The Player Piano
Have you ever listened to a pianist and thought to yourself "I wish I could play like that"? With a player piano you can play like that. It allows anyone to be a musician without first learning the complex technical skill of playing the piano. By automating the task of operating the piano keys, it frees the player pianist to concentrate on producing music.
A player piano starts with an ordinary piano. Inside the piano's case is an extra mechanism, the player. The player mechanism reads a roll of paper with holes perforated in it, and when a hole is read it operates a finger to play the piano mechanism. It can control the piano action with almost the same sensitivity as a pianist playing the piano keys. How it does this is be described in the history page.
Each player pianist will operate the player mechanism differently, according to their own musical tastes. Because the player piano responds precisely to the player pianist's controls, each performance is therefore different. In other words, the player piano is a musical instrument in its own right. To read "On Playing the 'Pianola" by Reginald Reynolds see the "playing page"
Although often thought of as a 'honky-tonk' hammering out ragtime music, the player piano is capable of much else, right up to being soloist with a full symphony orchestra. In fact, the player piano can do almost anything a conventional piano can, as well as some things no pianist could ever manage.
Player pianos were first marketed in the late 1890s. Mechanical music had been available for many years before this (in such devices as the clockwork barrel piano). These early instruments offer no real dynamic or tempo control, and genuinely provide mechanical music. After being switched on they work with no further intervention.
The player piano is quite different. It is truly 'interactive' in modern-day terminology in that the player pianist hears and adapts the performance in real time, and it is provided with all the controls essential for producing music. This adaptability, in the eyes of its enthusiasts, raises the instrument out of the ordinary run of 'mechanical music'.
AUTOMATIC MUSIC REPRODUCTION
Players pianos operate by means of pre-programmed media operating the player mechanism. These media developed over a period of years much as did computer media in today's age.
Early systems used a large wooden barrel with notes represented as pins and "bridges" round the surface of the barrel. This was essentially the same theory as later used in musical boxes. Despite improvements such as arranging the music in a spiral along the length of the barrel the music length could never be particularly long. Debain patented a system involving (rather impractical) wooden blocks which had one face pinned similarly producing music allowing longer pieces to be fed into the player block by block.
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Further ideas arranged the notes on rotating disks of metal or card. The gramophone developed from these ideas of spiralling along a barrel and later round a disk. Gavioli developed the idea of using Jacquard-loom type puched cards to operate musical instruments. For the domestic market the criteria for success would be a cheaply made media, not bulky, with a long playing time.
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The solution was found in paper rolls. Paper rolls had been used in small hand cranked organs. Scaling the idea up for a full sized piano system required developing a system to read large rolls and play a full sized piano. With early small organs often the air went straight through the holes cut in the paper roll to play the organ reed. Whilst this was sufficient for the requirements of small hand cranked organs the same principle would not operate a piano. The mechanism to convert the signal from the hole in the paper roll into a mechanical action to play the piano had first to be perfected. See the history pages for more details as to how this was done.
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PIANO ROLL PAPER
Player roll advances also advanced paper-making technology. Early papers expanded easily due to atmospheric conditions meaning rolls went out of alignemnt. Paper that was relatively stable under different climatic conditions was gradually perfected. Paper composition was also an issue. Cheap grade papers made for cheap piano rolls but these are prone do deterioration (as opposed to acid-free papers) and literally crumble after decades. Some makers initially sought to solve their paper troubles by using very dense paper bordering on card which would resist climatic change easier.
PIANO ROLL SPOOLS
Roll spools come in many varieties but all essentially hold the paper and have one spool end shaped so that it engages with the player mechanism rewind at the end. Spool cores and flanges at each end are usually wooden or metal on early rolls. Rolls from the 1920's and 30's are usually cardboard core with bakelite ends and more recently plastic has become the natural substitute. On most 58 & 65-note rolls there are 2 metal pins at each end which hold the roll in place in the player spoolbox with one of the pins having a drive lug to engage the rewind mechanism. On most 88-note rolls each end has a depression instead of pins one of which has a slot to engage the rewind mechanism.
Early rolls often have an adjustable roll flange to allow space for paper expansions and contraction. Some players have adjustable take-up spools similarly. This all serves to ensure that that music roll unrolls squarely across the trakcer bar and the music reporduces correctly.
PIANO ROLL PUNCHING
The roll paper is the "program" for the mechanism which is like an early computers. Like a binary system, each channel is either in the "on" or "off" state. Careful programming of peripheral mechanisms adjusting volume and other functions makes for a life-like performance. See the reproducing piano page for more details of such instruments. Musical notes are generally arranged chromatically with additional functions arranged varyingly between brands. Coding of such rolls is non-transferable as a general rule as periphal mechanisms operate diffeently across brands and so require different arrangements of hole punching to operate correctly. You may consider this a bit like the way different computer systems have developed. Similar, most early systems gradually fell by the wayside until only one or two main ones were left which became the industry standard.
Rolls were made in three manners generally. (i) by marking off the notes directly onto a large graph like sheet which was then converted into a master roll to operate the roll perforating machinery (ii) by a "marking piano" the keyboard of which marked the graph paper-type sheets for masters rolls thus simplifying the marking process (iii) by a real-time recording piano which marked off the master roll in real time as a live pianist played. Most reproducing rolls were made in this last manner though dynamic coding to the roll was a very complex process and was generally not fully automated. In all methods much editing was usually required to make the initial recording into the finished product. In this respect, todays recording industry (CDs DVDs etc) is just the same.
Punching machinery is generally operated via a master roll. This consist of the roll perforations spaced out singly onto a sprocketed wide card roll many times longer than the finished product. The roll being punched is advanced much slower than the master roll. Hence, the adjacent individial perforations on the master roll will overlap on the finished roll creating note slots. Plain transfer from sheet music to roll using exact note values produces a very mechanical sounding performance. There is, therefore, a very fine art in arranging notes onto the roll and selecting their ultimate lengths to produce the correct rhythms.
MUSIC FOR THE PLAYER PIANO
Music for the player piano is boundless. The player, unlike a human, has no limit on the amount of notes it can play. It will play whatever is on the roll. It is not limited to, say, 16-note polyphony unlike modern electric keyboards and the like. Solos, duets, trios, music for two pianos, music arranged from an orchestral score and music composed specifically for the player piano are all possible.
Many well-known composers have taken advantage of this fact and arranged music specially for the player piano. Percy Grainger believed greatly in the players ability to produce music beyond the scope of normal hand performance and arranged a verison of his "Shepherds Hey" for the pianola. Stravinsky also produced similar player-only versions of his compositions. More recently the late Conlon Nancorrow's virtual entire repertoire consisted of items composed direct onto piano roll with no consideration given to human playing limitations.
These oddities aside most of the music on roll consists of, well....the rest of music generally. Everything from classics to modern day pop tunes. If it's a tune playable on a keyboard there's no reason why it can't go onto a roll.