New Technology Influences the Player Piano
The style is almost strange, at first. The area is a perfectly typical studio in a part of Culver City. In one part of the room, a 6.5 foot concert grand piano with the lid removed--stands against the painted wall.
The piano keys begin to move by themselves, without human help, as if touched by an invisible master and then a spew of music pours out: delicately styled Chopin,Liszt, and a richly sounded Ellington. The sound is wonderful.
Master inventor Wayne Stahnke, having just played the computer buttons that set this piano in action, smiles. He has felt it all before: the amazed people, the shaking of the head, people looking inside the instrument.
Almost everybody has probably heard some kind of player piano, perhaps at Disneyworld, or in a grandparent's home parlor. But Mr. Stahnke's instrument, and the music it makes, are as far from the rickety ragtime of player pianos just as CD albums are from Thomas Edison's recordings. There aren't any foot pedals to move mechanical parts, no cylinder rolls of hole punched paper. The only visible parts that this is anything other than a typical grand piano are a box-like add on carefully placed under the instrument's midsection, with a slot for a computer floppy disk drive.
Classical pianist Earl Wild, whose playing has been copied in every imaginable recording medium, has high praise for Stahnke's invention.
"The reproduction is incredible," Mr. Wild said. "It reigns over any imitation piano I've ever played, and I've played every kind over the last 50+ years."
It may not even be completely accurate to refer, as Mr. Stahnke does, to his piano as an "imitation" musical instrument. Computer controlled in a way that replays the smallest nuances of a pianist's keyboard and pedal actions, it makes what can be thought of,as a virtual clone of the original performance.
Also important, it records as well as copies, making it important as a teaching tool. Students find it valuable to record a rehearsal, then have the opportunity to immediately evaluate every subtlety, every part of the music.
This technology, which took more than ten years to evolve from his hand constructed instruments is now licensed to the Yamaha Corp.
Labels: musical instrument, piano, player piano
