Re: Original Recording Pianos
By Robbie Rhodes
Myths about "Instant Playback"
A century ago American humorist Mark Twain observed, "A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing by it." He might have said the same about company advertising, then and now. They gamble that no one will challenge their claims. In other words, just because a big company (or a Hitler) implies or declares the truth, don't believe it without checking the facts.
Another version of Mark Twain's maxim is, "A gold mine is a hole in the ground with an optimist standing by it." This implies, simply, that there are many people in this world who _want_ to believe in something that, most probably, doesn't exist, never will, and never did!
It is a fact that a hammer-velocity recorder existed at Ampico; the apparatus and underlying theory were documented by reliable journals of the time. The artist could hear a draft of his performance a few days after he left the studio.
There are "eye-witness reports" of a recording system at DuoArt, which recorded the data directly to a high-speed perforator. A technician, who was familiar with the music, wiggled levers and buttons with his hands and feet while the song was recorded, and so created rudimentary DuoArt expression coding for instant playback.
In my opinion, if this system indeed existed, the expression data was so poor that the music editors ignored it; it was only for exhibition and impressing the visitors. The artist could hear a _real_ draft of his performance a few days after he left the studio.
I believe that a piano existed in Freiburg which sensed key velocity by means of carbon rods dipping into a tray of mercury. The Welte Mignon recording pianos subsequently built in America were similar. Documentation of this exists in one of the American Welte publications, in the form of a reproduction of a pen recording of key velocities. Nonetheless, the artist could only hear a draft of his performance a few days after he left the studio.
I heard a story that the Freiburg Welte recorder created a conductive stripe on the recording paper, of varying width according to the intensity, which was immediately reproduced by sensing the electrical resistance of the stripe to control the hammer velocity.
Alas, I fear that this story, and probably all the others telling of "instant playback", are only a myth, fed by eternal hope and kept alive by those optimists standing by the gold mine, waiting for the gold to magically appear.
Is it a fact that a Hupfeld or Welte or Ampico or DuoArt or Yamaha Disklavier "reproduces every nuance" of the artists performance? Who says so? And who is that fellow standing by the piano, hoping to make a sale? Do you believe what he says? Could you believe otherwise?
-- Robbie Rhodes
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(Message sent Sun 19 May 1996, 22:25:43 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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