Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
JUNE 27,
1925
THE
MUSIC TRADE
5
REVIEW
Vitality of the Player Trade Shown
at Chicago Conventions
Reproducing and Pedal Players, Together With the Small Grand, the Dominating Instruments in the
Interest of the Piano Industry at the Present Day—Energy and Ingenuity of the Manu-
facturing Side of the Industry Largely Concentrated on Pneumatic Playing Mechanisms
H E player business is alive. It is very
much alive. It is, in fact, alive and kick-
ing, in the first as well as in the second
sense of the latter adjective.
The mourners who have been awaiting the
decease of the player business are once more
shown to have been the victims of false alarms.
There is nothing the matter with the player
business; or if there has ever been anything
the matter with it, the causes of the trouble are
to be found entirely within the trade. The pub-
lic is not tired of the player-piano, the factories
are not degenerating in their production work,
the manufacturers are as interested and en-
thusiastic as ever they were; and if the mer-
chants feel that business is not good they had
better ask themselves what is the trouble—with
themselves.
If any one asks whence the writer of these
paragraphs derives such positive views, the
answer is that he has held them for a long time
past, but that they have been intensified and
rendered a great deal stronger by what was to
be seen and heard at the conventions just past.
At these conventions, the exhibits were not
only very interesting but very numerous; and
they showed, almost without exception, that
the trade, the music business, is to-day inter-
ested in three things, in the small grand piano,
in the reproducing piano and in the pedal
player-piano. It is among these that we shall
find the technical and commercial progress be-
ing made, and it is here that those who wish
to know what is to be the future of the music
.business must look if they expect their informa-
tion to be reliable.
Energy and Ingenuity
The energy and the ingenuity of the manu-
facturing end of the music business are being
very largely concentrated upon the improve-
ment of the pneumatic playing mechanism, in
both its automatic and its personal expression
systems. The mechanisms are being steadily
improved, and in spite of all efforts to retain
individual features, these are steadily being
eliminated wherever they do not actually con-
tribute towards the practical requirements of
playing.
Meanwhile the pedal-played player-piano goes
its way serenely, and shows constant improve-
ment in technical points and in general respon-
siveness to touch. If one may take a single
example, the application of the pneumatic mech-
anism with pedal control to a grand piano as
exemplified in the new Gulbransen player grand,
represents a technical achievement of the first
order, and shows that the pneumatic art has
been moving steadily forward until now it
shows itself able and ready to solve any tech-
nical problem which may be presented to it.
All of which is extremely interesting to the
analyst.
That Slogan
Now those whose business it is to observe,
to collect facts and to deduce conclusions there-
from must consider facts like these with the ut-
most care, for their very existence indicates
that the music business has to handle and mas-
ter them, if it i.s not to be handled and mastered
by them. It is difficult and perhaps impossible
to trace with any assurance the causes that
underly technical developments ; but when such
developments have come into being, those who
are affected by them must take counsel how
T
they may turn them to their own ends. And
that is the case with the matters now before
us.
The convention of the music industries, which
has just ended, took for its motto the words
"Make America Musical." It is an admirable
motto, but if it is to mean anything it must be
translated into fact. And if it is to be trans-
lated into fact it must be related in some prac-
tical way to the every-day work of the music
merchant. The latter hard-worked man must
not be expected to take more than an academic
interest in any aspiration, no matter how pious,
which is not related practically to his business;
and as his business in the present case is to
sell as many player-pianos as he can, the case
becomes one of relating the slogan "Make
America Musical" to the selling of player-
pianos.
Now precisely the reason of the compara-
tively slow progress of the player-piano in the
country of its birth is to be found in the fact
that its promotion has not been related with
sufficient closeness to the promotion of music
appreciation among the public, which has been
going along parallel with it. That this is so
need not, however, be taken as representing en-
tirely a condition of ignorance and apathy
among music merchants, for the musicians
themselves have been the active enemies of the
player-piano from the start. Even to-day, de-
spite the endorsements given both to the pedal
and to the reproducing types of player-pianos
by great musicians of all sorts, the profession
at large dislikes the pneumatic player with vio-
lent dislike and refuses to admit its place in
the scheme of music promotion and music
education.
The Right Sign-post
This fact has a significance all its own. It
means that the merchant has had to sell the
player-piano without any assistance from mu-
sicians and in face of their hostility. Natu-
rally therefore, the selling has been conducted
along very conventional lines and without the
exercise of very much imagination or origi-
nality. It is not surprising that the musical side
of these instruments has been treated with
little enthusiasm and less intelligence; for the
driving power in these directions which would
have been derived from the active support of
the musical profession has been conspicuous
only by its absence.
Still, as matters stand to-day, with the formi-
dable competition against which the business
has to strive, it is necessary to consider every
possible direction of promotion work, and one
may safely say that the best and surest direc
tion has for its sign-post the words "Make
America Musical."
What to Do!
Still, this does not mean that mere support,
for instance, of the Bureau for the Advance-
ment of Music will in itself produce the results
we are looking for. What is necessary is to
relate the work of the Bureau and every other
cognate educational work directly to the player-
piano. We shall realize, if we are wise, that
while the work of educating the public in mu-
sic appreciation goes steadily on, no proper
place in this work is being accorded to the
player-piano, reproducing or pedal. Here is
a defect which must somehow be cured.
Here then we have the crux of the situation
and the central question of the player business.
We must relate the player-piano, ot whatever
type and form, more closely and directly to the
present movements for public music education,
which are now so strong and are becoming each
day so much stronger. Supporting as we do
one of the most valuable and powerful of all
education agencies, we must insist that the most
important of all the articles we have to sell
shall not be left out of that agency's considera-
tion. And we must work to show the pro-
fession that the player-piano is its friend and
not its enemy.
We must connect up with our slogan; but we
must also insist that we be considered a friend
and not an enemy.
Planning Fair Exhibits
CANTON, O., June 22.—Retail music dealers in
the Canton district are already making plans
for their exhibits at the annual Stark County
Fair to be held the first week in September at
the fair grounds here.
Pratt Read
Products
Piano Ivory
Piano Keys
Piano Actions
Player Actions
Established in
1806
at Deep River, Conn.
Still There
Standard Service and Highest Quality
Special Repair Departments
Maintained for Convenience
of Dealers
PRATT, READ & CO.
PRATT READ PLAYER ACTION CO.
Oldest and Best