The editing of piano rolls

[pianolist]

This discussion topic has grown out of the reply I made below, to [arensky], in September 2006. You'll find a selection of recordings of piano rolls, and I hope they will turn out to be more musical than you expected! This part of the topic, in the Performance board, is for the explanations and discussions, and there is a mirror thread, in the Audition Room, for the musical examples. If you want an updated index of the mp3s available, visit this link: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg226567.html#msg226567


In a message which I sent on the subject of Busoni's "Twelve Commandments," I raised the subject of recordings on piano roll. Arensky responded with some very thoughtful comments, particularly about the editing of them, and I wanted to pursue the topic without treading on Busoni's toes.

This is the exchange so far.

Pianolist: I think the world of pianism would be immeasurably improved if students were made to listen regularly to pianists of a hundred years ago. But of course, it's only fun to play authentically when there are no recordings of the period to disprove the musicologists.

Arensky: I couldn't agree more. What better way to understand how to play and interpret the music of 100 years ago than to listen to the recordings that are available from then, and this includes artists rolls. Rolls are controversial, and can be and were edited the way recordings are today, but the authentic ones are invaluble documents of how artists played at the time (or closer to the time) the pre-modern repertoire was composed. To ignore these recordings or to dismiss them out of hand is willfull ignorance. As for the musicologists, some are coming around.

I heard a concert of Duo-Art rolls in NYC in 1980 or 81, played on a restored Duo-Art Mason and Hamlin concert grand.  Artists on the rolls included Rachmaninov, Cortot, Granados, Rubinstein (Artur) and others. You could really hear the difference in the artists dynamics, shading and attack. I believe rolls are legitimate representations of a pianists playing, IF they haven't been doctored, as were several of Paderewski's.

Man, I love the old records.

The editing of piano rolls is an enormous topic. You can't not edit piano rolls, because any reproducing piano is only capable of playing two dynamic levels at any one instant, one for bass and one for treble. It can vary these levels very rapidly, and the ear has a wonderful capacity for being deceived, as witness mp3 compression.

I don't have time tonight to go into the detail of every system, and in any case I'm gradually writing webpages about all these at www.pianola.org. But I can tell you about Paderewski's rolls being doctored.

There are surviving letters from Paderewski to the Aeolian Company, in which he asks them to clean up arpeggios and the like on his Duo-Art rolls. This could easily be done by the use of scalpels and sticky tape, but it is not as simple or deceitful as it first appears.

The recording process for the Duo-Art involved a very fast real-time perforating machine. Actually, there were two of these, one in New York, and one in London, and the London one was written up in some detail in an article in the 1920s in Gramophone magazine, by Reginald Reynolds, the London Duo-Art producer.

I have some of the surviving rolls from the London Duo-Art recording machine, and you can see the rough serrations along the edges of the perforations. Reginald Reynolds quotes a perforation frequency of almost 4,000 per minute, but on examining the actual rolls, I would say that the actual speed was 3,600, which would fit with alternating current frequencies of the time. The International Piano Archive at the University of Maryland has similar rolls from the New York machine. I have visited the IPA and examined some of the rolls: those I have measured show identical characteristics.

Since the recording roll was drawn on to a take-up spool which turned at a constant rotational frequency, the linear speed of the roll increased as more paper was drawn on to the spool. This can be checked by examining the perforations in detail. Their spacing gradually widens as the roll progresses. However, the performance tempo is not affected, since the rolls for playback are drawn on to a similar take-up spool, with a similar accelerating effect on the paper speed.

However, to copy rolls in quantity, any reproducing piano company of the time had to use perforating machines that punched at a regular frequency per inch, and not per unit of time. When you want to punch 16 copies at a time, you need heavy equipment, which has to draw paper through regularly, and which has to stop minutely before each punch row is perforated. You could not punch in real time with such a machine, and you need master rolls of two or three times the length of the finished roll, in order to ensure accuracy.

So, having made an original roll of Paderewski on the Duo-Art recording piano, Aeolian had to copy it from a perforation spacing of 3,600 punches per minute, to one of 21 or 31.5 punches per inch, which were the two usual formats used for the Duo-Art. This unsynchronised copying inevitably involved some coarsening of the finer detail of the placing of notes in time, and much editing was done in order to smooth out these roughnesses. You used to get a similar effect when videotapes were copied from US to European video standards, though in the latter case you couldn't improve matters by editing.

Paderewski in the early 1920s was a perfectly reasonable pianist, and his request to clean up his arpeggios is far more likely to have come about as a result of Aeolian's perforating techniques, rather than any inadequacy on his part. I hope I have managed to explain this OK. It's clear enough in my mind, because I have lived with these pianos for over 35 years. Remember, I am only talking about the Duo-Art at this point - other systems had their own characteristics.

Since the 1950s, player pianos have mostly been owned by enthusiastic collectors, and not by musicians. Very, very few indeed have played as they would have done when new, including most of those on LP or CD, and as a result, the player piano has acquired a poor reputation. As an example, most of you probably think that Scott Joplin played loudly and at a rigid tempo, because there are countless recordings of his and other ragtime composers' music pedalled without any expression or fluidity of tempo control. Such performances would not have occurred in the 1920s, but almost no-one realises this.

Try one or two mp3s on the Pianola Institute website (www.pianola.org), because we have tried to ensure that the performances are reasonably good. You will find Grieg, Granados, Scriabin and Medtner all playing their own works, plus various other pianists, including Josef Hofmann and Ernest Schelling. The pianos used are generally Steinway 'O's, which is roughly the size of piano used in the roll recording studios. If you have questions, do ask.

More anon.

[pianistimo]

this is all very interesting!  thanks for taking the time to explain. a lot to learn from them - but to repeat their performances.  no thanks!  i kinda prefer the flexibility of newer ways.  and probably - despite their immense talent - there are only a few composer/pianists that were actually 'concert' pianists, imo. 

i saw dinu lipatti (sorry i said the wrong pianist before) on 'the arts' channel last night at 3 am.  it was a 1961 concert.  you could tell he was 'old school' and it probably wouldn't go over as well with the 'straightness' of it.  but, it was facinating to watch and enjoy, knowing the time period.  he did play 'gollywogs cakewalk' with a certain panache.

[m]

i saw dinu lipatti (sorry i said the wrong pianist before) on 'the arts' channel last night at 3 am.  it was a 1961 concert. 

Interesting... as far as I know, by 1961 Dinu Lipatti was in a better world for about 11 years.

[pianistimo]

hmm.  even 1951 would have been too short.  why did they trick me.  or was it the 3 am psycho in me.  i was sure it was lipatti.  he only lived 33 years.  wow.  short life.  this guy looked 40 or 50.  now i'm really confused.  back then, they all looked older than they were.  why can't i remember anything anymroe.  help.  i'm going crazy. 

ok.  he died in 1950.  so for a 1961 concert.  yes...about 11 years too late.  now, why did i hear lipatti? and he had a square head.  and the same hair. 

with 'the arts' channel - can you look at programming.  i'm googling right now.

[pianolist]

Well, Lipatti didn't make piano rolls anyway, unless St Cecilia has a perforating machine!

Dear kindly Pianistimo, for how many hours in your whole life have you listened to modern pianists? It's a difficult estimate to make, of course, to count up the number of concerts and broadcasts, but I suppose you could hazard a very rough guess.

Then work out for how many hours you have listened to historical performances. And you might consider how many reproducing piano rolls, out of a complete repertoire of about 15,000, you have heard.

It would be like being brought up as a Muslim all your life, then hearing about Jesus for one hour, and deciding on that basis alone that he wasn't relevant in the modern world. You have to keep working at it.

Reproducing pianos have been in a bad state for many decades, and there is a vast quantity of terrible CDs out there. I plan to keep posting mp3s from time to time, and I'll hope one day to convince you, along with others, such as Arensky, who are already converted, I think.

One is on dangerous ground if one simply dismisses out of hand the interpretations that composers gave to their own music. I would actually argue that musical performance has to evolve, because the world changes, and it would otherwise stagnate. To that degree, I am unhappy about regimented authenticity. But to evolve sensibly, musical interpretation needs to do so in an informed way. Otherwise you get Lang Lang, who must already be a very rich young man, but who will never ever be a sensitive artist, unless he travels a musical road to Damascus.

By the way, as an atheist I am greatly impressed by your resilience and your good nature, in the face of what life and this forum throw at you. I would say that heredity, your family and your friends have made you what you are, and not any supernatural agency, but I'm sure you and I are both tolerant enough to agree to disagree.

[pianowolfi]

pianolist, your posts are very informative and interesting. Keep posting about piano rolls. I have a question. Though it's not about piano rolls but about acoustic recordings: Do you know which are the first cylinder recordings ever made, that are still conserved and listenable?

[pianistimo]

as i understand, pianolist, from my limited knowledge (and i do agree it is limited) - that the 'romantics' were more inclined to use rubato and give a certain 'that age' sound.  it doesn't mean i don't like it.  in fact, i find it really facinating.  but, i do not want to sound like anyone else anyway.  as far as lippati, i realize that he didn't make piano rolls - but it was a different sound from a different era - played on 'the arts' channel as a video clip.  it was still interesting!  there are more choices in pianos and types of sound one can get.  we get newer sounds, imo.

i have heard pogorelich (live), jean-yves thibeaut (on recording), andre watts (live), helen grimaud (live), barry douglas (tchaikovsky comp and recordings),  vhs of murray perahia, took a classical era class and heard a rough estimate of what orchestras in the 1700's sounded like (period instruments), john browning live, my teachers jean-paul billaud, (lousie billaud - his wife), james johnson, carl cranmer.  some pianists i've heard, i've probably now forgotten.  now, i don't profess to even want to sound exactly like any of them, either.  i want to be myself.  what is wrong with that?  also, i have a record of glen gould with all the 24 preludes and fugues that my dear teacher dean epperson gave me.  he was a really great bach person - and played a lot of chamber music, too.

ps  i really like piano rolls and think they are very valuable.  probably would even go so far as to use them for teaching purposes in terms of historicity of piano technique.  it has changed somewhat - but not the basics.  i'm not in disagreement there.

btw, you are quite knowledgeable about music so i'm not trying to get into semantic argument.  just saying what i feel.  the last class i took 'the piano concerto' we got to hear some pianists that are deceased such as cassedesus, and another (forgot his name) that were really spectacular too.  i have sat in the library and listened countless times to poulenc playing poulenc.  i would say that if i included library time - i would have listened to a lot of different pianists. 

weren't you the one that had the roll of brahms playing?  that was really interesting to me!  i listened at least two times - but wished i had time to listen more.  it is facinating to listen to the many varied styles of playing the piano.

[pianolist]

Pianowolfi - Ha! At school they told me I risked becoming a jack of all trades, and master of none, because I rarely concentrated on the matter in hand. Now I have become an expert, it is true, but on a remarkably restricted area. Which goes to say that I am no expert on acoustic recordings, but my friend, Denis, who hates computers, is just such a man, and I'll ask. But I have to tread carefully, lest he think I am spending too much time staring at the screen.

My instinct is to say that acoustic recordings that can be restored into something listenable, begin around 1900. There were early Paris recordings of Pugno, Chaminade and others, with an unfortunate wobble from some obscure cogwheel in the recording device, but I believe someone has recently developed a computer program to remove this.

Given what the early acoustics must have sounded like at the time, it is very understandable that pianists were lured towards the Welte-Mignon, where the actual sound was by definition better than the latest hi-fi of today, because it was an actual piano.

One of the best transferrers of old phonograph recordings to CD is Ward Marston, whose website is:

https://www.marstonrecords.com/

Now Pianistimo, dear Pianistimo. You and I need to understand each other well, because I don't at all want to upset you. I reckon, from reading the posts to this forum, that most of the brutish, bearded piano nuts who drag you into recipes and lonely hearts problems, are really rather fond of you. I can understand why, because you have a very natural and supremely patient way of responding. That is an excellent basis for naturalness in musicmaking.

Classical music, when it is sensitively performed, moves me very deeply. It's why I fight shy of pianists like Lang Lang, who is at one extreme. He uses music as a means of displaying himself, and that is diametrically opposed to the way I feel about it. Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, over here in London in 2004 for the Proms, played Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, and it's just as well I was sitting at the back of a box, because I wept through the whole performance. I've probably been to half a dozen performances of it, but only that one came near to having such an effect. I was simply overwhelmed that any musicians could still play in such an emotional way.

The style of piano playing from a hundred years ago was much closer to the heart, it seems to me. People had longer to think about life, and they weren't so seduced by commercialism or video games. Without 747s and discos, you didn't need to bash the daylights out of a hard-toned concert grand in order to widen an audience's eyes. Concertgoers were much more attuned to the piano, because so many more of them played it. If you regularly play to people who can themselves play very well, then you won't get away so easily with mere technical fireworks.

But of course, there were other considerations which I wouldn't want to go back to. Racial and religious prejudice were strong in many countries, healthcare was far worse, education depended on wealth, and so on. But I think that young piano students, who, as one can see throughout this forum, are often bursting with nervous energy, would learn a great deal from listening regularly to piano playing from a century ago. Not only would it give them ideas for their own playing, it would also teach them a great deal about life and emotion.

I am veering away from piano rolls, and my wife will be home from work 'ere long. You won't find Brahms on piano roll, though he did make a phonograph cylinder. I count Lipatti as a relatively modern pianist, in that he was born when the 20th century was already 16 years old. But good for you for listening - try some of the older ones as well !

General comment - A little more food for thought, given the title of this thread. You would think, from what you read in the press and hear on CDs, that George Gershwin recorded lots of piano rolls. Well, he didn't, at least not in the way you would think. He did record Rhapsody in Blue in the same way as other Duo-Art classical rolls were made, but in the vast majority of cases, if he did sit down and use a recording piano, then the marked up roll which he made was used rather like manuscript paper, as a basis for marking out by hand an absolutely metronomic dance roll arrangement. Such rolls have, typically, twelve punch rows per beat, rigorously applied throughout the roll. They were intended as an accompaniment for singing or dancing, and so were produced at a rigid tempo, and should not be taken as an indication of his performance style.

Scott Joplin is just the same - follow this link to an mp3 of a recently discovered piano roll, if you are interested:

https://www.pianola.co.nz/pleasant_moments.htm

[arensky]

Reproducing pianos have been in a bad state for many decades, and there is a vast quantity of terrible CDs out there. I plan to keep posting mp3s from time to time, and I'll hope one day to convince you, along with others, such as Arensky, who are already converted, I think.

Converted but not entirely convinced, perhaps. Many rolls (Paderewski, the Harold Bauer Sant-Saens 2nd Concerto) sound like midifiles to me. Your thorough explanation of the roll making process in this thread answers a lot of questions for me. My teacher in high school had the "Legendary Masters of the Piano" 3 or 4 record box set from the early 60's which includes rolls by Scriabin (op.8 #12), Lecshetizky, Busoni, Carreno and others. The Scriabin recording was the begining of my interest in piano rolls as well as Scriabin. What convinced me was the concert of rolls I heard in New York years ago. At that concert I felt that I was hearing about 90% of the pianists who made the rolls, something was missing but your explanation clears that up for me. Since then I've bought records of artist rolls whenever I've had the oppurtunity, including a 7 or 10 disc set devoted to students of Liszt and including performances by otherwise unrecorded pianists such as Stavenhagen and Reisenauer. Fascinating stuff, truly. I think everyone should drop by the Pianola Society for a listen. 

[pianolist]

Well, I shall hope to convince you in due course!

Since the 1950s, there have been so many terrible recordings of reproducing pianos, that their reputation has been completely distorted. All the expertise that there was between 1905 and 1935 had really gone by the time recordings began to be made. There are technical manuals, of course, but you can't write down the sort of everyday comments, made lying under pianos, or in tea breaks, that go to make up the lifetime's experience of professional experts.

Reproducing pianos became the preserve of collectors, and a status symbol as well, and the richest or most ambitious collectors wanted their instruments on LP or CD, but they didn't have the musical judgment to match their ambitions. Recording producers, faced with zero artists' fees, were only too happy to market stuff as the best thing since sliced bread. And technical experts often didn't want to take advice from musicians, whom they regarded with suspicion.

I have been involved in reproducing pianos for about 35 years. I began, like we all do, by thinking that the Ampico was the best system, but then realised after ten years that a really tip-top Duo-Art could be as good, if different. It has taken thirty years for me to realise that an original Welte-Mignon is capable of great subtlety of performance, much greater than the Welte LPs of forty years ago.

Since I'm only supposed to post mp3s in the Audition Room, I'm going to start a parallel thread there with the same title, "The Editing of Piano Rolls", which will be for musical examples. I'll start with Granados playing his arrangement of a Scarlatti piece, recorded in 1913 for the Welte-Mignon. Think about it - this is a 93 year old recording!

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg226595.html#msg226595

[pianolist]

Percy Grainger liked to get his hands dirty. I respect that, because pianola players don't have the luxury of relaxing in dressing rooms after concerts. We are too busy shifting instruments for that.

Anyway, it's rumoured that Grainger actually did some of the editing on his Duo-Art rolls, and this recording of the Ramble on the Love Duet from Rosenkavalier uses extended perforations to simulate the use of the sostenuto pedal. It's a technique that Grainger used in his Pianola arrangement of "Molly on the Shore" in 1914. He went on to use perforated rolls in his Free Music machines.

As per my custom, the recorded roll will be found in the mirror thread in the Audition Room. https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.0.html

I'm posting this today in honour of all the lads who love Pianistimo. https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg228736.html#msg228736

[pianolist]

From reading this thread, you would so far get the impression that the player piano is limited to recordings of famous pianists and composers. In fact, such recordings were made for the reproducing piano, and the foot-operated player piano, which I call the pianola, was quite different.

Rolls for the pianola were generally not recorded by pianists, at least not in the way we mean recording nowadays. The process involved musical editors marking up master rolls from the sheet music. This picture comes from the Aeolian Company's British factory at Hayes, Middlesex, in 1911.

I'll try to record some normal piano music in due course, because there's no reason why one can't put a little romance into the pianola, but for now, here are two examples of music that would be impossible for one person to play at the piano.

The first is the Danse Sacrale from the Rite of Spring. Stravinsky spent fifteen years of his life closely involved with player pianos, and he effectively rewrote most of his early ballets especially for the instrument. This arrangement of the Rite dates from 1921, and he did the work in collaboration with the Pleyel Company in Paris.

The second is a transcription on to roll of Lutoslawski's Variacje na Tema Paganiniego. I made the roll myself, many years ago, and our Pianola Institute included it on a compilation CD that also included Stravinsky's Les Noces.

The uploaded mp3s will be found in the Audition Room, at:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg229100.html#msg229100

[pianistimo]

you are quite a knowledgeable person about these piano rolls and the history et al.  i hope that you write a book or something.  perhaps give a live presentation that is recorded and show people all the parts of these player pianos - how they operate - what a piano roll looks like, etc.  i'm sure for posterities sake it should be included in all piano history classes.  am sorry i never heard much about them until now.  a very important part of music history!  and revival.

[pianolist]

Continuing my thread of musical examples of piano rolls, here is one that just failed to fit into the 20 Mb limit at my usual 128 kbps. Consequently I've encoded it at 96 kbps in MP3 Pro format, which I haven't tried before. Let me know if it gives problems, and I'll have another go.

It's a roll, or rather three, which I made of the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and it's taken from a CD our Pianola Institute made, and which is now out of print.

I'll repeat what I have said about player piano rolls, which is that they fit into two distinct types. There are the rolls recorded in real time by historic pianists and composers, which play on reproducing pianos. These rolls run at a more or less constant speed, since all the phrasing and rubato is contained on the roll, and the reproduced dynamics are stored in various proprietary coding perforations, according to the system in use.

Then there are normal rolls, which I often descibe as "metronomic" rolls, where the notes of the music are simply transcribed at a given number of perforations per beat. In these cases it is up to the pianolist to create the musical dynamics with the feet, to phrase the music and introduce subtleties of tempo by means of a right hand lever, and to operate the piano pedals with the left hand. If you are interested in more detail about this, there is a useful webpage devoted to a reprint of a treatise, "On Playing the Pianola", written in the 1920s by Reginald Reynolds, who was the Duo-Art producer and main Pianolist for the Aeolian Company in London. It's a basic guide for interested pianola owners of the time, and not the last word on the subject. The link is:

https://www.musanim.com/tapper/OnPlayingThePianola.html

As usual, I have placed the mp3 of the Rachmaninov in the Audition Room, on the mirror thread to this one, at:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg232522.html#msg232522

For those who cannot play MP3 Pro, I've encoded another version in normal MP3 format, but at 112 kbps, at:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg232606.html#msg232606

[pianolist]

I had intended to include an example of what might loosely be termed "popular" music, and Gershwin seemed like a good starting point. This will not be a roll played by Gershwin, mainly because he didn't actually play most of what we think of as his rolls, but it's a lovely arrangement by Adam Carroll, who was arguably the most subtle of the popular roll pianists of the time. The original roll was recorded for Ampico in the late 1930s, but was also issued on Duo-Art, because by that time the Aeolian Company, which developed the Duo-Art, had long since merged as the major partner with the American Piano Corporation, the proprietor of the Ampico.

I want to say something about Gershwin's piano rolls, because they have been poorly reported in the musical press and CD liner notes. The impression has been given, and it is quite incorrect, that Gershwin's rolls are recordings of his actual playing. This notion no doubt helps to sell CDs, but it is demonstrably not true. There are exceptions, such as Rhapsody in Blue, in which Gershwin's actual playing forms the basis of the rolls, but even here, Gershwin probably played only the solo part, leaving the accompanimental part to be cut in by hand by musical editors. This is not to say that the Rhapsody rolls are unmusical, because the editors were good musicians, but they are not simple representations of Gershwin's playing.

The vast majority of Gershwin's piano rolls are not recordings at all, in the sense that we would use the word today. What tended to happen at the Aeolian Company, and other similar establishments, as far as song and dance rolls were concerned, was that popular pianists would record at factory pianos, usually uprights, and thereby mark up paper rolls with some form of inked lines, according to the notes they played. These marked rolls would then be read like sheet music by musical editors, who would create metronomic dance arrangements on fresh master rolls. They might or might not use the original pianist's ideas, they might well create new passages of their own, and they might repeat sections in order to provide, say, three verses to form a decent length roll. This is not at all the same thing as a direct recording. You can count the number of perforations per beat on such rolls, which are absolutely regular throughout, just like artificial MIDI transcriptions are nowadays, although I have to say that modern MIDI frequently manages to be far less musical than the old piano rolls!

It is a sad thought that, for every musician who reads this thread, there will be at least a hundred thousand who never know the truth. Truth does not sit easily with either communism or capitalism, alas, but that's another story.

Back to Adam Carroll. He was born in 1897, played for Paul Whiteman, had his own band for a while, and joined Ampico as a staff pianist in 1922. When the music roll business ran out of steam in the 1930s, he played on Broadway and accompanied such luminaries as Fred Astaire. He kept on making rolls right up to the end of the era, and this was the penultimate Duo-Art in the main 7000+ series, published in 1939.

The mp3 is in the Audition Room, on the mirror piano roll thread, at:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg236042.html#msg236042

[pianolist]

My friend, Denis, has just finished some more recordings on his Hamburg Steinway Welte-Mignon grand piano, and this roll of De Falla is stunning. It almost defies belief that the roll was made over 93 years ago. De Falla was clearly a very sensitive pianist.

The audio recording is made very close by the piano, so there is inevitably a little bit of action noise, but you can use it to imagine De Falla's fingernails on the keyboard. For those who like the detail, the two microphones are ribbons, purchased from the BBC World Service when they turned to more modern equipment. The BBC's loss is our gain, however.

The recording is at:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg236651.html#msg236651

[pianolist]

I posted a generalised reply to [amanfang], concerning some aspects of the use of the sustaining pedal.

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,21565.0.html

She was actually asking about the Mendelssohn Variations in D minor, but as part of a more general reply I quoted the playing of early French pianists, including Debussy's style.

I thought an mp3 of Debussy playing his Soirée dans Grenade would be appreciated. Denis (my friend) has altered his microphone position. The acoustic is warmer, but also clearer, so you can hear some pneumatic action noise. If one were making public CDs, one would place duvets strategically over noisy action areas, but we musicians can hear through the noise, can't we!

As usual, the mp3 is to be found in the mirror thread in the Audition Room:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg238092.html#msg238092

[pianistimo]

am rolling through this thread again.  enjoyed the granados scarlatti immensely.  now i am reading 'on playing the pianola' by reginald reynolds.  thanks for sharing!

why do i imagine a nightmare?  a sort of laminating machine gone wild.  someone's hair gets caught in the piano roll.  their feet in a constant treadle - going so fast - they have to use their hands to hold themselves 22 inches away and decide which way they want to be sucked into the machine.

btw, i think you are very good at pianolisting grainger's love duet from 'der rosenkavalier.'  so romantic, yes!  does this explain why your wife is often gone shopping?  has she become  impervious to the love duet, too?   and how does your pianolisting improve your driving skillls?  does she sometimes hold onto the little handle on the side door and yell - 'henry, get your accompaniment foot off the melody.'  something else i'm wondering about.  whatever happened to paderewski's request for improvement on the arpeggios?  did he ever get adequately arpeggiated - or was this something that took years back then - and only days today?  why did they have to slow everything down so much at the aolian company?  couldn't they just leave it as is - and hope for the best?  especially if this created large discrepancies in chords coming together. 

 

[pianolist]

am rolling through this thread again.

Hello, P.

Spread chords and hands not together is the way they played. I like it, because I've got used to it, and in the right music it allows so much subtlety. It's another variable that can be used to paint a picture in sound. In the most critical situations, reproducing pianos need a minute offset between accompaniment and melody (though not particularly between left and right hand), but not to such an extent that it distorts the playing. If you can actually hear the arpeggiation in chords, it's far more likely that it is simply the pianist's style.

These reproducing pianos play on their own, without my help. They need a tremendous amount of restoration and regulation, but at the time of performance, off they go on their own. There are some examples of my playing the pianola on this thread, and in those cases the rolls were not recorded by pianists at all. Either I made them at my computer (and in the early days with razor blades!), or someone else transcribed them from the sheet music.

Good point about the driving! I've been driving cars since 1969, and I can cope with central London, so maybe the pianola has helped. It has also helped my leg muscles enormously, so I'm a good walker, too.

[pianistimo]

dear pianolist,

i would not tell any other girl that you did not pianola it yourself.  it takes away some of the import.  after all...you are a pianolist.  btw, i did not think your name to be henry - but i wasn't sure if anyone else was allowed to know your real name.  we don't want fans calling in the middle of the night.  especially now since we know you can manage london traffic - and could easily drive a few of us to and from a CERTAIN CONCERT.  alas, i understand.  if i were to pick up thal at the airport with my husband in the car- he would probably say 'who is that?'  'what is going on?'  'why didn't you tell me before?'  i can't stand to see him look down.  he has such loveable brown eyes and has always been so sweet. 

well, sorry i keep getting things you say mixed up.  inevitably it would all be much more understood if i could see it all in action.  did you say that you used to use 'razor blades.'  now what do you use? 

[pianolist]

I was distinguishing the two different types of player piano. The reproducing pianos play entirely on their own, but the pianola needs to be played by a human. Rosenkavalier is on a reproducing piano, using Grainger's recorded roll, but, for example, the Rite of Spring excerpt and the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody are on pianola rolls, and so will sound terrible unless played properly.

I made the rolls of the Rachmaninov myself. Nowadays I use a computer program which I wrote in the '80s and '90s, but up to the mid-80s I was still using razor blades. I used to joke that I didn't need them for shaving!

I had an Uncle Harry, which is the nearest my immediate family got to Henry. The fact that I am Rex is well enough known on this forum by now, but thank you for the thought. I'm glad you like the mp3s; player pianos have been my life for 30-odd years, and they are still widely misunderstood. It's lovely to have the opportunity of bringing them before a forum of musicians.

I should have to rent a car, or borrow my friend Denis' Fiat, in order to pick you up at Gatwick. We have a little van, with only two seats, which I use for transporting my pianola to concerts. In fact, we shall go by train, because Waterloo is only 15 minutes from our local station. I'm looking forward to meeting some "Streeters", including Thal, I hope. Beneath his savage breast beats a heart of gold, as they say. He'll slaughter me with one-liners for that!

[pianistimo]

dear pianolist,

thanks for explaining so much!  i do have a few more questions.  did you say that you mark the pianola rolls up so that you know what actions to take at what time (that lead to the best sound, in your opinion)?  also, do you use the marking sometimes of other pianolists?  is there a pianolist library of notated rolls?

just teasing you a bit about the ride to the concert on nov. 11th.  my problem is now somewhat financial - as we weren't expecting a dental emergency - but it's always something to consider.  even though insurance pays a large portion - we still ahve to come up with about $300 or so dollars.  and, because it's kinda unexpected, i'm not going to push the budget breaking trip on my husband.  his trips are paid by business.  unfortunately, for me, they are not.  if i was still in school i might be able to work something out. 

i've been talking with my aunt who i might talk into visiting the isles (all three) next summer.

[pianolist]

I've just tidied up the beginnings of this thread, so I'm online to respond. I kinda guessed you might not actually be coming (to the Warehouse on 11th November, for the concert including Alistair Hinton's Sequentia Claviensis), but you can bet there will be cameras at the ready a week tomorrow. I guess there will be a race to post afterwards!

I'm sure the inventors of the Pianola and its competitors never expected the instrument to be studied and played seriously, at least not in the beginning. It was intended as an easy passage to playing the piano, but it became clear very early on that you had to work at it. In the end, that is why it was supplanted by the reproducing piano, which by contrast was fully automatic, so that the rich piano owner could sit back, brandy in hand, and be entertained, just as though he were listening to a CD.

So normal pianola rolls from a hundred years ago, which you have to work at, do have tempo and dynamic indications on them, which the average amateur pianola owner could follow. It's much better to know the music, though, because no printed indications can ever be that subtle. I don't usually bother with marking up my own rolls, because by the time I have made them, I am very familar with the dynamics and speeds. For example, the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody rolls are not marked up, at least not my copies. The exception is rolls which are for playing with other musicians; I played a pianola concerto by an English friend of mine in Germany a couple of years ago, and I certainly needed measure lines, since all the measures were of different lengths.

You rarely find rolls marked up by other pianolists, though I do have some from the 1920s and earlier. They tend to be accompaniment rolls, with the solo part drawn in, which is quite useful until you know the music backwards.

The Aeolian Company in the USA actually published a series of rolls called "The Pianolist's Library", so you are one hundred percent correct. Mind you, it was something of a last-ditch marketing campaign, with de-luxe library roll boxes, in an effort to revive the sales of normal pianola rolls, which fell off rather quickly in the US as soon as the reproducing piano took over.

You let me know if you cross the Big Pond, and make sure to come visit. By that time we shall have a south-east London and Kent chapter of PianoStreet going!

[pianistimo]

you can be sure i'll look musical friends up.  what other true friends does one have?

[pianolist]

w0mbat began a thread in the Performance section, asking for suggestions about learning Balakirev's Islamey. By coincidence, my friend Denis has recently recorded a performance from Welte-Mignon piano roll, which must be the earliest recording ever made of this work. It was recorded in Russia, probably in February 1910, in the last months of Balakirev's life.

The pianist is Ida Michelsohn, and I can find nothing about her on Google. If anyone knows anything, perhaps they would be good enough to post on this thread. There are one or two notes which just fail to sound, but this is down to the expression coding on the roll, and not to Ms Michelsohn's playing. It is a fine performance, and the nearest you will ever get to hearing the work as Balakirev himself might have done.

The mp3 will be found in the mirror thread in the Audition Room.
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,20642.msg241179.html#msg241179

[wzkit]

I love the Falla recording. Extraordinarily sensitive playing, even though the breaks between the left and right hands are distracting. Would anyone know where I can find the sheet music for this?