Hi MMD readers,  One of the reasons why pianola rolls never got out of
the player reed/pipe organ range of Tempo 65-95 (averaging 75-85)
were the following problems which high speed arrangements would
introduce into the player action:

1) Faster roll travel is noisy, which is why so many European player
manufacturers had celluloid or glass covers for the spoolbox, even on
the console ([pushup) players like the Hupfeld Solo-Phonola;

2) Faster speeds reduced the playing time, unless one is performing a
short selection.  I cut some rubato sections at Tempo 40 on my Duo-Art
roll of Mephisto Waltz so that I could employ Tempo 120 for the faster
staccato sections, and keep the arrangement on a single spool.
(Rewinding would destroy the ambiance of this Liszt music.)  What was
Tempo 120 at the start of Mephisto Waltz became 100 and then 90, by the
way, with the music relatively the same as everything was perforated in
phrased blocks of music;

3) The air motor robs the system of about 30-50% power at those higher
speeds, requiring electric motors or spring-wound drives (of the
Melville Clark and Simplex [console player] vein), ideally.  The valves
of the player action stack and the air motor should be under high
vacuum and completely separate from the stack pneumatics -- another
cost for the finished product.  I compensate the Duo-Art dynamics for
the higher air motor speeds on some rolls, but then when played on a
late 'Thirties Duo-Art grand (with a B-Ampico style of action)
everything is louder, due to the presence of an electric motor drive
for the roll, and no loss of systems vacuum;

4) The player action would be difficult to fit inside a grand, and
would make the uprights rather obese and strange-looking, when equipped
with a system designed to handle orchestrion-sized rolls -- which is
what these Tempo 120-200 rolls would be, in many cases.  (I've been for
Tempo 150-200 for years, by the way);

5) Player-Piano prices would have been higher, much higher when
designed for the larger rolls that high speed player actions would
require.

6) Music Rolls were tied into the retail price of 78-rpm phonograph
records, so there was a hidden ceiling in the wholesale/retail
marketing of them.  (I remember Max Kortlander telling me in the late
'Fifties, "If we increase the price beyond 65 cents wholesale and $1.15
retail, nobody will buy QRS Rolls."  This was his reply to my
suggestion that medleys and longer rolls should be made by the Imperial
Industrial Co.  I also recall J. L. Cook telling me that "45 rpm
records run for only 2 minutes," as if there were some connection
between 45's and 88-Note rolls!  Old trade magazines will confirm this
industry belief in rolls having to be priced in the range of phonograph
discs.)

Just before he died, Melville Clark used his ratchet-style expression
system to set the Tempo on QRS-Automatic rolls via special perfora-
tions -- especially since 2-5 classical selections were being glued
together from single rolls of different speeds -- for the coin-operated
expression players such as Seeburg made briefly.  This is not unlike
the later Concertola Aeolian tempo-setting idea, at the beginning of
rolls custom-perforated for the customer; those that weren't, were set
by the user with the teensy Tempo Lever inside the Concertola roll-
changing cabinet.  (As I recall, the Concertola ran at Tempo 30-40
without the manual or automatic recalibration.)

Had players used the Clark idea in a standardized form, yet retaining
the air motor (which gives control & feel over the pneumatic player
action) the roll arrangements would have been ideal on the existing
equipment.  Rubato sections would be switched in-between pauses and
phrases, and technically-demanding music would receive Tempo 100-120
(or whatever) settings.  All these Tempo Lever changes could have been
cut right into the music roll arrangement, as some of those late
Melville Clark medley rolls were.  (Pianolists could have overriden the
tempo settings, if they wished, for added appeal.)

The problem was that piano sales fueled player sales, and roll
arranging was just the necessary evil to keep the industry going.  Most
companies -- if you read their in-house letters and memos (and many
still exist!) -- saw players as an add-on to close the sale, and not as
an end in themselves.

This would be akin to designing modern computers with all the features
of today (MMX, Pentium chips, plug & play configuration, etc.) and
selling 1980s MS-DOS software (in B&W) for the system.  (I still use
MyTreasures in MS-DOS by MySoftware Co. for listing rolls and other
items,  but know that it uses only a fraction of my Windows 95
machine!)

Advertisers in the past were unrestricted, so much of what player clubs
like AMICA reprints in their magazine is total baloney, once one works
past the fancy lithography and lofty texts.  Currently, AMICA reprinted
a Boesendorfer-Ampico advertisement, and the statements about the
Ampico rolls were the following (and I'm quoting from the actual
facsimile brochure here):

  "The reproduction of a great Master's genius by the Ampico is truly
  marvellous, for not only does the Ampico bring forth from the piano
  every tone with the exact quality, and with the exact volume,
  inflection and duration that were recorded when the artist played,
  but the lights and shadows of the soul of the artist -- as real as
  the notes themselves -- are portrayed by the Ampico."

This brochure was written for Ampico Ltd., the British branch of the
American Piano Co.  The part about Boesendorfer's history mentions
nothing about the pianos tone, and just lists famous musicians and
artists, closing with, "The business is carried on by his son, Ludwig
Boesendorfer, who further perfected the piano which had already
acquired a great reputation."

Pretty tame words for the Boesendorfer, which has/had wonderful tone --
for those of us who like the European sound.

However, the Ampico tracker bar has long slots for the sustaining and
soft pedal effects, and these are about 4x32nd-notes to 5x32nd-notes in
length, meaning that just a blip on the roll will be exaggerated by the
Ampico.  "Shadows of the soul of the artist?"  No, advertising puffery
from another time.  As for the notes being struck in the same duration
as when the artist played: double fooey!  Rythmodik and/or Ampico rolls
often feature cascades of notes being held down in clusters -- through
sostenuto arranging techniques -- and usually with the sustaining pedal
added on to this.  No famous artist ever played the keyboard in this
fashion, and never could -- if they wished to do so!

(Note, I'm too lazy to use the umlaut-o at this moment, so if this
e-mail is edited for the MMD, use "oe" and not "o".  The Boesendorfer
is too fine a piano to be written-up as "Bose-", as if it were a
Massachusetts loudspeaker line!)

 [ I agree!  Not all ISPs can handle 8-bit ASCII and umlauts, so
 [ we'll use 'oe' for now.  -- Robbie

I believe that the industry decided upon playing time over virtuoso
performance, which meant that they could recycle aging roll libraries
with long-playing medleys, roll changers and other methods, such as
re-mastering existing arrangements for slower tempi.  This was at the
same time in history as when Roy Bargy, Dana Suesse, Lee Sims and other
virtuoso pianist-composers were exploring the limits of piano jazz and
Art Deco arrangements, but the Pianola industry opted for the
background music route.

The numbers favoured lower prices and hotel lobby music, in spite of
what the advertising said.

Today, we know that rolls could do better.  If one plays a few bars of
Rhapsody in Blue (Primo) made for Aeolian Hall demonstrations [and
which sounds like Gershwin, but who knows?] vs. the released Duo-Art
rolls which bear the Armbruster techniques, then it's obvious that the
player roll factories knew what they were doing.  They could claim
anything, of course.

Practically all the rolls made for demonstration purposes were more
exciting than the commercial editions, featuring fast dynamic changes,
more staccato striking and far less automatic sustaining pedal; they
were also created to be used in connection with _specific_ instruments,
maintained by the manufacturers for concert purposes.  Even back in
1910, when Aeolian, Steinway and Wurlitzer had a battle of letters
(which I reprinted in the first edition of The Pianola Quarterly),
Wurlitzer at one point refused to return "the special rolls that came
with the Pianola Piano" -- this being a Steinway Vertegrand 88-Note
pedal upright.  The "special rolls" weren't described in the
correspondence, but were obviously different from what the customer
received from the Aeolian catalogue.

I've put a lot of thought into these problems over the past 4 1/2
decades, so there's much to consider when cutting rolls at the regular
speeds or the theoretical Tempo 120-200 range, which would yield a
superior performance in many ways.

Regards from Maine,

Douglas Henderson
Artcraft Music Rolls
Wiscasset, ME 04578
http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/