Ed Gloeggler mused on making durable modern players that could take
advantage of technical advances yet still be collectable 100 years
from now.

Rex Lawson in London has been slowly proceeding with his "electronic
pianola" which uses a purpose-designed Apple II program -- quite apart
from transcription, composition, editing and perforating of new rolls
-- for playing any MIDI device from a console using the displayed roll
on the monitor screen and player-piano-type foot and hand controls.

The effect at present is not unlike trying to play an ordinary roll on
an all-electric reproducer using hand controls -- the thing plays
willy-nilly and is nothing like as responsive as pneumatics, where if
you stop the roll stops.  But it's obviously a prototype for something
that could be very realistic.  He has thought of making a pneumatic
motor generate the necessary electricity -- in that way you would get
the exact right feel as well.

I have a Clavinova for public demonstrations of pianola-playing (and we've
had a Duo-Art "vorsetzer" on it as well) which I play using an Aeolian
65/88-note Themodist push-up.  (Anyone who came to the AMICA Congress in
London in 1995 will remember this combination (and me) from the riverboat
trip).  This combo makes a very good prototype for an electronic piano
with a traditional roll module on it.  It feels just like a good old
player except that the piano tone is artificial and lifeless.  Seeing that
wonderful digital recordings can be made of real pianos, I can never
understand why digital pianos are so poor.  People say to me, "Oh, the new
Korg/Kurzweil/Technics is wonderful!" and I rush along to the showroom and
it's worse still.  But we can expect this to be put right sooner or later.

I think there is no hope of making the electronics everlasting.  The
important thing is to make a roll-reader which will produce a MIDI output
using traditional controls which feel right.  Perhaps this would use a
valve block and a suction digitizer (which latter Lawson has already made
to put Duo-Art behaviour onto screen).  Disposable extras are then tacked
onto it: a computer which will display a MIDI file from a disk reader as
a piano roll, which the user then plays using the controls to produce a
"massaged" personal MIDI file; and whatever piano module and speakers the
user wants to use.

In this way people with no room or taste for rolls (my house is half full
of them) needn't keep any and no actual piano would be needed either.  But
you could "pianole" someone else's live performance on a keyboard as it
happened and, with a powerful MIDI/solenoid push-up, play a high class
grand !  The combinations could be endless.  I admit I prefer the wood,
rubber and leather original, though.

Dan Wilson