Music Trade Review
Issue: 1923 Vol. 76 N. 7 - Page 12
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12
THE
OUR TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT
(Continued from page 11)
should be made intelligible to them by being
expressed in terms which have for them a living
meaning. The all-inclusive charge means "For
five (or whatever is the amount) dollars I will
put your piano in proper shape, provided I do
not have to replace broken or worn-out parts,
readjust the entire action or undertake any
work made necessary by your neglect."
This is a practical solution. In effect it has
already been made the basis for the charges of
hundreds of successful technicians. I have no
doubt that Brother Boies in practice adopts it
also.
The Public Taste Question
Of course, it is perfectly true, as I have more
than once had to say in these columns, that the
masses of the people are almost totally ignorant
of tonal relations, while any native talent that
might be expected to arise here and there is
most likely to be corrupted from the start by
the present condition of popular music, with its
emphasis upon noise and its almost complete
blurring of harmonies through excessive syn-
copation and excessive use of barbaric tone-
colors. For that matter all modern music is
going in the same direction and the produc-
tions of our Sowerbys, Graingers, Schoenbergs,
Hoists, Baxes and Goossens are becoming mere
states of rhythmic noise, empty alike of form
and of recognizable harmonic relation. Of
course, it will not be always like this. We
shall have a change, for all human activity
seems to work in cycles despite the childish
belief of the present age that there exists some-
thing like progress in a straight line. The
superstition that no previous generation ever
knew anything worth knowing has been the
mark of each succeeding age. There is nothing
new about it. The young person of to-day who
believes that her mother must have had a miser-
able girlhood because she did not wear trousers
and smoke cigarettes has had her counterpart
in all ages. But meanwhile, until the inevitable
change back to sanity, calmness and rational
pleasure does come, we shall have to do the
best we can. Which, in our case, means to be
patient and accept the situation as we find it.
A Hopeless Condition
And what are we to do about the salesmen
who do not even understand the player-pianos
they are selling? Here the facts are more posi-
tive and direct, just as the condition to which
they point is more definitely evil. When we
consider that player-pianos have been on sale
for more than twenty years and that to-day a
player like the Gulbransen is almost a miracle
of simplicity and efficiency, it seems almost
incredible that the retail branch of the industry
should be badly informed about so important
a part of its stock-in-trade. Yet the evidence
by no means rests upon a single instance.
Brother Boies is only the latest in a long line
of expert observers who have had to chronicle
equally irritating and significant occurrences.
What is to be done?
It is perhaps characteristic of our industry
that at a time when the retail trade is still
commonly unable to promote intelligently the
simplest form of player-piano the most strenu-
ous efforts should be made to introduce and
popularize a much more complex form, demand-
ing much greater knowledge and intelligence.
There is one answer and one only. We can-
not educate the retailer. Either the manufac-
turers must set themselves to educate their re-
tail distributors, or those distributors will find
the business dying on their hands, quietly and
painlessly.
Meanwhile, the technicians must be apostles,
preaching and teaching. They have the knowl-
edge and they must spread it wherever they
can. That is what they best can do for the
sake of all. •
Mail Order Experts
One word about tuning schools, which teach
or profess to teach by mail. Any tuner will
agree that they set themselves an impossible
task and most tuners would say that they know
MUSIC
TRADE
REVIEW
it to be impossible when they undertake it. The
presumption of fraud might be strong in the
minds of tuners, but to establish it to the satis-
faction of the postal authorities as a step to
forbidding the use of the mails to such institu-
tions would be a very difficult task, for sundry
reasons, legal and evidential rather than tech-
nical. Meanwhile, I do not in the least fear
the mail-order school. It has been on the de-
cline for some years and I believe its day to be
pretty nearly over. Most of all there is not
enough money in the tuning game to bring the
usual horde of simpletons looking for an easy
road to fortune. The big mail-order schools do
not feature tuning among their courses. That
is significant.
Communications for this department may be
addressed to William Braid White, care The
Music Trade Review, 373 Fourth avenue, New
York, N. Y.
STUDYING PIANO CONSTRUCTION
Harold Clark, of Clark, Jones & Sheeley, Knox-
ville, Tenn., Spending Some Time in Study-
ing at Factories of Aeolian Co.
Harold Clark, of the prominent piano house
of Clark, Jones & Sheeley, with stores in Knox-
ville, Chattanooga and other cities, is spending
some time in New York, where he is visiting
the factories of the Aeolian Co. and making a
close study of the structural features of Aeolian
instruments with a view to acting as technical
adviser for his house upon returning to Ten-
nessee. Mr. Clark is accompanied by his wife, a
talented singer, who, while here, is being
coached by a prominent vocal teacher.
Harold Clark, his wife and his brother, Frank
Clark, some time ago organized a very capable
string trio which has already won a wide rep-
utation among music lovers in Tennessee and
neighboring States. The trio have planned a
very interesting series of concerts in which the
Duo-Art piano will be featured very prom-
inently in exploitation work throughout this
dealer's territory.
FEBRUARY 17,
ROOM FOR GOOD SALESMANSHIP
TERSE HAUTE, IND., February 13.—A petition for
three additional instruments for the Gerstmeyer
Vocational School Band was recently denied by
the Terre Haute Board of School Trustees on
the grounds that purchase of additional instru-
ments at this time would involve an undesirable
burden on the taxpayers of the city. The origi-
nal request for instruments for school bands
was refused, due to excessive costs, but a later
requisition for fewer instruments was allowed,
and the present action of the board is taken with
the view that by subsequent requests the or-
ganizations are attempting to exceed the num-
ber of instruments which could be reasonably
granted by the board.
GERMANS STRONG IN SOUTH AFRICA
The market for pianos in South Africa is
limited by the small white population, which
amounts only to 1,500,000 whites for the whole
Union of South Africa. During 1921, however,
2,547 pianos were imported, nearly 80 per cent
of which came from Germany.
Tuning Route and Home
For Sale
My three-year-old five-room house, fairly fur-
nished, with IS acres of level land, mostly wooded,
on the Island of Spa Juan, in the Puget Sound
country (Washington State), 1 Vi miles from the
county seat, Friday Harbor, on the main road,
telephone, rural route. Good schools of all grades,
all churches, bank, fish packers, agreeable climate,
hardly any snow, quiet life and well adapted to
the cultivation of small fruit, _ chickens, etc.
Steamer service twice daily to either Seattle or
Bellingham or Aracortes; also my tuning route
of some 1,200 customers. Tunings pay from $5
to $7.50 and net a yearly income of some $3,500.
Shall sell all for $6,000, preferably cash. No
incumbrances, all taxes paid and a good oppor-
tunity for you and the family. Am moving East,
cause of the sale. If not all cash at least half
cash and a mortgage for three years on the
other three thousand. Please do not disturb your-
self in case you cannot meet the conditions and
only if you mean business. When you are ready
to talk business and take possession, address Box
No. 2485, care The Music Trade Review, 373
Fourth Avenue, New York.
Tuners and Repairers
We have just issued a little 2 0
page price list off
PIANO MATERIALS AND TOOLS
and will send a copy upon request.
It is in convenient form and of in-
terest to every Tuner and Repairer.
Simply ask for Circular No. 2 4 4
HAMMACHER, SCHLEMMER & CO.
PIANO AND PLAYER HARDWARE, FELTS AND TOOLS
NEW YORK SINCE 1848
1923
4th Avenue and 13th Street
12
THE
OUR TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT
(Continued from page 11)
should be made intelligible to them by being
expressed in terms which have for them a living
meaning. The all-inclusive charge means "For
five (or whatever is the amount) dollars I will
put your piano in proper shape, provided I do
not have to replace broken or worn-out parts,
readjust the entire action or undertake any
work made necessary by your neglect."
This is a practical solution. In effect it has
already been made the basis for the charges of
hundreds of successful technicians. I have no
doubt that Brother Boies in practice adopts it
also.
The Public Taste Question
Of course, it is perfectly true, as I have more
than once had to say in these columns, that the
masses of the people are almost totally ignorant
of tonal relations, while any native talent that
might be expected to arise here and there is
most likely to be corrupted from the start by
the present condition of popular music, with its
emphasis upon noise and its almost complete
blurring of harmonies through excessive syn-
copation and excessive use of barbaric tone-
colors. For that matter all modern music is
going in the same direction and the produc-
tions of our Sowerbys, Graingers, Schoenbergs,
Hoists, Baxes and Goossens are becoming mere
states of rhythmic noise, empty alike of form
and of recognizable harmonic relation. Of
course, it will not be always like this. We
shall have a change, for all human activity
seems to work in cycles despite the childish
belief of the present age that there exists some-
thing like progress in a straight line. The
superstition that no previous generation ever
knew anything worth knowing has been the
mark of each succeeding age. There is nothing
new about it. The young person of to-day who
believes that her mother must have had a miser-
able girlhood because she did not wear trousers
and smoke cigarettes has had her counterpart
in all ages. But meanwhile, until the inevitable
change back to sanity, calmness and rational
pleasure does come, we shall have to do the
best we can. Which, in our case, means to be
patient and accept the situation as we find it.
A Hopeless Condition
And what are we to do about the salesmen
who do not even understand the player-pianos
they are selling? Here the facts are more posi-
tive and direct, just as the condition to which
they point is more definitely evil. When we
consider that player-pianos have been on sale
for more than twenty years and that to-day a
player like the Gulbransen is almost a miracle
of simplicity and efficiency, it seems almost
incredible that the retail branch of the industry
should be badly informed about so important
a part of its stock-in-trade. Yet the evidence
by no means rests upon a single instance.
Brother Boies is only the latest in a long line
of expert observers who have had to chronicle
equally irritating and significant occurrences.
What is to be done?
It is perhaps characteristic of our industry
that at a time when the retail trade is still
commonly unable to promote intelligently the
simplest form of player-piano the most strenu-
ous efforts should be made to introduce and
popularize a much more complex form, demand-
ing much greater knowledge and intelligence.
There is one answer and one only. We can-
not educate the retailer. Either the manufac-
turers must set themselves to educate their re-
tail distributors, or those distributors will find
the business dying on their hands, quietly and
painlessly.
Meanwhile, the technicians must be apostles,
preaching and teaching. They have the knowl-
edge and they must spread it wherever they
can. That is what they best can do for the
sake of all. •
Mail Order Experts
One word about tuning schools, which teach
or profess to teach by mail. Any tuner will
agree that they set themselves an impossible
task and most tuners would say that they know
MUSIC
TRADE
REVIEW
it to be impossible when they undertake it. The
presumption of fraud might be strong in the
minds of tuners, but to establish it to the satis-
faction of the postal authorities as a step to
forbidding the use of the mails to such institu-
tions would be a very difficult task, for sundry
reasons, legal and evidential rather than tech-
nical. Meanwhile, I do not in the least fear
the mail-order school. It has been on the de-
cline for some years and I believe its day to be
pretty nearly over. Most of all there is not
enough money in the tuning game to bring the
usual horde of simpletons looking for an easy
road to fortune. The big mail-order schools do
not feature tuning among their courses. That
is significant.
Communications for this department may be
addressed to William Braid White, care The
Music Trade Review, 373 Fourth avenue, New
York, N. Y.
STUDYING PIANO CONSTRUCTION
Harold Clark, of Clark, Jones & Sheeley, Knox-
ville, Tenn., Spending Some Time in Study-
ing at Factories of Aeolian Co.
Harold Clark, of the prominent piano house
of Clark, Jones & Sheeley, with stores in Knox-
ville, Chattanooga and other cities, is spending
some time in New York, where he is visiting
the factories of the Aeolian Co. and making a
close study of the structural features of Aeolian
instruments with a view to acting as technical
adviser for his house upon returning to Ten-
nessee. Mr. Clark is accompanied by his wife, a
talented singer, who, while here, is being
coached by a prominent vocal teacher.
Harold Clark, his wife and his brother, Frank
Clark, some time ago organized a very capable
string trio which has already won a wide rep-
utation among music lovers in Tennessee and
neighboring States. The trio have planned a
very interesting series of concerts in which the
Duo-Art piano will be featured very prom-
inently in exploitation work throughout this
dealer's territory.
FEBRUARY 17,
ROOM FOR GOOD SALESMANSHIP
TERSE HAUTE, IND., February 13.—A petition for
three additional instruments for the Gerstmeyer
Vocational School Band was recently denied by
the Terre Haute Board of School Trustees on
the grounds that purchase of additional instru-
ments at this time would involve an undesirable
burden on the taxpayers of the city. The origi-
nal request for instruments for school bands
was refused, due to excessive costs, but a later
requisition for fewer instruments was allowed,
and the present action of the board is taken with
the view that by subsequent requests the or-
ganizations are attempting to exceed the num-
ber of instruments which could be reasonably
granted by the board.
GERMANS STRONG IN SOUTH AFRICA
The market for pianos in South Africa is
limited by the small white population, which
amounts only to 1,500,000 whites for the whole
Union of South Africa. During 1921, however,
2,547 pianos were imported, nearly 80 per cent
of which came from Germany.
Tuning Route and Home
For Sale
My three-year-old five-room house, fairly fur-
nished, with IS acres of level land, mostly wooded,
on the Island of Spa Juan, in the Puget Sound
country (Washington State), 1 Vi miles from the
county seat, Friday Harbor, on the main road,
telephone, rural route. Good schools of all grades,
all churches, bank, fish packers, agreeable climate,
hardly any snow, quiet life and well adapted to
the cultivation of small fruit, _ chickens, etc.
Steamer service twice daily to either Seattle or
Bellingham or Aracortes; also my tuning route
of some 1,200 customers. Tunings pay from $5
to $7.50 and net a yearly income of some $3,500.
Shall sell all for $6,000, preferably cash. No
incumbrances, all taxes paid and a good oppor-
tunity for you and the family. Am moving East,
cause of the sale. If not all cash at least half
cash and a mortgage for three years on the
other three thousand. Please do not disturb your-
self in case you cannot meet the conditions and
only if you mean business. When you are ready
to talk business and take possession, address Box
No. 2485, care The Music Trade Review, 373
Fourth Avenue, New York.
Tuners and Repairers
We have just issued a little 2 0
page price list off
PIANO MATERIALS AND TOOLS
and will send a copy upon request.
It is in convenient form and of in-
terest to every Tuner and Repairer.
Simply ask for Circular No. 2 4 4
HAMMACHER, SCHLEMMER & CO.
PIANO AND PLAYER HARDWARE, FELTS AND TOOLS
NEW YORK SINCE 1848
1923
4th Avenue and 13th Street
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