Presto
Issue: 1920 1754 - Page 7
March 4, 1920.
PRESTO
buyer averaged, in turn, two pianos during the year, the result would
be, not 5,000 instruments, but 50,000.
The trouble probably is that the trade papers are too "cheap."
They have, from the.first, been struggling hard to help build up the
industry. The industry is now a giant and the trade paper remains
proportionately an active homunculus.
However, the trade paper—certainly this trade paper—has no
criticism of the piano industry. It has been here for thirty-six years
and expects to be here much longer than that time still. And we
feel that the trade papers—including this one—owe a debt of grati-
tude to Messrs Byrne and Conway—and to others, also—for their
tributes to the advertising force of the special representatives of the
press whose duty and delight it is to serve the best lines of business
in the world.
THE SINCERE FLATTERY
That old saw about imitation being the "sincerest flattery" seems
to have found a new application in the duplication, with variations,
of the popular trademark of a great player-piano industry. It has
been a good while now since the happy thought of a baby toddler at
the pedals of the Gulbransen player-piano made its first appearance.
It was an instantaneous success for, inasmuch as there can be no
happy home without a baby, the music-loving public at once made the
connection, and the same need of a player-piano was obvious. The
demand for the Gulbransen baby became great and insistent.
Today there is hardly a newspaper that carries musical instru-
ment advertisements that doesn't somewhere show a variation of the
Gulbransen trademark, even if the original Gulbransen baby doesn't
appear. And the changes, from the original design of the toddler
creeping under the key-board, with little chubby hand reaching for
the pedals, are often so slight as to make the flattery of imitation un-
escapably clear. We have, within a week, come across five of these
obvious flatteries of the Gulbransen publicity department. One of
the babies sits upon the floor with one foot resting upon a pedal while
he reaches upward as if to grasp the key clip—a poor effort. Another
has the baby standing up with foot upon the pedal and hand held
gleefully forth to mamma. A third shows the little one sitting beside
the pedals and trying to push them downward in the effort to see
where the sound comes from. None has thus far been depicted with
the instrument up-ended, after the manner of the youthful investi-
gator of the old watch who wanted to "see the wheels go 'round."
While it may be true that "imitation is the sincerest of flattery,"
the great Balzac also said that "you may imitate but never counter-
feit." The idea may be common property, but to appropriate bodily is
another matter. And, while we do not suppose the player-piano in-
dustry whose baby has been so nearly kidnapped, cares at all, it
would be obviously too big a boost for the Gulbransen itself were the
imitators to copy the trademark with accuracy.
There is but one other advertising device associated with the
music trade that has been more generally displayed than the Gul-
bransen baby. It's the "His Master's Voice" dog of the Victor. But
the dog with the spotted ear has not, in the same sense, been the
victim of the flattery of imitation. People do not associate dogs with
music, and the appeal to the inner heart of the family circle is not so
great as the baby suggests. Therefore were a prize to be given for
the best advertising device in the trade today it is probable that the
Gulbransen baby would win it.
ART AND THE PLAYER=PIANO
Director C. M. Tremaine, of the National Bureau for the Ad-
vancement of Music, sends to Presto a clipping from the Rocky
Mountain News, of Denver, in which Mr. Edwin J. Stringham has a
good article on the development of the player-piano and the place of
that instrument in art. Mr. Tremaine very correctly says that the
"fact that the great newspapers are devoting space to the discussion
of the player-piano indicates a new order of things and is pretty con-
clusive proof that we have made progress."
There can be no doubt about it. We have made progress. The
world is progressing and, after a terrible lapse to the barbarian
periods, and worse, we are growing rapidly upward. And music is
having a good deal to do with the upward motion. Music has been a
softener, a refiner and an element of good, ever since David played
his first harp and Joshua blew down the walls of Jericho and before
that time. Music has been the soul of the beautiful ever since the
"morning stars sang together" and probably back of that, and there
could be no such thing as stopping its beneficent influences. It would
be more difficult to stifle the love of music than to quench the natural
tendency to thirst or hunger when drink and food are lacking. And
the player-piano is the one great inspiration at this period in the
world's progress upward.
The article on music in the Rocky Mountain News concludes a
rather commonplace review of what the player-piano has done, with
this statement: "It will not be long before the piano-player will be a
necessity in the art of music." Of course Mr. Stringham had reference
to the marvelous player-piano and not the flesh and blood performer
who has been a very necessary element in art ever since Pythagoras
played upon the monochord nearly six hundred years before the
Christian era.
If Mr. Stringham had been in Carnegie Hall on the memorable
Wednesday, during the convention week, he would realize that the
player-piano is already a "necessity in the art of music." .For art is
not demonstrated by the pumping of the pedals and the sounding
forth of "popular tunes" in the manner of the average player-piano.
It is the perfect performance of the great artists who have combined
in themselves the powers of creative and interpretative genius.
When a player-piano, under whatever name, can reproduce the
master performances of an Ornstein, a Moiseiwitsch, a Rubinstein
and a Godowsky, art has an ally of such indisputable importance as
to at once overshadow any other illustrative or informative agency
that has been known. When the Ampico bewildered a critical audi-
ence by reproducing the highest possibilites of pianistic genius, with
such accuracy as to astound even the artists themselves, the place of
the player-piano had been fixed, and there could be no further question
of its place in art.
It is a good thing that the newspaper writers are filling some of
their space with discussions of the things that are above the prize
ring, the gunman's "quickness" and the latest device for "burning up
the road" with the automobile. Even the rule of the "drys" seems
of less importance than the expanding love of the things that can give
us permanently the best interpretations of deathless music by the
artists whose fingers must soon grow stiff and whose phenomenal
powers must soon grow dim.
No one who knows anything at all will deny that music is the
greatest influence for good in the world. And no one who knows
that it is so, will question that the player-piano, as we now have
it, is a "necessity in the art of music."
Presto's latest advertising proposition to increase piano trade is
the suggestion that the Better Advertising Bureau ought to establish
a marriage bureau. Trade ought to increase 100 per cent if all the
unwedded bachelors could be entrapped. The Bureau of Census says
that 16 1-3 per cent of the male population of the United States, 21
years of age or over, is married, while 4 3 ^ per cent of the females of
this age have entered the wedded state. The figures about the males
are startling. Every mother's son of them should be married and each
one should buy a piano, or a playerpiano.
Seems strange that France has been so slow about putting a tax
on pianos. In our country the piano is about the first thing the tax
gatherers look for.
* * *
When the country went dry it was thought that the automatic
piano had received its death blow. But it has turned out that pro-
hibition has increased the demand for the self-players of nickel-in-slot
and other varieties. Music goes just as well with ice cream and
ginger ale as it did with booze and cheese sandwiches.
Years ago Presto published an article designed to start the new
profession of player piano instruction. A recent issue of London
"Music" covers the same subject in similar manner. And the English
music paper's argument is so good that we will reproduce it else-
where. There are now a number of playerpiano instructors in this
country and the profession is steadily expanding.
Now's the time to clean up. Get your store in order for the spring
sunshine. Put what stock remains in good order; shine up the win-
dows and retrim them; replenish the small goods department, and
generally make things look as if you, too, are glad the season of real
living is again at hand.
Most piano manufacturers say ths dry law has bettered the busi-
ness. Some piano dealers say the same thing, and all piano travelers
believe that in time they will get used to it. It's still too early, how-
ever, to say just what the effect will be. Piano trade conditions a>
this time are such that comparisons are almost impossible, though it
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/
PRESTO
buyer averaged, in turn, two pianos during the year, the result would
be, not 5,000 instruments, but 50,000.
The trouble probably is that the trade papers are too "cheap."
They have, from the.first, been struggling hard to help build up the
industry. The industry is now a giant and the trade paper remains
proportionately an active homunculus.
However, the trade paper—certainly this trade paper—has no
criticism of the piano industry. It has been here for thirty-six years
and expects to be here much longer than that time still. And we
feel that the trade papers—including this one—owe a debt of grati-
tude to Messrs Byrne and Conway—and to others, also—for their
tributes to the advertising force of the special representatives of the
press whose duty and delight it is to serve the best lines of business
in the world.
THE SINCERE FLATTERY
That old saw about imitation being the "sincerest flattery" seems
to have found a new application in the duplication, with variations,
of the popular trademark of a great player-piano industry. It has
been a good while now since the happy thought of a baby toddler at
the pedals of the Gulbransen player-piano made its first appearance.
It was an instantaneous success for, inasmuch as there can be no
happy home without a baby, the music-loving public at once made the
connection, and the same need of a player-piano was obvious. The
demand for the Gulbransen baby became great and insistent.
Today there is hardly a newspaper that carries musical instru-
ment advertisements that doesn't somewhere show a variation of the
Gulbransen trademark, even if the original Gulbransen baby doesn't
appear. And the changes, from the original design of the toddler
creeping under the key-board, with little chubby hand reaching for
the pedals, are often so slight as to make the flattery of imitation un-
escapably clear. We have, within a week, come across five of these
obvious flatteries of the Gulbransen publicity department. One of
the babies sits upon the floor with one foot resting upon a pedal while
he reaches upward as if to grasp the key clip—a poor effort. Another
has the baby standing up with foot upon the pedal and hand held
gleefully forth to mamma. A third shows the little one sitting beside
the pedals and trying to push them downward in the effort to see
where the sound comes from. None has thus far been depicted with
the instrument up-ended, after the manner of the youthful investi-
gator of the old watch who wanted to "see the wheels go 'round."
While it may be true that "imitation is the sincerest of flattery,"
the great Balzac also said that "you may imitate but never counter-
feit." The idea may be common property, but to appropriate bodily is
another matter. And, while we do not suppose the player-piano in-
dustry whose baby has been so nearly kidnapped, cares at all, it
would be obviously too big a boost for the Gulbransen itself were the
imitators to copy the trademark with accuracy.
There is but one other advertising device associated with the
music trade that has been more generally displayed than the Gul-
bransen baby. It's the "His Master's Voice" dog of the Victor. But
the dog with the spotted ear has not, in the same sense, been the
victim of the flattery of imitation. People do not associate dogs with
music, and the appeal to the inner heart of the family circle is not so
great as the baby suggests. Therefore were a prize to be given for
the best advertising device in the trade today it is probable that the
Gulbransen baby would win it.
ART AND THE PLAYER=PIANO
Director C. M. Tremaine, of the National Bureau for the Ad-
vancement of Music, sends to Presto a clipping from the Rocky
Mountain News, of Denver, in which Mr. Edwin J. Stringham has a
good article on the development of the player-piano and the place of
that instrument in art. Mr. Tremaine very correctly says that the
"fact that the great newspapers are devoting space to the discussion
of the player-piano indicates a new order of things and is pretty con-
clusive proof that we have made progress."
There can be no doubt about it. We have made progress. The
world is progressing and, after a terrible lapse to the barbarian
periods, and worse, we are growing rapidly upward. And music is
having a good deal to do with the upward motion. Music has been a
softener, a refiner and an element of good, ever since David played
his first harp and Joshua blew down the walls of Jericho and before
that time. Music has been the soul of the beautiful ever since the
"morning stars sang together" and probably back of that, and there
could be no such thing as stopping its beneficent influences. It would
be more difficult to stifle the love of music than to quench the natural
tendency to thirst or hunger when drink and food are lacking. And
the player-piano is the one great inspiration at this period in the
world's progress upward.
The article on music in the Rocky Mountain News concludes a
rather commonplace review of what the player-piano has done, with
this statement: "It will not be long before the piano-player will be a
necessity in the art of music." Of course Mr. Stringham had reference
to the marvelous player-piano and not the flesh and blood performer
who has been a very necessary element in art ever since Pythagoras
played upon the monochord nearly six hundred years before the
Christian era.
If Mr. Stringham had been in Carnegie Hall on the memorable
Wednesday, during the convention week, he would realize that the
player-piano is already a "necessity in the art of music." .For art is
not demonstrated by the pumping of the pedals and the sounding
forth of "popular tunes" in the manner of the average player-piano.
It is the perfect performance of the great artists who have combined
in themselves the powers of creative and interpretative genius.
When a player-piano, under whatever name, can reproduce the
master performances of an Ornstein, a Moiseiwitsch, a Rubinstein
and a Godowsky, art has an ally of such indisputable importance as
to at once overshadow any other illustrative or informative agency
that has been known. When the Ampico bewildered a critical audi-
ence by reproducing the highest possibilites of pianistic genius, with
such accuracy as to astound even the artists themselves, the place of
the player-piano had been fixed, and there could be no further question
of its place in art.
It is a good thing that the newspaper writers are filling some of
their space with discussions of the things that are above the prize
ring, the gunman's "quickness" and the latest device for "burning up
the road" with the automobile. Even the rule of the "drys" seems
of less importance than the expanding love of the things that can give
us permanently the best interpretations of deathless music by the
artists whose fingers must soon grow stiff and whose phenomenal
powers must soon grow dim.
No one who knows anything at all will deny that music is the
greatest influence for good in the world. And no one who knows
that it is so, will question that the player-piano, as we now have
it, is a "necessity in the art of music."
Presto's latest advertising proposition to increase piano trade is
the suggestion that the Better Advertising Bureau ought to establish
a marriage bureau. Trade ought to increase 100 per cent if all the
unwedded bachelors could be entrapped. The Bureau of Census says
that 16 1-3 per cent of the male population of the United States, 21
years of age or over, is married, while 4 3 ^ per cent of the females of
this age have entered the wedded state. The figures about the males
are startling. Every mother's son of them should be married and each
one should buy a piano, or a playerpiano.
Seems strange that France has been so slow about putting a tax
on pianos. In our country the piano is about the first thing the tax
gatherers look for.
* * *
When the country went dry it was thought that the automatic
piano had received its death blow. But it has turned out that pro-
hibition has increased the demand for the self-players of nickel-in-slot
and other varieties. Music goes just as well with ice cream and
ginger ale as it did with booze and cheese sandwiches.
Years ago Presto published an article designed to start the new
profession of player piano instruction. A recent issue of London
"Music" covers the same subject in similar manner. And the English
music paper's argument is so good that we will reproduce it else-
where. There are now a number of playerpiano instructors in this
country and the profession is steadily expanding.
Now's the time to clean up. Get your store in order for the spring
sunshine. Put what stock remains in good order; shine up the win-
dows and retrim them; replenish the small goods department, and
generally make things look as if you, too, are glad the season of real
living is again at hand.
Most piano manufacturers say ths dry law has bettered the busi-
ness. Some piano dealers say the same thing, and all piano travelers
believe that in time they will get used to it. It's still too early, how-
ever, to say just what the effect will be. Piano trade conditions a>
this time are such that comparisons are almost impossible, though it
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/
Future scanning projects are planned by the International Arcade Museum Library (IAML).