How Piano Rolls Were Made
By Robbie Rhodes
Here's an overview about the methods of making piano rolls:
A. Making rolls by hand
The simple, straightforward method is to place a roll of blank paper on the kitchen table and cut slots with a sharp knife. Timing marks may be drawn beforehand, indicating the beats and the measure boundaries. A template of the note positions may be drawn on the back of a wooden ruler to guide the placement of the slots along the "note-axis".
I used a variant of the technique above for many years: after drawing the timing marks and notes I would mount the roll in my vertical pumper player, and cut the slots right at the tracker bar. This ensures proper hole placement. (I didn't move the knife on the brass, though; I moved the paper while the knife was stationary.)
Many rolls are still cut using a single-hole "frame punch", which has a mechanical index provided for both the note-axis and the "time-axis" positions. The punch frame moves 6 to 12 inches along precise ways; after that distance of punching is completed the paper must be re-positioned and secured with clamps.
These hand methods were used for creating the majority of piano roll titles through the mid 1920s.
B. Pianos for "live recording"
Some companies built "recording pianos" to record classical music, in which an external machine recorded the up-down positions of each key by marking paper in some manner. In most systems the piano key operated an electric switch which activated an electromagnet to make an inked line on the recording paper. Then a technician would cut holes in the paper where it was marked, or else use a pantograph to manually follow the marks and punch holes in a fresh sheet of paper.
Mr. J. Lawrence Cook, the prolific arranger at QRS, had a "step-time" perforator controlled by a keyboard. Cook would hold down the chord (sometimes aided by pencils stuck in keys which he couldn't reach) and then kick a foot-lever which caused the perforator crankshaft to rotate for one step. He made thousands of rolls this way!
But because the recording pianos required significant maintenance, and because popular rolls could often be created faster with a knife or hand punch, the "drafting board" method is still used, especially for editing the performance.
C. Making rolls for pneumatic reproducing pianos
After a perforated "draft roll" was edited a technician would add all of the extra holes to control the expression mechanism of the reproducing piano. The expression editor (usually a girl) was a skilled musician who was familiar with the style of the performer, and she worked and worked until the finished music roll sounded just like the artist (sometimes even better!). Expression editing of classical rolls produced after the mid-1920s by Ampico and Welte (DeLuxe) was aided by a recording of hammer velocity or key velocity.
Note that the reproduced music did not duplicate what the artist recorded: the goal was to make a music roll which satisfied the artist and the customer. Ampico staged "comparison concerts" in which the artist would alternate his live playing with an Ampico roll. The critics admitted they could not tell if the music was from the roll or the live pianist.
The secret was simple: the pianist memorized and reproduced the sound of the music roll, a task much easier than making a music roll memorize the pianist's performance!
D. Making disks for solenoid reproducing pianos
The Boesendorfer SE piano and the Yamaha Disklavier are controlled by binary commands stored on a computer disk, just as the binary (on/off) commands were traditionally stored as holes in a sheet of paper. In these contemporary pianos the velocity of each individual hammer is recorded and reproduced. Since few recording artists consider themselves perfect performers there is always much manual editing to do after the recording session, just as in the 1920s. The biggest difference is that nowadays the editing is done at the computer screen, which displays an image much like a piano roll! The disk file of the performance can be used to control a perforator to make a piano roll without expression. (Coding for reproducing pianos may be added manually.)
E. Conclusion
The best performances are created by extremely skilled arrangers or pianists, and brought to near-perfection by the efforts of the equally-skilled editors. The best classical music was recorded by concert-quality pianists, and the best popular music rolls were arranged by top-quality arrangers. The pianist or arranger who was less than top-notch wasn't invited back to record again!
[This manuscript has double spaces following the periods because it is edited with a primitive mono-spaced font, like a typewriter. I like it that way!]
-- Robbie Rhodes
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