Hello MMD readers,  Not long ago, a piano technician (and Artcraft
Music Roll customer) sent me an audio cassette taped from a New York
City live broadcast by WQXR.  I don't have the date, but the program
was tied-in with compositions of and rolls by 'Zez' Confrey, well-known
for his "Kitten on the Keys" and other complicated piano solo novelties.
The program began and ended with a live performance of Confrey works,
played by hand on a Steinway (acoustic) grand piano.

However, in the middle of the program, there was a GranTouch Disklavier
playing "Dizzy Fingers", based on a music roll arrangement (probably J.
Milton Delcamp, but sold in the name of pianist-composer Confrey).

The GranTouch instrument is, in my opinion, a bogus-piano, in every
sense of the word.  You see keys moving, as if an electronic Clavinova
had electro-mechanical appendages added to its pseudo-piano design,
while the sound comes out of a loudspeaker mounted under the lid of
a diminutive "grand piano" shaped case.

The roll source was not identified, but was probably the Ampico
arrangement of the 1920s, which on the proper instrument did have
a lot of panache, as when played on a grand piano with a well-regulated
pneumatic action.  Granted, the rolls sold in Confrey's name, including
the Kortlander-like QRS series, don't have the sparkle and clipped
staccato which one can hear on his original phonograph records, but
they do, on a Pianola, represent a good performance, in most cases.

Sorry to say, but not surprising to me, was the ghastly rendition on
the GranTouch Disklavier.  It was nasal, brittle, jangled in its tonal
texture, and the scale was so uneven that one imaged metal in the
treble and experienced a gruff, muddy sonority in the bass.  I noticed
that the keyboard pianist elected to play the Steinway for the two piano
solos, and not the ugly-sounding GranTouch Disklavier.

The question is, why not play the roll of "Dizzy Fingers" on an Ampico
instrument?  Many exist.  Why scan it into MIDI and then force the data
stream to deal with a loudspeaker system placed in a tacky-looking
pseudo-piano case?  I don't see why the Disklavier, in this form,
should have been featured at all, especially since the musical results
were so awful.

The small audience didn't applaud, as they did for the two pianoforte
solos.  While the M.C. suggested that they were "stunned" by the
performance-without-a-pianist, I think many had probably drifted off to
sleep, or simply left the room, since the droning, nasty sound of that
electronic instrument in no way resembled a genuine piano.

"Dizzy Fingers" didn't sound like an Ampico roll, either.  What few
accents that were heard came across as "gunning the engine" noises,
if one used an automobile accelerator reference here.

As for the statement that "the making of rolls was 'a closely-guarded
secret'", this in itself was a foolish remark, considering all the
articles and books which have been published for decades on the subject,
along with my treatise about the whole mythology behind the use of
artists' names on rolls: http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/rollnews.htm

Claims, ideas, theories and advertising puffery abound, from the player
roll field, so a "secret" the process was not, for those doing true
research.

As a final note to my negative critique of this WQXR broadcast, why
is MIDI scanning called "rolls" and why is a stringless, electronic
instrument called a "piano"?  (I certainly wouldn't hold up a VHS tape
-- a video -- and exclaim, "See, this is a 35 mm film" - without the
sprockets, of course!)

Anybody who heard that broadcast or the tape, as in my case, should
run to their nearest player and rediscover "Confrey" on music rolls.
Authentic or not, the arrangements are lively and via true piano
strings (assuming that your instrument is tuned), are nothing like the
musical atrocity of that GranTouch Disklavier, ruining a delightful
Confrey piece from the 1920s.

Let's hear it for perforated rolls!

Regards,
Douglas Henderson - Artcraft Music Rolls
Wiscasset, Maine
http://wiscasset.nnei.net/artcraft/