Mower County transcript., 1890-01-22
PIANO HAND ORGANS.

PIANO HAND ORGANS.
How Those Popular Instruments Of the
Street Are Put Together.
Their musical merits aside, the me-
chanical pianos trundled about the
streets by the re-esta blished peripatetic
performers are remarkable affairs. The
principle on which they are made is, of
course, we'll 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 makes one complete revolution of
the cylinder to finish one tune. After
that the performer may continue to
grind out the same tune again, or by
moving lever push the cylinder for
ward by as much as the width of one
peg, and so bring out different
piece. These pegs are not nearly as
broad as 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
nicety employed in their construction.
For, in machine pegged for ten tunes,
the cylinder is simply black with the
pegs, and the slightest inaccuracy in
placing them would bring out wrong
note somewhere.
The relation of the pegs to the ham
mers may be understood if one lays his
two hands side by side upon the table,
palms down. The fingers and thumbs
may represent the pegs, each peg play
ing it's part in the different tunes. The
space between the levers which one peg
lifts is just wide enough to pass nine
other pegs. It Ithappens, 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 the cylinder for this
especial piece.
A manufacturer in Elizabeth street
makes most if not all of the mechanical
pianos heard on the streets in the neigh
borhood. He makes every thing in his
own establishment.
"There," he said, 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 eor
the various parts of the instruments and
the tools for putting them into shape.
If kept within doors and played moder-
ately like house piano, it would re-
main in good tune for many weeks; in
fact, as long as the swell instruments.
Played out of doors, it gets out of tune
more quickly. The exposure to 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 cyEn-
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 mu-
sician takes sheet of paper just large
enough to cover the cylinder entirely,
and writes the piece upon it in dots.
The dots correspond to the pegs. The
musician, of course, knows the mechan-
ism, so that he can tell where to place a
dot to bring out the corresponding tone.
When he has marked the paper over, a
mechanic uses it for 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 we're,
to another. If that were done the ef-
feet would be feeble and utterly uninter-
esting. The mechanical piano has its
own characteristics, and the musician
must understand them so that he can
double notes in chord, and even quad
ruple them, in order to make Ethe sound
tell in the open air. As matter of
fact, piece played on mechanical pi-
ano is substantially the same as if it
were arranged for eight hands on two
pianos. IN Y. Sun.
1