Hello MMD readers,  Back in 1999, I posted a history of presenting the
player piano as a playback device along the lines of audio.  To make
a programmed mechanical musical instrument into a phonograph type of
device is a musical impossibility, but it was an effective marketing
campaign for the reproducing piano of the past through today's
solenoid player pianos such as the Disklavier.

Essential to these promotions, which included Rachmaninoff performances
which didn't sound like his Victor records or the original Ampico rolls,
were two features: a photograph of the dead pianist and the word "ghost"
in the text.  (The rolls were probably faked in his name by J. Milton
Delcamp.)

At http://wiscasset.nnei.net/artcraft/rollnews.htm is my article
written at the height of that "Ghost of Gershwin" campaign, where fancy
Duo-Art roll leaders were draped over a Disklavier pianos pin block and
other visual props.  The day that MIDI (which is a serial computer
program) is "note perfect" (to quote that article on the Internet) for
Art Tatum, I'll have to hear it to believe it!  See
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050420/ennew_afp/afplifestylemusic_050420141549

The jump from audio to electromagnetics bopping piano keys is a large
one.  Many of my Artcraft rolls do sound like Gershwin on audio or
modern pianists, such as Glenn Jenks or Frank French, but I never palm
off the "played by" box labels, since the rolls are made by arranging
processes, as they always were, in this perforated music sphere.

I recall a recording called "The Digital Caruso" in the 'Seventies.
Somebody in Utah studied early and late 78s by Enrico Caruso, and then
figured out what his voice "would have been like", even though he
matured, vocally, during that span of 1-1/2 decades with Victor
Records.  It was an annoying, fluttery recording and died, mercifully,
after making the publicity rounds.  It is better to play the tenor's
original audio and record from that, or use digital methods of today to
'clean up' the old recordings, than it is to monkey around with the
balance and equalization of his vocal timber.

These are only my opinions, but I find it amusing that a deceased
pianist's photograph (Glenn Gould) along with the "ghost/phantom" term
remain present in these latest solenoid player performance promotions.

Friends of mine and I still have memories of those poor solenoid
players trying to waffle through Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique", during
a 16-piano premiere in Lowell, Massachusetts.  The serial nature of
MIDI showed its warts, galore!  What should have been staccato,
pulsating chords became rippling flutters of keys, rolling like ocean
waves, victims of a serial player control system.

I'll stick with audio when I want to hear recorded pianists, both live
and dead!

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