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Player Pianos
A Musical Connection Between Generations
Outselling regular pianos in the early 20th century, player pianos will certainly go down as one of the most influential musical instruments in history. The foot pumped player is still common in homes to this day and serves as a link to the past, playing music exactly as it did decades ago. Reproducing pianos are able to almost perfectly replicate the sound of a live pianist, be the music classical, popular, or sophisticated jazz! Commercial coin operated pianos drew customers to speakeasies, restaurants, hotels, and made money while doing it. Even now, self-playing pianos continue to marvel and amaze, bringing the music of yesterday to the 21st century.
Player Pianos and their music
The home player piano was, and to some extent continues to be one of the most popular musical instruments in all American households. Originally, the standard player piano was strictly foot-pumped. The player piano 'player' would speed up and slow down pumping to add expression, but it didn't take long for electric players to become popular - and by the player piano revival of the 1950's and 60's, having an electric 'suction unit' was very common.
There's no expression coded into a normal 88 note piano roll, so having a constant amount of suction will result in music that does not express. Regardless, the sheer amount of piano rolls produced results in an almost limitless amount of music to listen to. One of the most popular piano roll arrangers: J. Lawrence Cook made around 10,000 piano rolls. There are likely hundreds of thousands of piano roll arrangements!
Reproducing Pianos can imitate the most famous pianists of the 20th century! Not only are all 88 keys accessible by roll, intricate musical expression is controlled by perforations and mechanisms to interpret these perforations for performance. With a reproducing piano, you can have George Gershwin in your home playing "Rhapsody In Blue" just as he did originally. In fact, orchestras in the past have taken this to a whole new level - accompanying a reproducer live in concerts celebrating Gershwin.
The music roll pictured is for a Steinway Duo-Art; expression perforations are on the sides of the playing notes.
Upright coin-operated player pianos were made by various manufacturers across the United States and were immensely popular up until the Prohibition. Listening to 'nickelodeon' music is one of the best ways to enjoy hits of the jazz age, and rolls don't wear out like a 78 record! Hot tunes of the 10's, 20's, and 30's were often transcribed from normal 88 note player piano rolls and extended for additional percussion, pipes, and expression. It was also common for firms to do in house arrangements exclusively for coin pianos.
The following photos show a Wurlitzer CX and its unique 'roll changer' mechanism. Below are other fine examples of upright coin operated pianos.
This video features an extremely rare instrument built by the National Electric Piano Company - of which only two complete examples exist. It plays the Peerless 'O' roll which is an entirely different 'O' roll from what is used by Coinola pianos.
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Take notice of the 'rotary' pump in the bottom of the piano with four different 'feeders' or 'pumps' supplying vacuum and air for the instrument. Many firms in the 1920's used rotary pumps due to being highly efficient!
The market for these unfortunately took a huge plummet during The Great Depression and with the invention of amplified sound. Luckily, their size is what has undoubtedly saved many of these instruments.
Being able to be stored in homes and back rooms of a store has allowed for instruments to still be discovered to this day!
'Cabinet' coin-operated player pianos became extremely popular after the Prohibition was enacted. These small pianos were able to fit in just about any corner of a speakeasy or 'joint'! Despite their size, many still have a large amount of instrumentation and percussion - space being saved by not having a keyboard and using a smaller piano plate. The cabinet pianos of the 10's and 20's are some of the most innovative music machines and are well-loved by collectors living in smaller spaces!
On Left: Nelson Wiggen Style 8,
Below: Wurlitzer Pianino