Thank you from the 10,000th member

[pianolist]

I was just very naughty and tried to attach a big thankyou for giving me 10 years' free Gold membership, in the "Anything but Piano" section. Nilsjohan can perhaps guess how I tried to do it, but anyway it didn't work, so I'll put it here instead. It's a piano roll I made of the Finale from Pineapple Poll, a ballet score created by Sir Charles Mackerras from the music of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Hope you like it!

Pianolist

[jlh]

I do!  You say you did this?

[MattL]

if you have the sheet music for this i would greatly appreciate the chance to play it.

[pianorama]

Wow. That's like a musical version of a hyper-active 6 year old who just won a free trip to Disneyland, and truck full of candy, and a chance to go to the Moon.

Though I'm a bit confused. Do you mean this is your own composition? What's a piano roll?

[leahcim]

What's a piano roll?

It's like a midi file for an abacus.

[jamie_liszt]

lmao this is a hilarious piece, can i have the sheet music  lol

[ilikepie]

sounds hard :p
YEY first post for me

[icd]

a lovely, joyous, energetic piece
absolutely love it!


i want to ask as well.. do u have the music score for the piece?
would be very grateful if u wouldn't mind posting it up!!


loadsa thanks for the wonderful music!

[pianolist]

Aha! I got you curious about piano rolls, pianolas and player pianos. This will take some time!

First off, I arranged this piece directly from the orchestral score to piano roll, so there is no sheet music, and I apologise to any disappointed Horowitzes or Friedmans (Friedmen). Player pianos are instruments you either don't know about, or else you probably think they are junk pianos that people pedal while they drink their beer, capable of playing ragtime with a fixed terrace dynamic of only one terrace. Yamaha, with its commercial emphasis on the Disklavier, has done its best to perpetuate this myth, in order to suggest that the Disklavier is somehow wildly better than the old player pianos and reproducing pianos. Well, it ain't true.

The pianola was originally a brand name for a player piano made by the Aeolian Company, which was based at one stage at Aeolian Hall on West 42nd Street, where Rhapsody in Blue had its premiere. These days I use the word to signify a foot-pedalled player piano, as opposed to a reproducing piano, which by contrast is an automatic player piano, on which you can hear the likes of Paderewski, Mahler, Rachmaninov and indeed Medtner, whom I posted to the Audition Room a few days back.

In the hope that Nllsjohan doesn't mind me luring you away for a moment, look at:

https://www.pianola.org

The website is a little out of date, and it is currently being upgraded (offline) to around ten times its existing size, but it will give you a rough idea about these instruments.

The pianola, that is, the foot-pedalled player piano, needs very careful playing, but almost everyone, including most pianola owners, fail to understand this. As a result, piano rolls generally sound soulless and mechanical, when in reality they shouldn't. One should be able to accompany chamber music with pianolas, to follow a conductor, to speak to other people's minds and souls, just as with the piano. But, there are scores of CDs of pianola ragtime and jazz out there, giving the impression that Scott Joplin and his friends all played honky-tonk pianos at a constant fortissimo. Well, they didn't.

There is a real need in the world for good pianolists, especially some who might be able to play in ensembles. George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique needs another fifteen of them, Stravinsky's Les Noces (1919 version) arguably needs another three, just to quote two examples. There were over 100 composers in the 20th century who wrote especially for the instrument. The secret is that most piano rolls were not made by pianists playing at a keyboard. Instead, musical editors marked up master rolls in pencil, and then holes were punched out where indicated, before production copies were made on automatic perforating machines. As a result, music on roll is not necessarily limited by considerations of the human hand. You can play pretty much as many notes as you wish.

You may have heard of Conlon Nancarrow, who wrote over fifty studies for player piano. Conlon, like most North Americans of his time, did not realise that the player piano could be sensitively played, but his interest lay elsewhere, in exploring complex rhythmic and fugal structures, all in a pre-programmed way. His music is quite wonderful, of course, but it is only one aspect of the player piano.

Your educational course in the player piano and its music is going to last for a while, so I won't overburden you in one posting, and I have work to do, and it's nearly 11 am already. In due course I'll post some more musical examples, but if you're hungry for such things, you'll find a few at the website quoted above.

A bientôt,

Pianolist

[shasta]

I love it!  Reminds me of Charlie Chaplin tottering around in one of his old black and white silent films of the 1920's.   

[gorbee natcase]

Wow. That's like a musical version of a hyper-active 6 year old who just won a free trip to Disneyland, and truck full of candy, and a chance to go to the Moon.

I like the simile I am going to use that in conversation 

I would love the sheet music to that it is so bouncy and happy it put a big smile on my face

[pianolist]

Well, as I said, I'm sorry, but I made the arrangement directly on to piano roll, or rather on to the computer program I wrote years ago, which then controls a roll perforating machine.  So there's no sheet music. But I'm glad you are enjoying the pizzazz!

Would you like a consolation prize? There's a free pianola version of the Rite of Spring in mp3 format, put on the Web by the orchestra which performed the other half of the CD. The pianolist is not credited on the webpage. It is on Benjamin Zander's website, along with the orchestral version, at:

https://www.benjaminzander.com/ypo/rightofspring.asp

Right of Spring indeed! It's in stereo!

Now don't go believing all the stuff Ben Zander writes about speeds in the Rite, which you will find via Google. He has his theories, but in my view they are not borne out in practice. He had the idea that the speeds indicated on the piano rolls (which were specially arranged by Stravinsky) should be followed by orchestras when they play the work. I think that is ridiculous - you can't take a speed designed for an upright piano in a domestic music room, and force it on to a full symphony orchestra in a large, resonant concert hall. Speeds in music need to be modified to suit the situation, just as public speeches cannot be as fast as intimate conversations.

The mp3s seem to have been heavily compressed, so the sound and the dynamics are not wonderful, but you'll get the general idea. Playing this sort of piano roll is not automatic, and not easy, either. The original rolls are sometimes irregular in speed, and the piano is a Bösendorfer Imperial, which takes much less energy than a Steinway to play loudly, which is not ideal for a pianola. And of course the pianolist was rather younger than he is now.

If you have any questions, just ask.

[letters]

lol that piece is so effing cool!! 

[kelly_kelly]

It sounds cool, but impossible to play 

[jamie_liszt]

Yeh it is impossible but still sounds cool