The player piano is a type of Piano which plays of the Musique without the assistance of a Pianiste to press the keys or the pedals.
In the place, they are actuated by mechanical systems , pneumatic S or electric.
One cannot allot the invention of this musical instrument to only one person. Indeed, its many mechanisms were invented over one long period, mainly during second half of the 19th century.
One of the first examples was the pianista developed by Henri Fourneaux in 1863. Most known was the pianola created by Edwin Scott Votey in 1895 in its workshop of Detroit.
The player pianos were sometimes built by assembling cords and musical boxes with wind inside. This kind of instruments was called a Orchestrion and was built since approximately 1840.
One of the largest firms in this field was the company américano-allemande Mr. Welte & Sons, fabricante of Welte-Nice and Wurlitzer-Company, rested by German immigrants of Bavaria. These enormous machines were the most complex instruments ever built, except for some organ. The player piano knew its peak of popularity in first half of the 20th century, approximately at the same moment as the Gramophone.
Types of player pianos
The player pianos most current are those actuated by a pneumatic system (via pedals actuated with the foot or of an electrical motor). There are mainly two types: the first, entirely automatic, accurately reproduced the interpretation which a pianist of the music would make; the other does not have the nuances of an execution on line. Today, there exist pianos equipped with a device of sensors and electrical motors under each key, ordered by an electronic system and a memory. That makes it possible to play a piece recorded on a diskette, or to record the play of the pianist in order to restore it later.
Player piano and electronic piano
The principal difference between the player piano and the electronic piano lies in the production of the sound. The player piano is a normal piano made up of cords struck by hammers actuated by the keys of the keyboard. The electric piano produces the sound thanks to a synthetizer which translates information with a whole of loudspeakers, the keys of the keyboard are nothing any more but switches starting the reading of the sample or the electronic generation of the note to each depression.
The modern piano electronic are generally called numerical pianos and can behave like a player piano, capable of rejouer a preregistered piece. Since 2004, some models can be connected on Internet and download sequences to be done to play by the instrument, like a player piano.
Historical interest
Appeared before the disc 78 turns, the player piano enables us to have an idea of the interpretation of large traditional pianists like Debussy or Rachmaninov, or of Ragtime like Scott Joplin.Recording-witnesses were even carried out according to the process AMPICO ( AMerican PIano COmpany ). They are the movements of the keys and the pedals which were recorded as the pianist played. That allowed a kind of “resurrection of the play” of prestigious pianists like Rachmaninov, such as Busoni, Paderewski, Dumesnil who recorded with this system at the beginning of the 20th century.
External bonds
- the general history of the player piano, in English, published by the Pianola Institute in London
www.pianola.org - Site in French and Dutch, published by the Museum of the Musical instruments in Brussels
www.pianola.be - Today, AMPICO is the name of the association which supports the republication of these files by a data-processing process (official site).
- Parallèle enters the player pianos and the use of the music of Ragtime, with some sound extracts in MP3.
- Player Group Piano: The U.K. company
- Themodist Music - rollers and partitions
- Pianola Forum
- The Player Group Piano in YouTube
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