He says that embellishments were not added at Imperial - the attempt was always made to maintain the player's original style and only to make improvements. After this process was completed, the roll, called a test roll would be listened to by Bargy and Charley Straight, the production manager, who would make any final adjustments required until they were satisfied. This became the final master roll, which was then put into production. Both the Imperial and QRS methods of recording were unable to provide instant playback, as the marked roll had to be perforated by hand before it was available for listening.
The giant Aeolian Company of New York and London used a 'direct perforating' method, in which a roll was punched as the pianist played. Their Uni-Record brand offers in the author's opinion the truest hand played performances , which seem to have been virtually unedited, and punched at the highest punch advance rate of any handplayed rolls of the time. In layman's terms, the higher the punch advance rate, the more possible locations of each perforation on the paper, providing a more accurate reproduction of the performance.
Toggle navigation pianola. Toggle navigation. Rolls for Sale About me. On the earliest recordings, like the Reinecke mentioned earlier, the roll was left untouched, mistakes and all.
However, as the technology improved, editors were able to go back and change the notes recorded on the paper, erasing a note here, adding a note there. These insights extend beyond the realm of player piano rolls. Whenever we listen to a tape, record, CD, radio or internet stream, we hear music from the past that is encoded with a unique historical context. The next time you listen to recorded music, whether from or , imagine the performance and recording process… and how will it compare to recordings in , years from now?
We can hope that Rachmaninoff performed similarly for the reproducing piano. Read more about Player Pianos and Reproducing Pianos. His approach to the player piano was inimical to the humane use of the instrument by those steeped in jazz like Confrey, Morton and Gershwin.
Antheil's compositions, though, had their fans. It was scored for 16 player pianos that were to be tightly synchronised during concert performance. They were to be accompanied by two grand pianos played by musicians, as well as three xylophones, four bass drums, a gong, three aeroplane propellers, seven electric bells and a siren.
That, at least, was Antheil's idea. But how would you make the 16 rolls of paper turn at the same instant and continue together? It was a conundrum wrapped in a piano roll, and one Antheil couldn't solve.
He rewrote the piece, combining the pianola rolls into one and played on a single instrument. Recently, though, the Ensemble Modern used antique pianolas fitted to respond to computerised commands. The ensemble's resultant concerts in London, Vienna, Frankfurt and Berlin used only two player pianos, however. It will not, however, be a live performance, which may be just as well since it is believed to be the loudest concert music ever performed. Music on a roll. Pianolas were once so popular they outsold real pianos.
Then along came the radio and recording, and they sank into obscurity. Now they are to be celebrated again. MIDI files accomplish digitally and electronically what piano rolls do mechanically. Software for editting a performance stored as MIDI data often has a feature to show the music in a piano roll representation. Rolls for the reproducing piano were generally made from the recorded performances of famous musicians. Typically, a pianist would sit at a specially designed recording piano, and the pitch and duration of any notes played would be either marked or perforated on a blank roll, together with the duration of the sustaining and soft pedal.
Reproducing pianos can also re-create the dynamics of a pianist's performance by means of specially encoded control perforations placed towards the edges of a music roll, but this coding was never recorded automatically.
Different companies had different ways of notating dynamics, some technically advanced though not necessarily more effective , some secret, and some dependent entirely on a recording producer's handwritten notes, but in all cases these dynamic hieroglyphics had to be skillfully converted into the specialized perforated codes needed by the different types of instrument.
Recorded rolls play at a specific, marked speed, where for example, 70 signifies 7 feet of paper travel in one minute, at the start of the roll.
On all pneumatic player pianos, the paper is pulled on to a take-up spool, and as more paper winds on, so the effective diameter of the spool increases, and with it the paper speed. Player piano engineers were well aware of this, as can be seen from many patents of the time, but since reproducing piano recordings were generally made with a similar take-up spool drive, the tempo of the recorded performance is faithfully reproduced, despite the gradually increasing paper speed.
The playing of many pianists and composers is preserved on reproducing piano roll. Gustav Mahler , Edvard Grieg , Claude Debussy , Sergei Rachmaninoff , and George Gershwin are amongst the composers who have had their performances recorded in this way.
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