Player Piano Roll Production Ceases 117
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."
Nostalgia... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
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]
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!
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.
Re:Still can be done (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.
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...
Another era gone to technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Remember, remember the 5th of January (2009)... (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 Babylon 5 tapes. Not as efficient as modern methods, but it was effective for its time (1996), and it created a loyal group of fans.
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. :) )
Re:Player pianos used to be cool (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.
technology meets art (Score:2, Interesting)
while i think it is great that we are developing better technologies that can do things more precisely, faster, more cheaply, and more reliably, but i am still captivated by some of the older technological innovations that started the excitement in so many fields.
the two that always stick out in my mind are the mechanical watch and the iron skillet. almost 300 years after its invention, the mechanism/s used in automatic watches are still popular, and not just among the idle rich. this is where technology and art start to mingle, the aesthetic appeal of an automatic mechanical watch is far greater than a lame quartz movement armitron.
no matter how many "modern kitchen marvels" are created, my choice for food preparation is often the iron skillet: the greatest addition to the culinary arts/sciences since fire.
Re:Only older than 1923... (Score:3, Interesting)