It's a sad, but sobering trend I see too often. In the "old days" a
piano stood in almost every living room, and children took piano
lessons.  But now in this modern world of video games and iPods, the
younger generation has little use for something challenging, like the
finer arts.

I am not only concerned about players, but about our society as a
whole.  It seems to me that people are not taught today to think out of
the box.  They merely go along with life, accepting things at face
value, challenging nothing.

Lest anyone doubt me, take a look at how most people drive these days.
Courtesy is gone.  They drive like the devil on the highway, passing
everything, only to end up two or three cars ahead of you at the first
stoplight.  The risk they take with these dangerous moves is certainly
not worth the few hundred feet they gain.  Following too closely, and
thinking that the horn will move mountains.

Common sense is no longer common anymore.  To be able to play the piano
takes thousands of hours of practice.  The best pianists take flight
from what is written in the musical notation.  To me, music played as
written is like a movie I have seen before.  I am always surprised when
a pianist (or roll) throws something in that totally unexpected, pro-
vided that it makes musical sense.

Pianos are cumbersome, and heavy, and require constant tuning.  Some of
these old stage pianos require tuning twice a week.  When I play music
on stage, I would always prefer a string piano.  But often this is not
practical, especially if I'm doing a weekend gig. Therefore I too am
guilty of bringing an electronic keyboard.  But the subtle annotations
of a string piano add a dynamic to the music that no electronic
keyboard can ever hope to attain.

The future of players is unclear to me.  Last week I bought a fine old
Baldwin Monarch player on eBay for a dollar!  I wonder how many player
pianos are destroyed each year because there are few people willing to
make an effort to rescue and restore them to their former glory?

With the loss of my source for custom-made music rolls due to Mr.
Tonnesen's health issues, I fear that my roll arranging days are over,
at least on perforated paper for the foreseeable future.  This has been
extremely depressing to me, and devastating to my enthusiasm.

I arranged rolls more for fun than profit.  I feel that I still have
more music to bring to the tracker-bar.  But alas, things happen.  I
fear that my efforts will be relegated to MIDI, unless a old perforator
falls in my lap ... and that's not very likely.  I will never forget
the sobering words said to me by Bob Berkman: "You entered this field
about fifty years too late."

Be that as it may, players may go up in value.  As fewer and fewer
survive, the market will adjust accordingly.  There will always be a
few who love these machines.  But I often ponder: what will happen to
them when we are gone?

Andy Taylor