Hello MMD readers,  I see that there are many postings today about the
question "What is a recording?"

Records that are "programming" are what player rolls are, including
musical box cylinders, barrels for mechanical organs, Regina tune
sheets and such.  "Programming" also includes accounting records and
another other kind of information which can be set down on paper, laid
out or otherwise organized, so that it can be accessed and interpreted
or modified at some future time.  Everything from 3x5 cards in library
catalogues to Ampico rolls are "records" in that fashion.

Audio "recordings" are something else.  There, a performance was
captured by the vibration of sound waves or the light coming into a
camera, be it a sheet film model, a motion picture device or modern
videotape equipment.  True recordings are analogue, since everything
is "fixed" and the retrieval involves having the right equipment in
most cases.  (Few after-the-fact changes can be made with analogue
recordings.)

Digital recordings combine "programming" with the concept of the
traditional audio recording, and this has led to many musicians to
question whether people in the future will really _know_ what our
modern artists really sounded like, since there are many variables.
That is why many people in audio, including myself, prefer analogue
for the source material and the digital aspect for the copies.

To say that a music roll is a "recording" (as did Ampico on their roll
labels most of the time) is a stretch of the imagination.  Whether an
artist 'played' a recording piano or not -- since graph paper was often
used -- doesn't matter when the final product, the commercial roll, is
concerned.  The stepping "rules" for the roll arrangement and the
requirements for the original duplicating perforators overrode whatever
nuances in tempo or striking which the artist would have played.

Thus, the final roll is an arrangement, and the expression holes are
added by people with those skills, laughingly called "editors" in the
old industry, a questionable term which continues through today.
An "editor" is somebody who would change an incorrect note here and
there or tweak a dynamic on a master roll, as I am doing today.

An "arranger", as I was when making the new master, is somebody who
forces the music into norms for patterns dictated by the paper travel
speed, taking in account the many limitations of a Pianola action;
he/she also controls the sustaining pedal length and manipulates the
perforation lengths to suit the performance of a particular mechanical
instrument.  Thus, you get Woods instead of Paderewski, Kortlander
instead of Wendling and Waller or Delcamp instead of Friml.  They are
not really "editors" but "arrangers" whose impressions of the material
from a keyboard performance are what really created the master roll.

(Many of these factory artisan-musicians were more like City Editors at
the traditional 1920s newspapers, so they delegated many of the routine
tasks and just passed upon the final product, but I use a single name
for convenience sake here.  If you examine some of the Ampico masters
which still exist, you'll discover a number of initials, or signatures,
for a single roll, with sometimes up to 6 people being involved with
the many steps in the old production days.)

When playing virtuoso music, the Ampico really can't use much crescendo
since it takes a 1/2 to a full measure (approximately 4" of paper
space) to swing the instrument from one extreme to another, and back
again.  Rachmaninoff, for example, kept his 4th finger busy, something
which doesn't register on the lock and cancel system.  If the crescendo
is at zero most of the time, to allow for wide dynamic changes, you end
up with approximately 5 intensity levels, eliminating 2 of the 7 by the
fact that 4+2 = 6 and that 4 = 2, musically, when the crescendo systems
are at rest.

This means that the 5-step Recordo and the Ampico, for example, force
the alleged pianist to be "reproduced" in a limited level of dynamics,
with and without a slow moving hammer rail lift for the soft pedal
(usually an action shift on an artist's grand piano).  A musician
decides what the expression player will do and perforates the holes
accordingly.

Such musical limitations for expression apply to the Duo-Art, Welte
and other players as well.  (Each system has its own performance
shortcomings to be circumvented when creating a master roll.)

All these variables and characteristics get "arranged" by somebody in
order to create the rolls we enjoy.  They are a "record" of what was
produced in the past but not a "recording" of any specific artist.  Let
a hammer harden, adjust the zero setting on the expression unit or
fiddle with the equipment and the entire performance changes.  This
doesn't happen with lithographs, movies, old 78s, analogue magnetic
tape and other true "recordings".

Anyway, that's my approach to the subject.

Regards from Maine,
Douglas Henderson

PS: When I hear a 'reproducing' piano play, and not being able to see
it, I hear that particular brand of instrument instead of the pianist
whose "recording" is supposedly being played.  I hear a Welte-Mignon,
Ampico, Recordo, Licensee, Artecho, Artrio-Angelus, Duo-Art and other
instruments familiar to my ears.

I have even done this on remote radio broadcasts, such as when our
Maine museum was called up by a Boston radio station.  Without seeing
the player instrument or the rolls, I could hear on the telephone, for
a live New England broadcast, the brand of the roll by the "arranging
style" and the "striking patterns" which had nothing to do with the
alleged artist.  Thus, I'd tell the host what colour the label or roll
box was, the brand and usually identify the tune, the station having
a live player in their studio at the time.

That's why I discount the term "recording" for perforated music rolls,
comparing them more to interactive computer software of today than
phonograph records (often the advertising claim in the old days of
unrestricted advertising).

Douglas Henderson