There have been several posts about the pianocorder and recording music for the many now present player units. Here is the history as I see it. I may be incorrect in some of the details, but here goes. Some engineers working for Teledyne in Tennessee developed an electronic reproducing piano. It was marketed with limited success with some problems. Joseph Tushinski of Superscope being a player piano buff and the owner of 18000 reproducing piano rolls bought the product and through cleaning up the design and promoting the product and training classes put it on the market. The sales forecast was 50000 unit per year (sales were less than 20000 for the life of the product of about15 years). I attempted to get a dealership since I had a strong interest in pianos and had a good electronic background. I was given the bums rush. They only wanted to deal with large piano and organ stores. After that failed miserably, they reduced their requirements and gave anybody a dealership that could buy 2 units and a 200 dollar spare parts kit. I qualified for that. I made a decent living installing them during the next few years. I had developed better techniques to install them for better performance and concentrated on weird antique pianos such as Viennese grands etc. I was still working in the corporate world part time. Joseph Tushinski became senile and then died. It was common knowledge that the financial management of Superscope hated the pianocorder since it was Joe's hobby and did not produce enough profits considering the problems associated with the product. Superscope then lost a significant amount of money and was facing bankruptcy. It was bought out by another large company that I can't remember the name of. It was this company that sold the Pianocorder division to Yamaha. It's my understanding that Yamaha had attempted to buy the patents for the pianocorder. They really wanted the copyrights to the music. The company said "We won't sell you the patents, but we'll sell you the whole division" That's what happened. Yamaha then flew some of their executives to North Carolina to visit the factory they'd just bought. Lo and behold! There was no factory. The independent company that had been producing the product had already filed bankruptcy and the building had been sold and Yamaha then had to get the inventory out of there. At the Toronto natl convention I had a Yamaha employee ensure me that Yamaha would continue to market the Pianocorder (I won't give his name to protect the guilty). Us dealers that had been in limbo for several months then were informed that the product would be discontinued and inventory would be sold to existing dealers until liquidated. An aquantenace of mine that had worked for Pianocorder was hired as a consultant to Yamaha to convert the music to midi to be compatible to Disklavier. He told me "It's easy to convert pianocorder to midi, but it's hard to get it to sound good." They are two totally different systems. The pianocorder system used a scheme similar to the duoart. An expression signal was produced for the bass and another for the treble. Midi uses an expression value for each note played. I was told that even though the copyrights for the pianocorder were owned that to release the same music in a different format (Midi) required a new release. Pianocorder initially released 300 45 minute cassettes of music. Most of this was transcribed from Joe's piano rolls. I'm sure they were transcribe by various people. Some of this music was not bad, but some was not so good. I think this was because the response of pneumatic devices is similar in turn on and turn off. A solenoid turns on quickly, but turns off (drops out) slowly due to the energy stored in the inductance. I've measured this to be about 40 milliseconds of delay. Expression was limited on some cassettes to prevent loss of notes. Later some celebrity series were released that were head and shoulders better due to better techniques. For instance, Liberace was recorded digitally as well as auditory and then a skilled musician edited the digital to sound as much like the audio a possible. There were 12 cassettes released with this technique. Most were superb. As for recording, that is a difficult job to do. I had a pianocorder set up with a record feature and had Joanne Castle make a recording on it . She did Lara's theme. At first it did okay, but when she got fancy the system just lost it. It was a simple minded system to do an extremely difficult job. When piano disk or pianomation say they are midi compatible, that doesn't mean it will sound good unless the music was created for the system it is to be played on. A solenoid player system has an inherent threshold below which there will be no sound. Remember that a pneumatic player system has the maximum power at the beginning of the stroke, but a solenoid has the maximum power at the end of the stroke. This means that a solenoid must be given an additional burst of power to get it to move and then it's not easy to slow it down. Combine this with the severe loss of power due to heat in the winding of the solenoid, and is it any wonder that expression at low volume is hard to achieve in an electronic system? I won't service the record portion of the pianocorder. It's not worth it. I prefer to remove it if the customer will agree. Converting a piano cd to play on a player is not feasible. That's why it isn't available. It's two completely different concepts. By the way, I've probably got the largest supply of pianocorder parts west of the Mississippi. Carl Meyer Assoc. PTG Santa Clara, California cmpiano@attbi.com > PianoDisc, (and their competitors for that matter), is based on midi > technology. These are digital data, NOT music recordings. In other > words you cannot just take a music CD and convert it to play on a > PianoDisc system. > > PianoDisc recordings are made in a studio on a piano equipped with a > recording system, (also available as a consumer option). In the studio > however, the recordings are input directly into a computer for editing > with midi software rather than on a control box disk. During the > recording, as is in most midi applications, the system not only records > which note is being played at any given time and how long plays, but > also the note's velocity, (i.e. volume). Simultaneously the sustain > pedal data is also recorded. Once the artist is finished and the data > is in the computer the recording can be edited using midi sequencing > software. The editing is not intended for changing the recording or > adding/taking away expression, but to simply remove subtle mistakes and > nuances that the pianist may have made. This is done with the artists > approval and personal satisfaction and not necessarily PianoDisc's. > Once the editing has been completed it is ready to be converted to > PianoDisc's system format and put onto disks for distribution. > > There is one exception to this process, that being their "live > orchestrated" disks which include not only the digital piano data but > also "live accompaniment" from other musicians. These recordings are > made in the same way as any normal audio recording would me made in a > studio other than that the piano portion is recorded in the same midi > digital method mentioned above rather than acoustically. After editing > the digital piano portion the accompaniment audio tracks and the digital > piano data are rejoined as single recording and burned onto CD ready to > play. > > The PianoDisc recordings of famous dead pianists such Horowitz, > Rubinstein, and Rachmaninoff are transcribed from old reproducing player > piano rolls. Specifically, these would be from systems capable of > playing the dynamics such as the Ampico, DuoArt, and Welte players. > Many now deceased artists made recordings for these pianos. The > dynamic expression of these recordings are remarkable. Many piano techs > poo poo these pianos thinking that they were little more than basic old > players. They in fact were not. Unfortunately there are only a handful > of rebuilders in the country experienced and capable of rebuilding these > pianos so that they play they way they did when new. If you listen to > one of these fully and properly restored instruments play these > recordings as intended it would knock you off your feet in amazement at > how capable and lifelike they really are, particularly when considering > the early 20th century technology involved. The transcribed PianoDisc > recordings from these old systems are still probably less than perfect > but with at least most of the expression present and having been played > but the artists themselves they are quite remarkable treasures. It is a > blessing that we have these recordings preserved today. It is also a > tragedy that many of these fine old reproducing players are lost forever > by dealers, technicians, and rebuilders who have raped them by > discarding their player systems in order to sell them quickly in the > name of money. Once they are gone they are gone forever and can never > be replaced. To learn more about these reproducing pianos and their > recordings I would recommend the following books: > > "Re-Enacting The Artist" by Larry Givens, (currently out of print but > worth it's weight in gold if you can find it.) > > "Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments" by Q. David Bowers, > (wanders in and out of print and expensive but well worth the money.) > > "Player Piano Servicing and Rebuilding" by Arthur A. Reblitz (in print, > mostly technical, but excellent information and a must for restorations). > > "The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments" By Arthur A. Reblitz. > (This is his latest work and is specifically on the history of > automatic music machines, their recordings, and their abilities. It > took Art over ten years of research to assemble and is also the only > book available with detailed color photographs of these machines both > assembled and disassembled. Again very expensive but well worth it if > you are seriously interested in learning about these machines). > > > Rob Goodale, RPT > Las Vegas, NV > > > > > Charles Neuman wrote: > > >I got into a discussion with someone about whether you can take any > >recording and retrieve enough data from it to make a good playback on a > >player system, including dynamics. From PianoDisc's website, this is what > >they offer: > > > > Our CD Music Library contains songs in every category of music. The > > highly acclaimed and ever-expanding Artist Series includes recordings > > by today's top performers. Our Masterpiece Collection contains > > classical selections performed by some of the legendary pianists of the > > 20th century, including Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein and Sergei > > Rachmaninoff. > > > >The question is, how did they get this data? Was it a painstaking process > >of trial and error for each recording until they got it right? Or do they > >have the technology to easily convert any recording into digital data that > >would faithfully reproduce a piano performance on a PianoDisc system? > >Anybody know? > > > >Charles Neuman > >PTG Assoc, Long Island - Nassau > > > >
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