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Player Piano Roll Production Ceases
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jan 05, 2009 03:28 AM
from the day-the-music-died dept.
from the day-the-music-died dept.
boustrophedon writes "The Buffalo News reports that QRS Music Technologies halted production of player piano rolls 108 years after the company was founded in Chicago. QRS continues to make digitized and computerized player-piano technology that runs on CDs. 'We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for pianos that play themselves. It's just the technology that has changed. But I would be lying to say [the halting of production] doesn't sadden me,' said Bob Berkman, the company's music director. Piano rolls can last for decades, but not forever. Volunteers at the International Association of Mechanical Music Preservationists build piano-roll scanners to scan rolls optically and convert them to MIDI files. The IAMMP archive and others contain thousands of scanned rolls."
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Copyright (Score:2)
OK, so who holds the copyright, so we can tell Noh "Maddog" Hall [linux-magazine.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
Jon even. Oops.
Nostalgia... (Score:5, Interesting)
Still can be done (Score:3, Informative)
It's just MIDI data has replaced a paper roll. Yamaha makes a line of pianos called the Disklavier. They are real pianos (grand or upright) with control systems that read and record MIDI data. However you get a much better result than with a player piano. Player pianos only signal note on and note off with the paper. So everything is played at one volume level. MIDI pianos (good ones at least) record the note velocity, which is how hard the key was hit. So they reproduce the dynamics as they are supposed to
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As I recall, there were three kinds of rolls, no expression (the most common, the one you mentioned), those with dynamics hand-crafted afterwards, and those with recorded dynamics.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Higher-end player pianos (Ampico, Aeolian, Welte, etc.) control the amplitude at which notes are struck, though no where near as accurately as MIDI (which controls velocity and can even modify the velocity after touch). That's why they have more than 89 holes in the tracker bar.
That said, all of QRS's rolls that I'm aware of are 88 note, though they often have instructions for how to modify the amplitude printed on the roll, along with lyrics in
Re:Still can be done (Score:5, Interesting)
That's like saying modern digital pinball machines are better than the old electro-mechanical ones. Sure, they are technologically better in nearly every way, but there's something about mechanical devices that are intrinsically more fascinating than electronic ones. (and if I have to explain why, you'll never understand. :) )
Parent
Oh well (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, remember the 5th of January (2009)...* (Score:4, Insightful)
...Next time someone mentions a technology that is outdated. Like say... floppies.
*5th of January 2009 is today, when you read the news about the last mass produced player piano roll going out the door.
Re:Remember, remember the 5th of January (2009)... (Score:4, Informative)
Next time someone mentions a technology that is outdated. Like say... floppies.
Ironically (?), the predominant distribution media for digital player pianos is STILL the 3.5" floppy disk.
What was state-of-the-art when the first Disklaviers were released in the late 1980s is now hopelessly anachronistic, but as long as first-generation hardware owners continue to be willing to pay $30 for a handful of MIDI files, concessions to them will continue to be made.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's funny you bring that up. Back in the 90s there was a show called Babylon 5 which I wanted to share with other Forum posters. Today it would be easy via high speed internet, but most people were still stuck at 28k, so that was not a practical solution. Instead I created five VHS tapes and distributed them to five people.
I let them keep the tapes for a week, and then pass the tapes to the next person on my list (at their own expense). After about a year around 200 people on my forum had watched the B
Times change... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't shoot! I'm only the piano programmer!
Westerns won't be the same...*sigh*
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry they'll call you to fix all those pianos for the Y2Ksomething bug
Video of piano roll production at QRS Music (Score:5, Informative)
Enjoy!
Re: (Score:2)
fascinating video!
Re: (Score:2)
huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Piano Porn?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You can see their bare strings!
Player pianos used to be cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Listen to Gustav Mahler playing himself [youtube.com]. He played a part (the Death March) of his Fifth Symphony in 1905, recorded to piano rolls.
I just hope at least some of the player pianos could be preserved in a working state, although it would be getting more and more difficult as time goes by.
Technologies get replaced but the coolness remains.
Re: They work when the power goes *poof* too. (Score:2, Interesting)
There are a few out there that have been restored. The bellows on many are brittle, but most have been electrified by using a motor to supply the air, but you lose things like volume control etc, when you go electric on the old one.
This is our model here in the image ... [wikipedia.org]
And it works great, has a home, and isn't going to be thrown out anytime soon!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several CDs available of player rolls of Rachmaninoff pieces played by Rachmaninoff himself. The recordings also have pieces by other composers as well.
Another childhood memory is now just that. (Score:2, Interesting)
I can safely say that I will actually miss this.
When I was a young lad in the 60's this was still one of the coolest things out there. I used to love going to grans as a small child and cranking up the piano. ( Yep hand crank version ).
The death of Nintendo Game cube or equiv gadget of the day will never compare to the death of something that lasted over 100 years.
This device saved 10's of thousands of families around the globe from uncle Bob's horrible Xmas piano playing. It will be missed.
Re: (Score:2)
I give it 30years and things like this will start to make a come back. The technology we have now(and will have) is fine and grand and all that, but sometimes you just want to sit down and play other times you want to see that bit of mechanical technology do it on it's own.
Which reminds me...I need to price out a clarinet, because as grand as it is listening to someone else play, or some of the greats...nothing beats playing yourself when you know how to.
Re: (Score:2)
I give it 30years and things like this will start to make a come back. The technology we have now(and will have) is fine and grand and all that, but sometimes you just want to sit down and play other times you want to see that bit of mechanical technology do it on it's own.
I'm not so sure. That would be a pretty expensive item for a ride down memory lane. Besides, it's not like the concept is lost forever. It's just taken a slightly different form. [yamaha.com]
Re: (Score:2)
But sadly, it does nothing to save anyone from grandma's fruitcake.
Re: (Score:2)
The sad part is it was the first medium to be reproduced and copied easily. Heck 100 years is a good run. :)
For music, I am sure that is true. But the printing press [wikipedia.org] seems to have been in use in the 1700s.
Re:Memories... (Score:2)
I still get a twinge thinking of the old Linotype. I never worked on it myself, but UC Printing Services kept one going in Berkeley for years after it's obsolescence, just to print diplomas and such. What a cool bit of old school tech. Of course, reliability was on a different order of magnitude, but I maintain that there is some merit to a device that can be built or repaired with common hand tools. The Skilled Mechanic is the real loser here. Habitat loss will wipe them all out soon, I fear.
Forward to 2067 (Score:5, Funny)
So, any bets on whether the above statement will be a reality??
Or the alternative version in 2109...
"...halted support for Windows XP 108 years after the language was founded. We continue to provide support for Windows Vista. Windows Vista is a great enhancement to the user experience, and we really really really hope that people will get over it and stop asking for XP. Really, we mean it this time, NO MORE XP SUPPORT. No... Really..."
Player Pianos... (Score:2)
QRS isn't the only place to get them! (Score:3, Informative)
And thus... (Score:4, Interesting)
That system has held in place until today, though you see technology (and history) repeat itself over and over. It's important not just from a DRM and YRO perspective, but also from a historical perspective. Beyond the moving-type press, this allowed for the greatest proliferation of music across America to be enjoyed cheaply by everyone. The roll single handedly changed the way America could experience music, and it completely defined the historical legislation and business practice of modern music. This is the passing of a titan, not just a kitchy thing that your great-grandparents might have owned.
Of course, now that I went to the effort to write all that, I remember Cory Doctorow mentioned the same thing in an old, well-read paper of his. [craphound.com]
CD's are cold! think of the warm sound! (Score:2)
Oh no, but CDs are so *cold* in their reproduction of the sound! They just can't match the warmth of a good piano roll!
Very sad, it's a lovely technology that intrigued me since I was a kid, but I guess it's a free market economy - if there's no money in it there's no reason to continue to spend money on doing it. Would be lovely if it was possible to continue production on a small scale in a 'living industrial museum' and turn out a few for tourists and fans though if a funder could be found to keep the ma
Re: (Score:2)
While CDs don't capture the sound of a live piano fully (though well recorded ones come real close), doesn't mean that you can't have this sort of thing still. As I mentioned in another post, automatic pianos are still made, they just use a computer to control them and MIDI to store the data. Yamaha's Disklavier is the most well known line, but there are other and there are companies who will retrofit any piano you like.
So if you like that sort of live sounds, then this is what you want. It'll do a better j
Re: (Score:2)
You jest, but what struggles to match the sound of a good piano roll, or rather a good piano roll in a good piano, are el-cheapo midi synthesizers and some of the digital pianos of today. Many digital pianos are just samplers and it's very hard to create the expressiveness of an actual piano using layered samples. You need a lot of high resolution samples and most (affordable) digital instruments will come with a selection of virtual pianos so they need to divide up the ROM space. Software synths have come
Re: (Score:2)
Somebody still played that piano to generate that roll. I think it's awesome.
I find the perfection of midi reproductions shrill. Even when done with very good midi equipment, there are so many variations in the conversation between the pianist and other instruments, the pressure, attack, decay, tuning, blah blah blah, that it is just much easier to record audio of a real musician on a piano.
I think the human brain is *very* good at picking out repetition in sound. It might not be conscious, and even
Production pauses (Score:4, Informative)
Player Pianos are supreme tech (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the great fortune to apprentice with one of the last remaining player piano craftsman/restorers/repairmen in the west coast. A mad genius if there ever was one. (Hey Larry!).
Not many jobs gave me to opportunity to make glue from fish guts, cut leather, polish wood with graphite and tinker deep in the guts of Steinway's.
The player piano's are truly amazing technology. Ask most people how the players work and they'll draw a blank. (Hint: vacuum).
Sit next to a properly tuned (musically & mechanically) player piano, close your eyes and listen. They can be scary good.
I love music machines (Score:3, Interesting)
Oslo's most awesome museum, the museum for science and technology, is currently establishing a permanent exhibition of "musical machines". It'll be done for summer. I can hardly wait.
One curious thing about music machines: I have never heard a midi piano that sounded as good as the most sterile yamaha piano. Why is that? I would suppose you could do a decent physical simulation of the interior of a piano these days, capturing such things as interaction with other undampened strings. But they don't do that. The sostenuto pedal is usually just an echo effect...
if anyone wants to buy some.... (Score:2)
Another era gone to technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm. It seems to me, though, that a gizmo for recording rolls is well within the ability of a competent machinist to build. Possibly the kind mechanical enthusiast who goes in for old time player pianos could do it. The main difficulty for a clever mechanic would be getting rolls of paper of a suitable dimension and quality; that's a place where eccentricity provoked sweat equity wouldn't get you far, unless you got lucky. Maybe mylar would work and there are companies producing film rolls that coul
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, they just started selling product to sex shops instead. Buggy whips will hold out till they finally finish outlawing anything remotely fun.
Re: (Score:2)
Hwhip. It's pronounced Hwhip.
Actually (Score:2)
People still do ride horses, so it is possible to by riding crops which presumably are manufactured. A smaller group of people drive horse drawn wagons, carriages and, yes, buggies, and therefore it is possible to buy buggy whips, so somebody is manufacturing them. In about 30 seconds of Googling, it is even possible to locate places to buy them on line [windrockequine.com]. Granted, the $6.95 buggy whip appears to be just a fiberglass driveway marker with a bit of cord on the end, but it exists.
Player pianos, on the other
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Dear Self:
Don't be ridiculous. The conversion of downloaded digital data into sound in the air, or flickering light on a screen, is relatively inexpensive. A few watthours of power. Mere dollars.
The conversion of digital data into a physical essence (food) is something entirely different. According to Einstein's E==mc(squared) formula, you would need a small Star Trek-style warp drive to accomplish that goal. Clearly we don't have that kind of power available in the year 2009 and even if we did, you co
+1 Funny (Score:2)
I'd kill a man for a single mod point at this moment.
Okay, maybe not. But I would for a million dollars!
Well, let's be realistic. I'd probably do it for just a hundred grand.
Only older than 1923... (Score:4, Informative)
The sites listed in the article only contain music that is out of copyright, from rolls published before 1923.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And thank Heaven for that. These vile owners of player pianos are stealing the bread from the mouths of our hardworking musical performers. I say to you that the player piano is to the American musician and the American public as H.H. Holmes is to the woman home alone!
Telegraphs have been dispatched, and intrepid agents of the RIAA are even now speeding cross-country in their horseless carriages! Tremble, law-breakers, for your time is now at hand.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Scanning is Archeology (Score:2)
Go check the site, they don't release anything for public download unless it was published before 1923.