Player piano

The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction, brought by radios, contributed to a decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.

[2] The first practical pneumatic piano player, manufactured by the Aeolian Company and called the "Pianola",[3] was invented in 1896 by Edwin S. Votey, and came into widespread use in the 20th century.

The mechanism of this player piano was all-pneumatic: foot-operated bellows provided a vacuum to operate a pneumatic motor and drive the take-up spool, while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two stages to sufficient strength to strike a note.

This caused problems for many small manufacturers, who had already invested in 65-note player operations, ultimately resulting in rapid consolidation in the industry.

This consensus was crucial for avoiding a costly format war, which plagued almost every other form of entertainment medium that followed roll music.

It created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll.

The other major advance was the arrival in America of two commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano: the Ampico (from 1911 but fully 're-enacting' by 1916) and the Duo-Art (1914).

In England, the Aeolian Company continued to sell classical material, and customers remained willing to contribute to performances by following directions printed on the rolls and operate the hand and foot controls themselves.

Sydney Grew, in his manual The Art of the Piano Player, published in London in 1922, said that "it takes about three years to make a good player-pianist of a man or woman of average musical intelligence.

Different player systems have different perforation sizes, channel layouts and spool fittings though the majority conform to one or two predominant formats latterly adopted as the industry standard.

The player piano sold globally in its heyday, and music rolls were manufactured extensively in the US, as well as most European countries, South America, Australia and New Zealand.

The MIDI files can trigger solenoids, which use electric current to drive small mechanical plungers mounted to the key action inside the piano.

Live performance or computer generated music can be recorded in MIDI file format for accurate reproduction later on such instruments.

The conversion process usually involves cutting open the bottom of the piano to install mechanical parts under the keyboard, although one organization—Logos Foundation—has manufactured a portable, external kit.

A new player piano conversion kit was introduced in 2007-08 by Wayne Stahnke, the inventor of the Bösendorfer SE reproducing system, called the "LX".

Electrical components in post-pneumatic versions are limited to moving the keys or hammers mimicking the actions of a person; sound is not generated or amplified electronically.