The piano has always been my favourite instrument and it's really great to have access to such a treasure trove of melodic music with really full harmonic/chord structures. Surprising also that the pieces are so expressive. I have recall of many years ago listening to a player piano and the sound was mechanical - no feeling at all. The owner used to open all the windows of a ground floor room facing the street and with flamboyant arm movements pretend to passersby that he was playing..

Many thanks for the link Heather. Only problem for me now is finding time to play my Kn7k

Peter

The mechanical aspect comes about since velocity is not recorded so all the notes are at the same loudness, although loud and soft pedalling was often mechanically reproduced, so expression was limited.
There were top end systems that recorded expression down the side of the roll in a kind of post production, but only in a handful of discrete steps.
There's no step recording, the artist plays a special recording piano.

Hi Peter,

At the website Mark gave above it explains that many of the older rolls were not even played by someone. They were marked up by hand and cut. Which also accounted for the expressionness sound in addition to the fact that the early rolls did not record that information as Alec said.

It was up to the person pumping the pedals to provide that aspect of the sound. What a tough job that would be to keep up the tempo and still pump hard or soft on the pedals.

Heather

Thanks Alec and Heather. Fascinating stuff. Haven't tried Mark's recommened site yet but now on my way.

Peter

The later pianolas had motors rather than pedals and Gershwin, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky all made rolls in their time. Some years ago I seem to remember someone making a recording of perhaps Rhapsody with a Gershwin piano roll and a real symphony orchestra!
Today the important rolls are transcribed to floppy and played on a concert Diskclavier.

Hi Alec,

You never stop amazing me. You have such a wealth of information.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

I know some of the midi files in these collections are Gershwin songs I wonder if any are the one's he actually did.

Heather

I know for sure the surviving Gershwin solo piano rolls have been made into cds, it would not surprise me if they had been transcribed for diskclavier, and midi files would then be a piece of cake, so you never know...
Realistically though his music would have been very sought after at the height of pianola popularity, just before the advent of mass market cylinder or shellac reproduction, so there must have been many versions cheaper than his