page_title: Player piano
section_title: 1900–1910
hierarchical_section_title: Player piano / Development / 1900–1910
caption_attribution_description: Sectional illustration of player piano interior action
context_page_description: A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using MIDI. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.
context_section_description: The Pianola was advertised in one of the highest-profile campaigns ever, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements. It cost $250 (equivalent to $7,700 in 2019). Other, cheaper makes were launched. A standard 65-note format evolved, with 11 ¹⁄₄-inch-wide (290 mm) rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes.
  Huge sums were spent: by 1903, the Aeolian Company had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month.  Many companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly of light, religious or classical music.  Ragtime music did feature, but not commonly: in this period, the player was being sold on its artistic capabilities to rich buyers.
  The pioneer of this decade was Melville Clark, who introduced two key ideas: the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard. Both ideas were ridiculed by his competitors as unnecessary or impractical, but Clark rapidly won both battles.
  By the end of the decade, the piano player device was obsolete, as was the 65-note format. This was a major catastrophe for many small manufacturers, who had spent all their capital on setting up 65-note player operations, and the result was rapid consolidation in the industry.
  A new full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in Buffalo, New York in 1908, the so-called Buffalo Convention.  This kept the 11¼-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch. Any player made anywhere in the world could now play any make of roll. Understanding the need for compatibility was the defining moment of the player industry. The consensus was key to avoiding a costly format war, which plagued almost every other form of entertainment media that followed roll music.
  While the player piano matured in America, a young inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which controlled all the aspects of the performance automatically, so that his machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist were sitting at the piano keyboard.  This device, the Welte-Mignon, was launched in 1904.  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, allowing owners of player pianos to experience such a performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it.
  From the early days, manufacturers sought to create mechanisms which would pick out the melody of a musical composition over the background of the rest of the music in the same manner as a live pianist. The true player piano was designed to be a fully interactive musical experience rather than merely an automatic instrument, and hence they are fitted with interactive control levers intended for the "player pianist" or "pianolist" to create a music performance to their own taste.  The player piano would provide aspiring pianists and music lovers with the technical dexterity they lacked while permitting them to control the musical performance interactively as if they were an accomplished pianist.
  Aeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the latter being an invention "bringing out the melody clearly above the accompaniment." With sales growing rapidly, and the instruments themselves relatively mature, this decade saw a wider variety of rolls become available.  Two major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll.
  Hand-played rolls introduced musical phrasing into the rolls, so that player pianists did not have to introduce it through the use of tempo controls –  something that few owners ever felt much inclination to do.
  Word rolls, a significant 1916 innovation, featured printed lyrics in the margins, making it simple to use players to accompany singing in the home, a very popular activity in the years before radio and
caption: The mechanism of a player piano.
  1. Pedal. 2. Pedal connection. 3. Exhauster (one only shown). 4. Reservoir; high tension (low-tension reservoir not shown.) 5. Exhaust trunk. 6. Exhaust tube to motor. 7. Air space above primary valves. 8. Secondary valves. 9. Striking pneumatic. 10. Connection from pneumatic to action of piano. 11. Piano action. 12. Pneumatic motor. 13. Trackerboard (music roll passes over trackerboard).
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