It was the hot technology a hundred years ago. A player piano looked just like a regular piano, but it was capable of playing songs without a person. In an age when audio recordings sounded scratchy and tinny, the player piano delivered full, rich sound. With a player piano, anyone could have the gift of music in the home. Businesses brought them in as well, so that people could enjoy music as they dined.
The player piano was, for its time, an amazing piece of technology. Although later ones did run on electricity, most player pianos were powered by simple foot pumps, fed through a very complex pneumatic system. They offered a choice of different songs and even technological advancements like auto-transposition and tempo control. They were the marvels of their day.
Because YouTube has everything
Of course someone made an explainer showing the guts of a player piano. Of course they did. So, take a look at this video that goes through the ins and outs of what makes this amazing technology work.
You have to be amazed by two things here. First of all, that someone would be able to invent such a monstrosity of tubes and rods and bellows. Second, that 110 years later, someone would understand the technology well enough to repair it. I remember someone I knew had a player piano 40 years ago, and it was hard enough back then to get someone to maintain it although player piano tech had only gone out 45 years earlier. Now we’re so far away from the heyday of the player piano that it’s amazing that anyone understands the things.
The key to the music: player piano rolls
The player piano roll was an offshoot of one of the very first data storage methods. Long before computers, makers of fancy tapestries had a way to reproduce the same design over and over. They used plates with holes in them that corresponded to where the needles went. The same technology would later be used for computers. Long before optical storage or hard drives, computers ran on large stacks of paper cards. Player piano rolls worked much the same way.
A player piano roll had a series of holes that would uncover spaces in a vacuum bar. With the space uncovered, a particular key would be free to hit the sounding board, and the piano would make a sound. This was technically an “analog” technology. A piano player would play a song, while a series of pencils inscribed a master roll. That master roll had the pencil marks replaced with holes, and then the roll could be duplicated easily. When one of the duplicates was mounted on a player piano, it was as if the original piano player was playing, live.
Believe it or not, these rolls are still made today. Here’s a video from a decade ago, showing their manufacture:
And surprisingly, the leading maker of piano rolls, QRS, is still in business. Today they still make player piano rolls, but they also have more modern music recording technologies for sale. Pretty cool that a company that’s been around over 100 years now has an e-commerce site. All I can say is that I hope Solid Signal still has customers in 2123. Who knows, maybe they’ll still read this blog.
