Music Trade Review

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PIANO FACTORY and
PIANO SERVICING
DR. W M . BRAID WHITE
Technical Editor
New Electric Musical
Instruments Offer New
Fields for Piano Tuners
DR. WM. BRAID WHITE
EADERS of this department are well,
perhaps painfully, aware that new prob-
lems confront them, calling for new
solutions. The ordinary routine of piano
servicing continues, of course, to have and
hold its place; but the scale of its opera-
tions has necessarily shrunk, without any
great likelihood of being restored to its an-
cient magnitude. This is not to say that
the men who know their work thoroughly
and have acquired a community reputation
for excellence in it should therefore, one
and all, sell their piano tools and turn to
something else, brewing for example; but
it does mean that even they ought to be
thinking about the possibilities of profitable
work, within their range of interests, but of a
new kind. Already I have discussed some of
these. Let me now take up some others.
R
ELECTRONICS
And in the first place I should like to
point out that the electrical generation of
musical sound is once more being heard of.
My older readers will remember the furor
which nearly thirty years ago Thaddeus
Cahill created for a season with his Telhar-
monion, which manufactured alternating
electric currents at musical frequencies, com-
bined them, sent them out over cables and
into subscribers' homes and there turned the
product into telephone receivers, whence they
The
Piano-Moth -e X
Method
Quickly—Positively doubles tuners' incomes.
Dealers—Tuners, write
THE SCHAI.L LABORATORIES
Madison Avenue
LaCrosse, Wis.
THE M U S I C TRADE
emerged as audible music. The Telharmo-
nion died, but a few years later came the
Choralcelo, which was a most ingenious and
beautiful device for exciting electrically the
strings of a piano and thereby giving rise
to a wide variety of tone qualities and tone
intensities. And there were other attempts
of the kind during what may be called the
pre-radio era.
Since the invention of the vacuum tube
valve and the consequent rise of the radio
arts, electrical engineers have worked stead-
ily and effectively in the hope of producing
musical instruments in which the sound
should be generated by electric energy di-
rectly applied, even without the interven-
tion of anything resembling musical strings.
As everyone knows, the vacuum tube valve
gives out an oscillating current which can be
held closely to any given frequency within
the range of musical sounds. It thus be-
comes possible, theoretically, and to some ex-
tent, practically, to generate oscillating cur-
rents, controlled through a keyboard corre-
sponding to the whole musical scale with ad-
ditional frequencies corresponding to har-
monic components of musical sounds. By
means of suitable and sharply tuned "filters"
the currents can be mixed in a wide variety
of composition, giving tone qualities of vari-
ous timbres, while, of course, intensity and
pitch may be controlled at will.
In all these instruments the generating
force is electrical. Amplifiers are used to
step up the current intensity and loud speak-
ers to turn the electrical into sound energy.
Now I should not wish it to be supposed
that any one of these instruments, most of
which are still in an experimental state,
are ever likely to come to be part of the
furniture of every well regulated home.
There is an enormous difference between a
scheme worked out, never so carefully, by an
engineer on paper and a practical embodi-
ment which can take a dominating or even
a favorable place in the practical art of
music. I have been listening to instruments
of this kind for five years, and it is my
deliberate opinion that none of them so far
presents features which entitle it to prece-
dence over the existing body of strings and
winds, with or without keyboards. On the
other hand, there can be no doubt whatever
REVIEW, December, 1932
that within the next few years a number of
these new electrical music makers will be
pushed forward by powerful interests, mostly
connected with broadcasting. There will
then be a strong effort to sell them to the
public; and it is quite within the range of
possibility that many of them will be sold.
GET TO KNOW THEM
In any case, since today every man who
has any mechanical ability at all knows or
is trying to learn something practical about
radio circuits and radio practice, it is plain-
ly the practical duty as a mere matter of
good sense of all tuners to make an effort
to acquaint themselves with the electrical
principles of these instruments. They will
be found to fall into two classes. One class,
typified by the so-called Neo-Bechstein, now
being shown in this country, utilizes the
sound sources of a standard instrument, usu-
ally the piano, and builds upon this along
electrical lines. Thus the Neo-Bechstein em-
ploys piano strings, action and hammers. The
vibrations of the strings cause oscillations of
magnetic flux in the fields of permanent
magnets and these in turn give rise to oscil-
lating currents which are amplified and then
turned into a loud speaker. Others, like the^
Theremin instrument, like Merthenot's inven-
tion and like the newly invented Emicon,
utilize vacuum tube valves to generate alter-
(Plcasr turn to page 16)
BADGER BRAND
PLATES
are far more
than
merely
good p l a t e s .
They are built
correctly of the
best material and finish and are spe-
cified by builders of quality pianos.
American Piano Plate Co.
Manufacturers BADGER BRAND Grand
and Upright Piano Plates
Racine, Wisconsin
15