Piano roll
A piano roll is a medium for supplying a mechanical musical instrument with control information. It was also the first medium that could be easily and cheaply made with changing music. In contrast to the pin rollers previously used , the piano roll could be industrially manufactured and duplicated and thus provide the customer with the latest music.
Were used and piano roll at the " electric piano ", as the " Player Piano ," in fairground , steam organs , fairground organs , barrel organs in specially constructed, stationary - (also called barrel organs) and - albeit rarely pipe organs .
Piano rolls were u. a. incorporated by M. Welte & Sons into their orchestras since 1883. Since 1897 piano rolls have been produced in large quantities by various manufacturers. Perforated tapes with current arrangements are still made today, especially for barrel organs. New and re-punching for historical musical instruments are common.
What is coded as hole writing on piano rolls can in principle also be saved electronically. Mechanical musical instruments have also been controlled by electronic components since the early 1980s. These mostly process MIDI files that contain all control functions. The MIDI information read out by special software is converted into mechanical-pneumatic impulses via electromagnetic valves. Computer software that allows editing of MIDI files, so-called sequencer software, often has a viewing function for the music data in the so-called piano roll notation , which is similar to the punched image of piano rolls (“piano roll editor”).
The information stored in a piano roll is usually read out by pneumatic-mechanical means. For example, atmospheric air is sucked in through the punched holes and triggers a control pulse through the corresponding pressure difference inside the valves. Or the sampling takes place via the so-called downflow principle (often in barrel organ construction). Air under pressure (called wind) is blown out of the holes in the belt. The resulting pressure difference in the wind chest also causes a control function to be activated.
After hundreds of companies had initially produced piano rolls of various formats and perforations in this booming business until after the First World War , American producers agreed on a standard in 1909, the so-called Buffalo Convention .
Reproduction pianos
Rolls for so-called reproduction pianos were made by instrument manufacturers in such a way that the playing of famous pianists was practically recorded. For this purpose, the pianist used a special recording instrument that recorded his keystrokes and the use of the pedals for dynamic play and the removal of the damper on a tape. At first the velocity of the keys could not be recorded; this information was added later by experienced musicians (editors). It was Welte that first developed a process that could also take these game dynamics into account in the recordings (see below).
Reproduction pianos can reproduce the dynamics of real piano playing using the specially encoded information on the piano roll. Different companies had different methods of capturing this dynamic information, some were technically advanced but not necessarily more efficient, some were secret, and some depended entirely on the hand-notes of the recording.
Piano rolls play at a certain speed marked on the beginning of the roll, at which, for example, an entry "70" means that seven feet of paper (approx. 2 meters) can be played within one minute. On all pneumatic pianos, the paper is wound on a take-up reel, and the more paper is wound, the faster the paper is pulled. The technicians of the automatic pianos took this into account, as can be seen from many patents of the time, but because the recording devices for reproduction pianos generally worked with a similar spool, the tempo is reproduced in the same direction and largely faithfully, despite the gradually increasing paper tape speed.
The playing of many pianists and composers of that time is recorded on piano rolls: Gustav Mahler , Edvard Grieg , Claude Debussy , Sergei Rachmaninow , Teresa Carreño , Cécile Chaminade , Alexander Scriabin and George Gershwin are among the numerous composers whose playing was recorded using this technique.
Pianolas
The pianola was originally designed for roles that had not been recorded on a piano. Instead, so-called noteurs or music artists applied markings to a paper tape (master roll) as a more or less interpretive transfer of the music written in notes. The markings were then converted into a hole pattern using punching tools to create an original master roll. This master roll was used as a template and could now be mechanically copied as often as required.
Music played by the pianola sounds mechanical and droning without the assistance of the pianolist, the drawn piano roll lacks artistic design.
If you play a pianola and you don't want the music to sound like an automaton, you have to play the pianola "musically":
The pneumatics of a pianola are driven by pedals, which generate a negative pressure via bellows. In this way, the " pianolist " can influence the dynamics of the playback and use it to set accents, cause crescendos and other effects. Since the speed of playback is essentially fixed, there are also controls and switches for influencing the tempo, usually set with the right hand.
In addition to these two clearly distinguishable piano roll types, there were others that bridged the gap between these two types of instruments. "Hand-played roles" reproduce the notes of a live pianist, but without influencing the dynamics, which allows the owners of a pianola to implement their own ideas of an expert game without having to actually play.
Piano rolls also offer the possibility of creating music that even the most talented pianists can never achieve due to their complexity. Over a hundred composers wrote music especially for automatic pianos as early as the early 20th century . Paul Hindemith , Igor Stravinsky and Conlon Nancarrow deserve special mention . The latter in particular dealt only with “player pianos” throughout his entire artist's life.
“Arranged” rolls are produced by punching holes in the carrier material (paper, foil, sheet metal, cardboard) to trigger the control functions (tones, dampers, dynamics, register switching). Either music notes, sound carriers or other storage media serve as a template. With a skilful approach, this does not necessarily result in a “mechanical” sound, but rather a “humanized” sound, that is to say similar to the hand game, can be generated.
"Hand-recorded roles" are created on a recording device that marks the paper while the pianist plays. The marked paper is then punched at the marks. You can insert additional notes or correct mistakes in the game. This method had been in use since 1904 when the Welte company came out with the Welte-Mignon reproduction piano , which recorded the playing of such famous pianists as Camille Saint-Saëns , Richard Strauss and George Gershwin .
Welte , Hupfeld and Philipps made invaluable records of the playing of famous pianists that left no sound recordings. Around 1911 the manufacture of hand-held reels began in the USA for Duo-Art and AMPICO, and the dynamics could also be reproduced on various types of pianos as the pianist recorded them.
Manufacturer
There were hundreds of companies around the world making piano rolls during the heyday of the automatic pianos between 1900 and 1927. The serial production of piano rolls ended in 2009. Some of the larger companies are listed below, along with their most famous artists:
- QRS Company - James P. Johnson , Fats Waller , Zez Confrey , Max Kortlander , Pete Wendling , J. Lawrence Cook , and Victor Arden
- Imperial - Charley Straight , Roy Bargey
- Vocal style - Jelly Roll Morton , Mary Allison, Walter Davison
The Welte-Mignon brand was known for its reproduction rolls, and their systems have enabled a largely exact reproduction of the artist's attack and dynamics since 1905. From around 1906, Hupfeld and Philipps also created a large repertoire of artist rolls and reproduction rolls for their Hupfeld DEA and Philipps DUCA systems. The manufacturers Duo-Art and Ampico had also been able to record the dynamics of a pianist's piano playing since 1911.
Duo-Art had artists such as Shura Cherkassky , Alfred Cortot , Frank Milne , Teresa Carreño , and Dagmar Nordström in its repertoire . The Ampico company had artists such as Sergei Rachmaninow , Leo Ornstein and Marguerite Volavy under contract. For Welte-Mignon u. a. Artists like Gustav Mahler , Claude Debussy and George Gershwin . By Ignacy Paderewski , there are seats for all three systems.
research
Since 2007, piano rolls have been the subject of music historical research as significant sources of music history. In a research project of the Bern University of the Arts, the piano rolls were examined as a source in the Geisterhand project and reassessed. As a sequel, the project “Recording the Soul of Piano Playing” has been researching since 2012. In the Deutsches Museum in Munich since 2013, runs DFG project to tap and digitizing the collection of piano rolls for player pianos. The Stanford University (USA) with the Player Piano Project very active in research and publication on the subject.
See also
literature
- Elaine Obenchain: The complete catalog of Ampico Reproducing Piano rolls . American Piano Co., New York circa 1977, ISBN 0-9601172-1-0 .
- Charles Davis Smith: Duo-Art piano music: a complete classified catalog of music recorded for the Duo-Art reproducing piano compiled and annotated by Charles Davis Smith . Monrovia, California circa 1987, OCLC 17940137 .
- Gerhard Dangel, Hans-W. Schmitz: Welte Mignon Reproductions / Welte Mignon Reproductions. Complete catalog of recordings for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano 1905–1932 / Complete Library Of Recordings For The Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano 1905–1932 . Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-00-017110-X .
- Barbara Bryner: The piano roll: a valuable recording medium of the twentieth century . Dept. of Music, University of Utah, 2002, OCLC 50482085 .
Web links
Player Piano Project , Stanford University website
Overview of piano roll types , website of FaszinationPianola
Global Piano Roll Meetings , website of the Bern University of the Arts (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ US Patent 287,599, Emil Welte, New York, October 30, 1883 [1] (PDF)
- ↑ Mark Sommer in: Buffalo News, Jan. 03, 2009: The day the music died. QRS has ended production of player-piano roll ( Memento from June 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Digitization and evaluation of paper rolls for reproduction organs and pianos
- ↑ Recording the Soul of Piano Playing
- ↑ Indexing and digitization of piano rolls for self-playing pianos from the collection of the Deutsches Museum ( Memento of the original from 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
