Re: Loud Duo-Art and "Knightleyizing"
By Dan Wilson
A bit of to-and-fro in my article in Digest 96.08.28. I'd said:
> and had a concert pianist named Peter Brooks staying with her.
> He played a number of pieces on the Weber (which was well kept
> and in tune) and I realized that to do a proper replication
> of what he was doing, you'd have to separate the accompaniment
> and theme powers on a Duo-Art to a drastic degree and jack up
> the suction. A real pianist commands attention by his presence,
> where a machine can't.
and Robbie Rhodes said:
>[ Ed Note: Dan, are you saying that Mr. Brooks played with greater
>[ separation between the musical theme and the background
>[ accompaniment? Why can't a reproducing piano replicate this?
>[ Or are you simply saying that Mr. Brooks doesn't sound like a
>[ Duo-Art?
Mr. Brooks's "theme powers" were much higher compared to his accompaniment powers than you get on all but a very few late DA rolls. This gives a much greater "presence" than a roll, but I can quite imagine people trying to talk over it complaining.
I said:
> The Player-Piano Group and Pianola Institute (Rex Lawson, Denis
> Hall & Peter Davis plus different back-up crews) both do regular
> Duo-Art recitals in London concert halls, mostly using a
> converted Pianola push-up player on the halls' own nine-foot
> Steinways, and it's surprising how the size of the hall demands
> a different setting of the pump
and Robbie said:
>[ Ed Note: The Duo-Art adjustment process which Craig Brougher
>[ describes is a far cry from "tweaking". It's hard to believe
>[ that the pump speed was the only item that was adjusted.
It wasn't. No point in my detailing everything to make the point. Denis Hall does the adjusting: he knows the push-up's characteristics well and resets the zeros and the regulators in a matter of moments. He has three or four test rolls which he then uses to check that the dynamic range is right all the way though. The just-not-fail point is checked with the soft playing in the four-hand roll of The Carioca.
To answer Craig Brougher's point that reproducers were originally demonstrated against the recording artists live -- of course they were, and no way could "home-listening" levels have been used for the demos to have been convincing. They'd've had Mr. Knightley and his Ampico counterpart at hand !
Dan Wilson
[ Ed. Note: I see now that I sounded a bit aggressive, Dan --
[ apologies. Thanks for the answers; I'm attempting to improve
[ the "scientific reporting" in our articles. -- Robbie
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