"JustWaitAFrekinMinute!" wrote in message
...
On Jun 15, 11:03 am, Richard Casady
wrote:
On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:26:13 -0400, HK wrote:
My dad was an advanced amateur organist, and we
always had a Hammond, Wurlitzer or Gulbransen in the living room

When I was a kid, fifty years ago, we had a Gulbransen piano, once a
player but all traces of that were gone.

Casady

Yeah, when I was a kid my uncle up in Lynn had an old player piano and
dozens of reels. We would (me and the cousins) would sit around and
play with that thing all day long. You had to pump two pedals on the
base if I remember correctly... It was cool, you will never see
anything like that again outside of a museum now I would guess..

-----------------------

Player pianos are still made, although they have electric motors for pumps
and the rolls are somewhat hard to come by.

There's another option however. We have a Samick Grand Piano in which we
had a QRS "Pianomation" system installed. It is mounted behind the keys
within the piano and has solenoids that operate the piano hammers. The
solenoids follow instructions from a CD disk player in terms of what note to
strike with all the parameters associated with playing it manually,
(velocity, sustain, etc.) The instructions on the CD are in a proprietary
QRS format, however I discovered a free software program that converts
digital midi to the QRS format and can now download non-copyright protected
classical piano performances from the 'net and play them on the piano. And
yes, just like the old player pianos, the keys on the piano are actuated by
the QRS system. Little kids eye's bug out the first time they see it.

http://www.qrsmusic.com/

Eisboch