Player Piano Roll Production Ceases

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."

Comments

Nostalgia...

[Chrisq]

I remember my gran having a player piano. It was great fun (as a seven year old) working the peddles to play music at double-speed. It also seemed somehow magical seeing the keys "play" themselves.

Oh well

[MichaelSmith]

There goes my backup strategy.

Remember, remember the 5th of January (2009)...*

[denzacar]

...Next time someone mentions a technology that is outdated.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.

Times change...

[rts008]

Don't shoot! I'm only the piano programmer!

Westerns won't be the same...*sigh*

Video of piano roll production at QRS Music

[Andorion]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FTaGwfXPM

Enjoy!

huh?

[russ1337]

'We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for pianos that play themselves.

Piano Porn?

Re:huh?

[RPoet]

You can see their bare strings!

Player pianos used to be cool

[gzipped_tar]

Listen to Gustav Mahler playing himself. 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:Player pianos used to be cool

[HungWeiLo]

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.

[upuv]

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.

Forward to 2067

[gnieboer]

"...halted support for COBOL 108 years after the language was founded. We continue to provide support for Cybernetic Linux. We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for machines that help humans. It's just the interface that has changed. But I would be lying to say it doesn't sadden me..."

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..."

QRS isn't the only place to get them!

[I_Can't_Fly]

List of currrent Player Piano Rolls and Equipment

And thus...

[Warhawke]

The humble beginnings of the ever-turbulent fight between music publishers and end-users comes to an end. More than simply nostalgic, the piano roll was the first cheap medium for copying music, and as such it created the massive debaucle whose legacy is still carried on today by the RIAA. Prior to the hayday of the player piano, musical entertainment for home use required live performance. Sheet music publishers had a stranglehold on the industry. Enter the player piano roll, and suddenly these new device publishers could manually record, copy, and redistribute music en masse, and they did so with great frequency, never paying the sheet music publishers a dime. Even "worse", the player piano was autonomous, and so you didn't need a musician at all to enjoy the music played. Naturally, the sheet music publishers were outraged. They considered the device to be sterile and even dangerous to the artistry of music. If no one had to play piano, then no one would, and the music would simply cease to exist. They asked Congress to ban the piano roll and require that any new recording system be voted on by the sheet music publishers. Fortunately, that didn't hold, and instead a licensing system was created where player piano roll producers paid the publishers a paltry fee per roll produced.

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.

Re: They work when the power goes *poof* too.

[I_Can't_Fly]

Ours is a " Betsy ", and works flawlessly.

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 ...
And it works great, has a home, and isn't going to be thrown out anytime soon!

Still can be done

[Sycraft-fu]

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 be.

So the magic is still around, for those that want it, it's just a better control system has come along.

Re:Still can be done

[Vintermann]

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:Still can be done

[dondelelcaro]

Player pianos only signal note on and note off with the paper.

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 some cases.

Re:Still can be done

[Reality Master 101]

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. :) )

Production pauses

[yogibaer]

If you read the article carefully, it becomes clear that they will be trying to reestablish the production in a new location, but are a bit worried, that some of the ancient machinery will survive relocation. They still sell 50.000 rolls a year and have a stockpile that will last them for 1-2 years.

Player Pianos are supreme tech

[VividU]

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

[Vintermann]

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...

Re:I can download Player Piano Rolls?!?!?

[commodore64_love]

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 couldn't afford the million-dollar electricity bill.

Signed,
your other personality

Another era gone to technology

[GomezAdams]

Just as buggy whip and vinyl records and 8" floppy disks have gone so mechanical players and rolls are going away. As a former registered PTG piano tech I worked on my share of these player machines. I never rebuilt one but have made minor pump replacements and glued up the occasional bellows and made adjustments. As musical instruments older pianos are built to last a 100 years or more so these instruments are not going to disappear anytime soon. The rolls on the other hand are paper and can be damaged and just plain deteriorate long before the player part quits working. I hope someone will step up and keep a supply of rolls coming. It'll be a niche market for sure but just like keep ancient planes and autos running it will be worth it for future generations to see how 'The Old Folks'(tm) lived in The Good Old Days.

Re:Remember, remember the 5th of January (2009)...

[commodore64_love]

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.

Only older than 1923...

[argent]

The sites listed in the article only contain music that is out of copyright, from rolls published before 1923.

Re:Only older than 1923...

[5KVGhost]

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:Only older than 1923...

[canajin56]

You'd win that bet, because it IS accurate. The sheet music industry lobbied to have the player piano outlawed, on the grounds that if nobody needed to hire a live musician, there would be no such thing as music anymore, and nobody would buy their sheet music, ruining the economy. They didn't succeed, but as a concession, congress made it so player piano manufacturers had to pay the sheet music industry a fee for every roll they sold.

Re:Remember, remember the 5th of January (2009)...

[poot_rootbeer]

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.

technology meets art

[CaptainNerdCave]

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.