Althouse: I'm sitting next to a player piano that's playing crappily.

August 11, 2015

I'm sitting next to a player piano that's playing crappily.

How does that even happen?

Is it playing back the last set played by the actual lounge pianist who last sat here? Is that how player pianos work these digital days?

36 comments:

Ann Althouse said...: WTF is Althouse doing in a "lounge"???; 8/11/15, 6:06 PM
Ann Althouse said...: It's the cheesball best of Frank Sinatra. I've sat through the whole cycle, which got back the "Luck Be a Lady," which, weirdly enough is a clue to where I am.; 8/11/15, 6:18 PM
Bob Ellison said...: It takes a human to do it right. Invite me to your piano lounge.; 8/11/15, 6:29 PM
Bob Ellison said...: good piano; 8/11/15, 6:35 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: He self-identifies as a good Piano player - who is anyone to judge?; 8/11/15, 6:51 PM
ken in tx said...: A digital player piano can play back a previous performance or play from a pre-recorded CD.; 8/11/15, 6:57 PM
Bricap said...: Can't be Vegas. Has to be Trump's Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.; 8/11/15, 7:02 PM
Anonymous said...: Don't shoot the player piano-- it's doing its best to cope with the meter change since they had to change the song to 'Luck be a cis-bi-female'.; 8/11/15, 7:16 PM
pm317 said...: casino?; 8/11/15, 7:26 PM
richard mcenroe said...: the paper rolls get worn.; 8/11/15, 7:35 PM
Chris N said...: You haven't lived until you've passed an hour in 'Bubbles,' listening to a player-piano inside a wine bar tucked into a corner of O'Hare.

That's where I was last Saturday trying to get around their signal-muffling, metered network connection.

F**k off with your half-hour rates!; 8/11/15, 7:42 PM
Bob Ellison said...: "Luck,Be a Lady Tonight" was Brando, not Sinatra.; 8/11/15, 7:45 PM
rhhardin said...: Granados plays Granados youtube player piano roll.; 8/11/15, 7:58 PM
Oscar DeNoe said...: "Good Piano" Bob Ellison, thanks for the direction. Really rural I am. Unlikely I'll ever again be back in places I might hear such magnificent sounds live. I worry now and then. How much longer will YouTube cost zero?; 8/11/15, 8:17 PM
Beldar said...: One of my favorite recordings is Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting a full orchestra, playing early 20th Century instruments, and accompanying a piano-roll version of George Gershwin on piano playing "Rhapsody in Blue."; 8/11/15, 8:25 PM
madAsHell said...: Crappily? I'm not familiar with the tune.; 8/11/15, 8:29 PM
madAsHell said...: Wait!?!?! I'm re-reading this, and I see the crappily was your choice of words.
Is there alcohol involved?; 8/11/15, 8:32 PM
madAsHell said...: "that crappily" not "the crappily"; 8/11/15, 8:33 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Oscar DeNoe, the music will reach out to you. Thanks for listening.; 8/11/15, 8:48 PM
LarryK said...: Not The Ivory Room? The piano players there do not play crappily, from my experience. They're damn good, and usually entertaining.; 8/11/15, 9:19 PM
Wince said...: 'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off; 8/11/15, 9:26 PM
Wince said...: 'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off; 8/11/15, 9:26 PM
Quaestor said...: Is that how player pianos work these digital days?M

That's the way player pianos worked even when they were first invented. Not every piano could record to a roll, but there were some made that could even record dynamics, sustain, as well as simple key up - key down. In my collection I have a 4-track reel-to-reel tape of Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic in "Rhapsody in Blue" with the piano part on a player piano reading rolls recorded by George Gershwin, himself in 1925. Every nuance of Gershwin's performance is recorded on those rolls.

Listen.; 8/11/15, 10:06 PM
Quaestor said...: Oops, I didn't see Beldar's comment. Glad to know he and I share a musical taste. He's evidently a superior man. /snarc off; 8/11/15, 10:09 PM
Quaestor said...: Back when player pianos were The Thing all the rolls were created by a live performance recorded on another player piano. Then as now there were good players, bad players, cheap players, and expensive players. All the piano companies made them, even Steinway. Yamaha made some of the very best, which cemented their reputation as a world-class industrial enterprise.

The only limitation on the best players was in the roll itself, which I understand could play for about 5 minutes, necessitating multiple rolls for long pieces like "Rhapsody in Blue."

Cheap players, like the kind in road houses and speakeasies that played a song for a nickel, couldn't read the dynamic lines or control the sustain, which is why they sound peculiar - every note has the same loudness, the same attack, the same dwell and sustain. Nor did the cheap ones have RPM governors, so these players often read rolls at the wrong speed.; 8/11/15, 10:26 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I remember the old player pianos where you had to pump 2 pedals to make it go and that controlled the speed.; 8/11/15, 11:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Jual Filter Air; 8/12/15, 1:07 AM
rcommal said...: Crap, Althouse: That's what this post is. You just noticed how that memory of yours leaked away decades ago? And that's just about you, not actually about other people who actually cared about that sort of thing and spent time on it.

Eh, well, never now no mind. Yet:; 8/12/15, 2:05 AM
rcommal said...: I do care about a lot of the stuff about which you do not and also about which you do.; 8/12/15, 2:14 AM
Anonymous said...: Thanks for the link, Quaestor! Very cool.; 8/12/15, 2:30 AM
Bob R said...: All(?) digital pianos convert the information from the keyboard into a digital code called MIDI which contains information like pitch, volume, duration, velocity. "Every nuance" is a bit of a stretch. Good (even mediocre) keyboard players can tell the difference between analog and digital. Old piano rolls are analog, but they still compress the information from the keyboard.

At any rate, you can now easily record the MIDI rather than the final sound and then play the midi through a sampler or synthesizer to create the sound. The piano you say next to was just for show. You could get the same sound out of little box fed to a speaker system. As it has been throughout the history of recorded music, if you record a crappy player, you get crappy music.

And yes, thanks to Quaestor for the link.; 8/12/15, 5:42 AM
Bob R said...: I remember the old player pianos where you had to pump 2 pedals to make it go and that controlled the speed. You can do that easily today, but the more common thing (even when playing live) is to transpose or change the pitch. Most keyboards have a transpose button on them. I have a friend who has perfect pitch, and it really bugs him to play the piano and have the "wrong" notes come out. Fortunately, he's also a good enough piano player to play in a key like C#.; 8/12/15, 6:12 AM
dbp said...: All these theories above are possible but I think the most likely explanation is that the piano is out of tune.

I remember the ones you ran by pumping pedals: If I recall correctly, there was some annotation on the roll about the speed and you could use a metronome to keep proper pace.; 8/12/15, 8:02 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: "I'm sitting next to a player piano that's playing crappily."

Maybe it is just playing jazz.

I am Laslo.; 8/12/15, 8:35 AM
Jason said...: There's a whole CD out there of the Gershwin Piano Rolls. Not just Rhapsody in Blue, but a lot of his shorter pieces.

What an absolute crazy genius he was. I didn't appreciate the Gersh until I heard those rolls and got a window into how he thought and played with his own two hands from that CD.; 8/12/15, 8:43 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Player pianos always sound crappy, at least a little bit. Maybe the CD is a little too accurately recreating the experience.; 8/12/15, 3:15 PM