I have a question! I always thought that these self playing piano's that use a roll are some sort of recording of a person playing the music which then punctures holes in the roll and you can then playback the roll. If this is true, would there have been 2 people playing for this particular roll? At around the 4 minute mark, there is what looks like an octave in the low registers while there are chords being played in the middle an higher register.
Good observation. Its played by one person but the reproducing piano rolls used longer sustain on notes to make up for the third middle pedal which they didn't use. So you can see notes down that the artist would have released but held down by the Sostenuto pedal. Another process sometimes was having the artist go back over a roll and add more notes to it for the effect they needed. That applies mostly to popular things which they called assisted on the label. On other complicated selections like symphony or overture rolls they did use two artist playing the piano to get all the effects they needed.
I have a question! I always thought that these self playing piano's that use a roll are some sort of recording of a person playing the music which then punctures holes in the roll and you can then playback the roll. If this is true, would there have been 2 people playing for this particular roll? At around the 4 minute mark, there is what looks like an octave in the low registers while there are chords being played in the middle an higher register.
Good observation. Its played by one person but the reproducing piano rolls used longer sustain on notes to make up for the third middle pedal which they didn't use. So you can see notes down that the artist would have released but held down by the Sostenuto pedal. Another process sometimes was having the artist go back over a roll and add more notes to it for the effect they needed. That applies mostly to popular things which they called assisted on the label. On other complicated selections like symphony or overture rolls they did use two artist playing the piano to get all the effects they needed.
@acousticedison that is very interesting, thank you for the explanation.