Re: Mechanical vs. Electronic Music Players
By Dan Wilson
Ed Gloeggler mused on making durable modern players that could take advantage of technical advances yet still be collectable 100 years from now.
Rex Lawson in London has been slowly proceeding with his "electronic pianola" which uses a purpose-designed Apple II program -- quite apart from transcription, composition, editing and perforating of new rolls -- for playing any MIDI device from a console using the displayed roll on the monitor screen and player-piano-type foot and hand controls.
The effect at present is not unlike trying to play an ordinary roll on an all-electric reproducer using hand controls -- the thing plays willy-nilly and is nothing like as responsive as pneumatics, where if you stop the roll stops. But it's obviously a prototype for something that could be very realistic. He has thought of making a pneumatic motor generate the necessary electricity -- in that way you would get the exact right feel as well.
I have a Clavinova for public demonstrations of pianola-playing (and we've had a Duo-Art "vorsetzer" on it as well) which I play using an Aeolian 65/88-note Themodist push-up. (Anyone who came to the AMICA Congress in London in 1995 will remember this combination (and me) from the riverboat trip). This combo makes a very good prototype for an electronic piano with a traditional roll module on it. It feels just like a good old player except that the piano tone is artificial and lifeless. Seeing that wonderful digital recordings can be made of real pianos, I can never understand why digital pianos are so poor. People say to me, "Oh, the new Korg/Kurzweil/Technics is wonderful!" and I rush along to the showroom and it's worse still. But we can expect this to be put right sooner or later.
I think there is no hope of making the electronics everlasting. The important thing is to make a roll-reader which will produce a MIDI output using traditional controls which feel right. Perhaps this would use a valve block and a suction digitizer (which latter Lawson has already made to put Duo-Art behaviour onto screen). Disposable extras are then tacked onto it: a computer which will display a MIDI file from a disk reader as a piano roll, which the user then plays using the controls to produce a "massaged" personal MIDI file; and whatever piano module and speakers the user wants to use.
In this way people with no room or taste for rolls (my house is half full of them) needn't keep any and no actual piano would be needed either. But you could "pianole" someone else's live performance on a keyboard as it happened and, with a powerful MIDI/solenoid push-up, play a high class grand ! The combinations could be endless. I admit I prefer the wood, rubber and leather original, though.
Dan Wilson
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