Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1889-12-26
THE PIANO HAND ORGANS.
How Those Popular Instruments Of the
Street Are Made.

.
| Street Are Made.
Their musical merits aside, the me-
chanical pianos trundled about the streets
by the re-established peripatetic perform
ers are remarkable affairs. The princi-
pie on which they are made is, of course,
well known. They are enlarged music
boxes, the hammers that strike the wires
being set in action by coming in contact
with minute pegs set in a cylinder that
extends the whole length of the frame,
or, popularity, the key board. In the
largest Of these pianos the cylinder is
pegged to play ten tunes, and it takes
one complete revolution of the cylinder
to finish one tune. After that the per-
former may continue to grind out the
same tune again, or by moving lever
push the cylinder forward by as much as
the width of one peg, and so bring out a
different piece.
These pegs are not nearly as broad as
a pin head, and the fact that, unpleasant
as the machines are to a trained ear,
they rarely if ever strike false notes, is
evidence of the care and nicely en-
ployed in their construction. For, in a
machine pegged for ten tunes, the cylin-
der is simply black with the pegs, and
the slightest inaccuracy in placing them
would bring out wrong note some
| where.
The relation of the pegs to the ham,
mers may be understood if one plays his
two hands side by side upon the table,
palms down. The fingers and thumb
may represent the pegs, each peg play
ing its part in the different tunes. The
space between the levers which one peg
lifts is just wide enough to pass nine
other pegs. 1t happens, of course, that
the same note does not occur in every
one.of the ten tunes; in that case no peg
would be driven in in the line of ten
when it came to setting tho cylinder for
this especial piece.
A manufacturer in Elizabeth street
makes most if not all of the mechanical
pianos heard on the streets in this neigh
borhood. He makes everything in his
own establishment.
"There," said he, pointing to pile of
lumber, "are well seasoned boards that
are being kept for working into frames
and other parts of the piano. There is
the machine for making the wires. And
all through the house are materials for
the various parts of the instruments and
the tools for putting them into shape.
Now, the piano that was played in front
of The Sun Office Immediately after the
aldermen rescinded their order forbid
ding street music was one of the best we
ever made. If kept within doors and
played moderately, like house, piano it
would remain in good tune for many
weeks; in fact, as long as the swell in.
struments. Played out of doors, it gets
out of tune more quickly. The exposure
to the weather and the rumbling over
rough pavements, as we'll as constant
playing, brings this about. The men
who have pianos in use bring them in
here on an average of once in two weeks
to get them retuned. Of course, another
influence to put them out of tune is the
extreme force with which the wires are
struck"
"How is music adjusted to the cylin-
der?"
"It requires not only musician but
man who understands the mechanism of
the machine to do this. The first thing
after selecting the composition is to buy
the piano score. Then the musician
takes sheet of paper just large enough
to cover the cylinder entirely and writes
the piece upon it in dots. The dots cor
respond to the pegs. The musician, of
course, knows the mechanism, so that he
can tell where to place dot to bring out
the corresponding tone. When he has
marked the paper over, mechanic uses
it for a chart, and drives pegs into the
cylinder exactly on the spots indicated
by the dots. But the musicians part is
by no means limited to mere transfer
of the composition from one style of
notation, as it were, to another. If that
were done the effect would be feeble and
utterly uninteresting. The mechanical
piano has its own characteristics, and the
musician must understand them so that
he can double notes in chord, and even
quadruple them, in order to make the
sound tell in the open air. As matter
of fact, piece played on mechanical
piano is substantially the same as if it
were arranged for eight hands on two
pianos.-New York Sun.