Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-11-01
Why Player Pianos Bang
How to Avoid 1t

If player pianos didn't sound mechanical everyone
would have them. Their great defect has always been
their machine-ike banging.
What makes them bang?
Most people reason that mechanical fingers" must
hit harder, somehow, than human fingers do. They think
that a machine must play like a machine.
The striking of the note does not make the difference.
The stroke of the human finger and the mechanical finger
produce exactly the same tone. The trouble is not one of
Touch but of Expression.
Expression! The velvet chords which we adore in
music, the light and shade, the emotion, the passion which
grips us by the throat-can these things originate in a
machine?
No! They are things of the human spirit-subhe,
changing, evanescent things, no two times alike. II there
is to be Expression in the music of a player piano that
expression must come from you, who operate 1t.
Manufacturers of player pianos have been trying for
years to make expression for you. They have charted out
a set Of Feelings in red lines, dotted lines, Italian SYM
bols, numbers and the like. And they have supplied a set
of levers and of indicators by which the chart Feelings
may be followed. They have attempted to put Feeling
and Expression into music by means of Mechanism
always more Mechanism.
You don't want Mechanism. What you want is Music.
And the less machinery there is in getting it, the better.
If you try to get expression by mechanics you only get
mechanical expression-the very thing you want to get
away from.
There is a great, bubblng we'll of musical expression
right in y%ou-right in your own Instinct. And it is that
well of musical expression which the wonderful new
Virtuolo taps.
Instead of snufing out your divine spark OF instinct
with a confusing stream of red lines, dotted lines, sym
bols, indicators and levers, the Virtuolo stirs it into farns.
Instead of attempting to Control your free expression
Of Yourself, the Virtuolo Responds to il. 1t only asks that
you allow your own ~unfailing Instinct to be Master, that
you throw Yourself into the Music, instead of into lines,
symbols and Interpreting Machinery!
There are four buttons to touch-that is all. They
give you the effects your Instinct calls for.
How they do it is too much to try to tell you here.
The only way the wonderful new Virtuolo can be
explained to you is to let it explain itself.
SEND FOR 1.-THE INNER BEAUTY"
A remarkable little book which we have published,
tells how the composer talks to you, through his music;
how he converts his splendid Instinct into Sound; how the
Sound goes out to meet your INSTINCT, and how the
music of the Virtuolo blends his Instinct with yours.
You ought to let us send this little book. 1t is well
worth having, but il costs you nothing.
PRICES AND TERMS
The Virtuolo in Hallet & Davis Piano, from $500 to
SITS. The Virtuolo in Conway Piano, mahogany or walnut,
$575O0. Lexington Player-Piano, $3.50 to SASS.
Terms: Three years in which to pay if you desire that
much time.
Pianos and ordinary player-pianos taken in exchange
at fair valuation.
s Davis Piano Compan
EstabIIshed 1889
49, $500 Nf~-x~~A.