[ Karl Ellison wrote about Biograph Piano Roll CDs:
 [
 [> I still was disappointed in their presentation.  They seem to
 [> be played at a constant volume (loud), no expression whatsoever,
 [> and roll acceleration is very noticeable.  Many of the pieces come
 [> across as monotonously disagreeable sounding.  Did the producers of
 [> these recordings purposely record these rolls [this way,] perhaps
 [> because that is the way Joe Six-pack would hear them on his average
 [> player piano?
 [
 [
 [ Karl, I'm afraid you're right!  :(   But Johnny Lite (and maybe
 [ others) has steel ears trained to hear the music in spite of the
 [ deficiencies of the recording.  And he's a philosopher, too, with
 [ a big love of the music.  :)   Here's Johnny!   -- Robbie


I, Joe Sixpack, rarely post here, not caring about the rusty greasy
gewgaws which comprise the innards of a player piano (forgive me), and,
after reading an old post o' mine (concerning the origins of Ragtime)
which belies an embarrassing self-serving fascination with my own
too-honed verbosity, I hesitate to post agai...  --  No, strike that!
I want to speak:

I enjoy the Biograph CDs, especially their too few Jimmy Blythe pieces.
This is the only way I'll hear his solo playing, inasmuch as the rolls
represent it.  He was a main influence on my favorite player, Pete
Johnson, and I never knew that before hearing him on the Biograph CDs.
If only as historical artifacts, they are valuable.  But I am also
using the CDs as a source of new material as a pianist.  That's fun.

My main criticism of them is that the producers, Mike Montgomery and
Arnold Caplin, chose to include Eubie Blake's Charleston Rag on 3
different CDs -- they just couldn't get enuf mileage out of it!  But,
thanks to Montgomery, whose coveted collection was used, I got exposure
to music I never heard, and, at 50, it's nice to find a brand new bag.

Regarding Wayne Stahnke's Rachmaninoff CD, or any recording of
any rolls:

As Wayne Stahnke mentioned regarding his own CD (which is an artistic
end in and of itself, above and beyond its ties with Rachmaninoff et
al), "there is no accounting for taste".  But what does one expect in
order to have fun?

I realized (again) that one can find happiness, or at least have fun,
by ignoring, or lowering, one's expectations.  The fine-tuned expecta-
tions of the connoisseur, gourmand, expert, spoiled brat causes him to
demand from his entertainment "nothing short of everything", to quote
a famous feminist.

This demand -- by virtue of the intentionality (self-awareness) of
demanding -- pops the magic bubble, the fun, whose effervescent
existence depends on "chance" (enchantment).  It depends -- face it!
-- on fantasy.  I mean, why demand that a piano roll "be" Rachmaninoff?
Or Fats Waller?  Is that what it takes to get the kick?  Would you
really like to see a video of Jesus on Real TV tonight?

What do we really seek in our escapes?  All the kick that remains for
us -- and it's never enuf, after we set the table of our "tastes" with
such scrupulous exactitude -- is getting off on one's own chronique
critique of the poor unsuspecting meal.

A good human player generates a certain "glue" between notes, and an
inner rhythm, a neural rubato, a struggle with a medium.  Except for
the egregious ones, even mistakes can represent the player's maximum
effort, something good, part of art, which, if missing, can be detected
-- the result is aseptic, empty, in and as perfection.  You can often
hear Tatum's struggle with the impossible, and it makes you hear, even
more, how good he really is.

On the other hand, so to speak, a piano roll has certain qualities
live playing can't have.  Speed is one, precision another.  Expression
in piano rolls is, for me, of dubious value.  True, expression can be
understood to be an aspect of precision; but with rolls, precision is
mostly about all the right notes, and the spaces between them, and not
their "expression".  Many actors, for example, don't "act".  They just
"say" their lines.  Like a player piano.

To me, the Robo-Cop "technique" manifested in a roll is the amount of
time a note can be "held" before the holding "finger" is "moved" to a
next note.  Especially on "unarranged", or solo "hand-played" rolls,
where it can be easiest heard, this effect creates a richness of
content not heard in human performance.  There is an unnatural
democracy of digits, the third (ring) "finger" is heard just as loudly
as the much stronger "index" or "thumb".  Thus, we can really hear the
intrinsic music, the true content of the material, for what it may be
worth.

This is the main strength of piano rolls.  Jimmy Blythe really and
truly could not play as loud and clear and fluidly as he sounds on the
Biograph CDs.  But, as heard live with Johnny Dodds, for example, he,
the man, could play his ass off.

Those of us who do MIDI are shocked to see a computer sequencers
"piano roll" view of our performance, depicting the truth about our
fingers -- they are a dysfunctional family unified briefly by a song.
They're basically claws.

Even if what we played (italics:) sounds good, MIDI-ized, it just
doesn't (italics:) look good...  Perhaps, visual creatures that we
are, we give precedence to sight.  So we get perfectionistic that way.

Let us employ the bell curve of editing.  Let's remove the wrong notes,
let's quantize the mess of splayed chords, quiet that harsh Dee, louden
that uncertain Cee, and then let's just speed the whole damn thing up
by 20 beats per minute!  That, everyone, that's ME playing!

I used to beat myself up because I couldn't maintain the relentless
shuffle beat of Meade Lux Lewis's Honky Tonk Train Blues on an LP
I had.  (It was played, I was sure, on a Farfisa organ).  Didn't know
Meade was that good, that clean, that perfect.  Years later, I realized
that the recording was of a "rare piano roll" (it was actually a
harpsicord).

Forgiving my limits, I took myself off the hook.  I also had the
audio recording of Meade, the man, playing Honky Tonk Train Blues.
All that hiss, all that warble, and one or two clunked notes enhanced
the necessary images -- to conjure a blues not heard in the roll:
a faraway freighter rumbling through the plains night, someone watching
from a lone shack ...

I loved the song both ways.

Johnny Lite

 [ I feel that the dedicated music roll artists (not necessarily
 [ "pianists") knew that they were creating an abstraction of the
 [ pianist's art: an extension of artistry, but also constrained
 [ by the mechanical limitations.  Only a few, including the likes
 [ of Jimmy Blythe, could convey on a music roll the same feeling
 [ as when they performed live in a smoky lounge.  But many more,
 [ who didn't perform live in public, created the abstractions
 [ we enjoy as "piano roll style" !  -- Robbie