be done to take
this question up fruitfully at the present mo-
ment? We have before us, as these words are
written, a copy of the Gulbransen-Dickinson Co.
Bulletin for September. This Bulletin, we are
informed, is sent out free to a select list of
piano dealers and piano tuners all over the
country. It is a single sheet, printed on both
sides, about the size of a large newspaper sheet,
and contains, among other things in the current
issue, certain practical hints of an unusual kind
upon a much neglected feature of player mech-
anism.
Now, we do not mean to say that there is
anything unique about this, because the same
thing is being done elsewhere, but we wish to
point out something particularly interesting in
this work; namely that the writer of this column
has consistently recognized something which we
have on our part consistently urged, and has
done this more definitely than anybody else who
is working along the same line. In short, the
Gulbransen-Dickinson practical writer is taking
the utmost care to give his readers an under-
standing of the scientific principles which gov-
ern the practice of pneumatic instruction. Now,
the writer of these words has himself experi-
mented more or less in matters of an instruc-
tive nature for the benefit of practical men,
and can say with conviction that it is not very
easy to impress the truths of physics upon
minds which have never had any scientific
schooling and which in consequence are not
acquainted with the methods of exact thinking
which the natural sciences presuppose. He is
therefore all the more pleased to be able to say
that he has read with pleasure the explanation
of the physics of the pneumatic player which
appeared in the Gulbransen-Dickinson Bulletin
for September. This is said solely for one pur-
pose—to induce a great many people to read the
short article in question and to insure that those
who do read it will see that here is something
which must be taken into consideration. Here
is something, in fact, that cannot be left out if
we are going to teach men, scattered all over the
country, how to take care of player-pianos. We
must, in a word, start at the beginning, and the
beginning is physics.
Another Commendable Enterprise
It is scarcely necessary, we suppose, to re-
mind our readers of the very remarkable and
valuable work which has been done by the
Standard Pneumatic Action Co. in the monthly
issue of their little magazine—"The Standard
Player Monthly." Along parallel lines, and more
elaborately by far, this little magazine is telling
the truth about player mechanisms to many
thousands of readers who may have it every
month at the slight trouble of sending in their
names and asking for it.
These two enterprises, we are convinced, show
better than anything else that has been tried,
but they suffer alike from an essential defect.
In other words, the idea they impart is abso-
lutely right; that the only way in which you can
get technical facts into the minds of a group of
thinly scattered, untrained men is by constant
reiteration of the essential facts. Now, the de-
fect of these two magazines lies, of course, in
their being devoted to the interest of the houses
that publish them. That is not their fault, but
it does show a way in which the technical prob-
lem can, perhaps, be solved.
Conclusion
That way is to be found by taking this bulletin
idea and making it part of the Music Industries
Chamber of Commerce propaganda and devoting
it to the general interests of pneumatics and
not to the special interests of anybody. The
idea is one which we quite believe could be car-
ried out, for we cannot see that i't is less legiti-
mate than any other propaganda of the Bureau
for the Advancement of Music. Indeed, it seems
to us that it is legitimately part of the work of
that Bureau.
The suggestion is offered for what it is worth,
in the hope that the members of the trade will
find some value in it.
JOIN PIANO MANUFACTURERS' ASSN.
It has just been announced that P. S. Wick
Co., North St. Paul, Minn., and the Adler Mfg.
Co., Louisville, Ky., have been elected to mem-
bership in the National Piano Manufacturers'
Association.