{"history":[],"article":{"id":"89688c65-33a6-4ef0-9c73-aac60afd0fc0","title":"Player piano","slug":"player-piano","content":":::summary\n:::\n\n# \nA **player piano** is a self-playing piano with a [pneumatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/pneumatics) or [electro-mechanical](https://bliptext.com/articles/electro-mechanical) mechanism that operates the piano action using perforated [paper or metallic rolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/piano-rolls).\nModern versions use [MIDI](https://bliptext.com/articles/midi).\nThe player piano gained popularity as mass-produced home pianos increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\nSales peaked in 1924 and subsequently declined with improvements in electrical [phonograph](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonograph) recordings in the mid-1920s.\nThe advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction, brought by radios, contributed to a decline in popularity, and the [stock market crash of 1929](https://bliptext.com/articles/wall-street-crash-of-1929) virtually wiped out production.\n# [A restored pneumatic player piano | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Pianola1.JPG]\n\n# History\nThe first practical pneumatic piano player, manufactured by the Aeolian Company and called the \"Pianola\", was invented in 1896 by [Edwin S. Votey](https://bliptext.com/articles/edwin-s-votey), and came into widespread use in the 20th century.\nThe name \"pianola\", sometimes used as a generic name for any player piano, came from this invention.\nThe mechanism of this player piano was all-pneumatic: foot-operated bellows provided a vacuum to operate a pneumatic motor and drive the take-up spool, while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two stages to sufficient strength to strike a [note](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-note).\n\n## 1900–1910\nVotey advertised the Pianola widely, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements.\nIt was sold initially for $250, and then other, cheaper makes were launched.\nA standard 65-note format evolved, with 11+1/4 in rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes.\nBy 1903, the [Aeolian Company](https://bliptext.com/articles/aeolian-company) had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month.\nMany companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly consisting of light, religious, or classical music.\n[Ragtime music](https://bliptext.com/articles/ragtime-music) also featured..\nMelville Clark introduced two important features to the player piano: the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard.\nBy the end of the decade, the piano player device and the 65-note format became obsolete.\nThis caused problems for many small manufacturers, who had already invested in 65-note player operations, ultimately resulting in rapid consolidation in the industry.\nA new, full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in [Buffalo, New York](https://bliptext.com/articles/buffalo-new-york) in 1908 at the so-called [Buffalo Convention](https://bliptext.com/articles/buffalo-convention).\nThis kept the 111/4-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch.\nThis meant that any player piano could now play any make of roll.\nThis consensus was crucial for avoiding a costly [format war](https://bliptext.com/articles/format-war), which plagued almost every other form of entertainment medium that followed roll music.\nWhile the player piano matured in America, an inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which would reproduce all aspects of a performance automatically, so that the machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist were sitting at the piano keyboard.\nKnown as a Reproducing Piano, this device, the [Welte-Mignon](https://bliptext.com/articles/welte-mignon), was launched in 1904.\nIt created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll.\nThis allowed owners of player pianos to experience a professional performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it.\nAeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the Themodist being an invention which was said to bring out the melody clearly above the accompaniment.\nSales grew rapidly, and with the instruments now relatively mature, in this decade a wider variety of rolls became available.\nTwo major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll.\nThe other major advance was the arrival in America of two commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano: the [Ampico](https://bliptext.com/articles/ampico) (from 1911 but fully 're-enacting' by 1916) and the Duo-Art (1914).\nArtrio-Angelus also introduced a reproducing player from 1916.\nWhen World War I came in 1914, German patents were seized in the US.\nIn England, Aeolian had a huge factory and sales network and easily outsold the Ampico.\nOther makers of Reproducing systems, Hupfeld Meisterspiel DEA (1907) and Philipps Duca (c 1909), were successful in Europe.\nHupfeld perfected an 88 note reproducing system, the Triphonola, in 1919, and around 5% of players sold were Reproducing Pianos.\nIn America by the end of the decade, the new 'jazz age' and the rise of the fox-trot confirmed the player piano as the instrument of popular music, with classical music increasingly relegated to the reproducing piano.\nMost American roll companies stopped offering large classical catalogs before 1920, and abandoned 'instrumental' rolls (those without words) within a few years.\nIn England, the Aeolian Company continued to sell classical material, and customers remained willing to contribute to performances by following directions printed on the rolls and operate the hand and foot controls themselves.\nSydney Grew, in his manual The Art of the Piano Player, published in London in 1922, said that \"it takes about three years to make a good player-pianist of a man or woman of average musical intelligence. It takes about seven years to make a good pianist, or organist, or singer\".\nWord rolls never became popular in England, as they cost 20% more than non-word rolls.\nAs a result, post-World War I American and British roll collections looked very different.\n# [The mechanism of a player piano.

Pedal.\n
Pedal connection.\n
Exhauster (one only shown).\n
Reservoir; high tension (low-tension reservoir not shown.)\n
Exhaust trunk.\n
Exhaust tube to motor.\n
Air space above primary valves.\n
Secondary valves.\n
Striking pneumatic.\n
Connection from pneumatic to action of piano.\n
Piano action.\n
Pneumatic motor.\n
Trackerboard (music roll passes over trackerboard).

| upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Pneumatic///piano.png]\n\n## 1950–present\nIn the early 1950s, player pianos and other instruments of the 1920s and earlier became collectable.\nAn enthusiast, Frank Holland, who had collected player pianos while working in Canada, returned to England and held meetings of like-minded enthusiasts at his house in London.\nIn 1959 this gathering was formalized as 'The Player Piano Group', and in the early 1960s Holland founded the British Piano Museum (now the [Musical Museum](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-museum-brentford)) in Brentford.\nIn America, another collector, Harvey Roehl, published a book called Player Piano Treasury in 1961.\nThis sold in large numbers and was followed by books published by Roehl's Vestal Press on how to rebuild and restore the instruments.\nOther societies were formed worldwide to preserve and study all aspects of mechanical music, among them the Musical Box Society International (MBSI) and the [Automatic Musical Instruments Collector's Association](https://bliptext.com/articles/automatic-musical-instruments-collector-s-association) (AMICA) in the USA.\nThe revival of interest in player pianos in the 1960s led to renewed production.\nAeolian revived the Pianola, this time in a small spinet piano suited to post-war housing, and other manufacturers followed.\nQRS offered a traditional player piano in its Story and Clark piano.\nEarly enthusiasts could often get by with limited patching and repairs, although original 1920s instruments could still be found in working order.\nComplete rebuilding of old instruments to original condition became possible.\n# [A player piano performing | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Player///piano///keyboard.jpg]\n\n# Types\nA player piano is a piano that contains a manually controlled, pneumatically operated piano player mechanism.\nThe operator manipulates control levers to produce a musical performance.\nVarious aids were developed:\n# [Steinway Welte-Mignon reproducing piano (1919) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/SteinwayWelte1919.jpg]\n\n# Music rolls\n[Music rolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/music-roll) for pneumatic player pianos, often known as piano rolls, consist of a continuous sheet of paper rolled on to a spool.\nThe spool fits into the player piano spool box whereupon the free end of the music sheet is hooked onto the take-up spool which will unwind the roll at an even pace across the reading mechanism (the \"[tracker bar](https://bliptext.com/articles/tracker-bar)\") The music score to be played is programmed onto the paper by means of perforations.\nDifferent player systems have different perforation sizes, channel layouts and spool fittings though the majority conform to one or two predominant formats latterly adopted as the industry standard.\nMusic is programmed via a number of methods.\nThe player piano sold globally in its heyday, and music rolls were manufactured extensively in the US, as well as most European countries, South America, Australia and New Zealand.\nA large number of titles from all manufacturers survive to this day, and rolls still turn up regularly in large quantities.\nIt was reported that the last remaining mass producer of piano rolls in the world, QRS Music, temporarily halted production of the rolls on December 31, 2008.\nHowever, QRS Music still list themselves as the only roll manufacturer remaining, and claim to have 45,000 titles available with \"new titles being added on a regular basis\".\nThe [Musical Museum](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-museum-brentford) in Brentford, London, England houses a nationally significant collection of piano rolls, with over 20,000 rolls, as well as an extensive collection of instruments which may be seen and heard.\n# [A player piano roll being played | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/PlayerPianoRoll.jpg]\n\n# Modern implementations\nLater developments of the **reproducing piano** include the use of [magnetic tape](https://bliptext.com/articles/magnetic-tape) and [floppy disks](https://bliptext.com/articles/floppy-disk), rather than piano rolls, to record and play back the music; and, in the case of one instrument made by [Bösendorfer](https://bliptext.com/articles/b-sendorfer), [computer](https://bliptext.com/articles/computer) assisted playback.\nIn 1982, [Yamaha Corporation](https://bliptext.com/articles/yamaha-corporation) introduced the \"[Piano Player](https://bliptext.com/articles/disklavier)\", which was the first mass-produced, commercially available reproducing piano that was capable of digitally capturing and reproducing a piano performance using floppy disk as a storage medium.\nThe Piano Player was replaced in 1987 by the Yamaha [Disklavier](https://bliptext.com/articles/disklavier) and since 1998, the [Disklavier](https://bliptext.com/articles/disklavier) PRO models are capable of capturing and reproducing \"high-resolution\" piano performances of up to 1024 velocity levels and 256 increments of positional pedaling using Yamaha's proprietary XP (Extended Precision) MIDI specification.\nAlmost all modern player pianos use [MIDI](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-instrument-digital-interface) to interface with computer equipment.\nMost modern player pianos come with an electronic device that can record and playback MIDI files on floppy disks and/or [CD-ROMs](https://bliptext.com/articles/cd-rom), and a MIDI interface that enables computers to drive the piano directly for more advanced operations.\nThe MIDI files can trigger [solenoids](https://bliptext.com/articles/solenoid-engineering), which use electric current to drive small mechanical plungers mounted to the key action inside the piano.\nLive performance or computer generated music can be recorded in MIDI file format for accurate reproduction later on such instruments.\nMIDI files containing converted antique piano-rolls can be purchased on the Internet.\n, several player piano conversion kits are available (PianoDisc, PNOmation, etc.), allowing the owners of normal pianos to convert them into computer controlled instruments.\nThe conversion process usually involves cutting open the bottom of the piano to install mechanical parts under the keyboard, although one organization—[Logos Foundation](https://bliptext.com/articles/logos-foundation)—has manufactured a portable, external kit.\nA new player piano conversion kit was introduced in 2007-08 by Wayne Stahnke, the inventor of the Bösendorfer SE reproducing system, called the \"LX\".\n[Steinway](https://bliptext.com/articles/steinway) manufactures a player piano based on Wayne Stahnke's Live Performance LX system, which was sold to [Steinway](https://bliptext.com/articles/steinway) in 2014 and re-branded as Spirio.\nUnlike other piano brands, a recording option was not originally available, but in 2019 Steinway introduced Spirio | r models, which can also record.\n[Edelweiss](https://bliptext.com/articles/edelweiss-pianos) is a British music upcomer on the player piano market offering totally bespoke pianos, available in luxury department store [Harrods](https://bliptext.com/articles/harrods) since 2017 and according to the [Financial Times](https://bliptext.com/articles/financial-times) [YouTube](https://bliptext.com/articles/youtube) channel 'How to Spend it', [Edelweiss](https://bliptext.com/articles/edelweiss-pianos) is \"regarded as the most upmarket of today's breed of the self-playing piano\".\n# [Player and control unit of Yamaha Disklavier Mark III | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/DisklavierPlayer.jpg]\n# [Sequencer control unit of Yamaha Disklavier Mark III | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/DisklavierSilencer.jpg]\n\n# Comparison to electric pianos\nA player piano is not an [electric piano](https://bliptext.com/articles/electric-piano), [electronic piano](https://bliptext.com/articles/electronic-piano), or a [digital piano](https://bliptext.com/articles/digital-piano).\nThe distinction between these instruments lies in the way sounds are produced.\nA player piano is an acoustic piano where the sound is produced by hammer strikes on the piano strings.\nElectrical components in post-pneumatic versions are limited to moving the keys or hammers mimicking the actions of a person; sound is not generated or amplified electronically.","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-25T18:20:11.079Z","updated_at":"2025-01-25T18:20:11.079Z","search_vector":"'piano':2 'player':1","search_content":" \n \n\n# \nA **player piano** is a self-playing piano with a [pneumatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/pneumatics) or [electro-mechanical](https://bliptext.com/articles/electro-mechanical) mechanism that operates the piano action using perforated [paper or metallic rolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/piano-rolls).\nModern versions use [MIDI](https://bliptext.com/articles/midi).\nThe player piano gained popularity as mass-produced home pianos increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\nSales peaked in 1924 and subsequently declined with improvements in electrical [phonograph](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonograph) recordings in the mid-1920s.\nThe advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction, brought by radios, contributed to a decline in popularity, and the [stock market crash of 1929](https://bliptext.com/articles/wall-street-crash-of-1929) virtually wiped out production.\n# [A restored pneumatic player piano | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Pianola1.JPG]\n\n# History\nThe first practical pneumatic piano player, manufactured by the Aeolian Company and called the \"Pianola\", was invented in 1896 by [Edwin S. Votey](https://bliptext.com/articles/edwin-s-votey), and came into widespread use in the 20th century.\nThe name \"pianola\", sometimes used as a generic name for any player piano, came from this invention.\nThe mechanism of this player piano was all-pneumatic: foot-operated bellows provided a vacuum to operate a pneumatic motor and drive the take-up spool, while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two stages to sufficient strength to strike a [note](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-note).\n\n## 1900–1910\nVotey advertised the Pianola widely, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements.\nIt was sold initially for $250, and then other, cheaper makes were launched.\nA standard 65-note format evolved, with 11+1/4 in rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes.\nBy 1903, the [Aeolian Company](https://bliptext.com/articles/aeolian-company) had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month.\nMany companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly consisting of light, religious, or classical music.\n[Ragtime music](https://bliptext.com/articles/ragtime-music) also featured..\nMelville Clark introduced two important features to the player piano: the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard.\nBy the end of the decade, the piano player device and the 65-note format became obsolete.\nThis caused problems for many small manufacturers, who had already invested in 65-note player operations, ultimately resulting in rapid consolidation in the industry.\nA new, full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in [Buffalo, New York](https://bliptext.com/articles/buffalo-new-york) in 1908 at the so-called [Buffalo Convention](https://bliptext.com/articles/buffalo-convention).\nThis kept the 111/4-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch.\nThis meant that any player piano could now play any make of roll.\nThis consensus was crucial for avoiding a costly [format war](https://bliptext.com/articles/format-war), which plagued almost every other form of entertainment medium that followed roll music.\nWhile the player piano matured in America, an inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which would reproduce all aspects of a performance automatically, so that the machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist were sitting at the piano keyboard.\nKnown as a Reproducing Piano, this device, the [Welte-Mignon](https://bliptext.com/articles/welte-mignon), was launched in 1904.\nIt created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll.\nThis allowed owners of player pianos to experience a professional performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it.\nAeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the Themodist being an invention which was said to bring out the melody clearly above the accompaniment.\nSales grew rapidly, and with the instruments now relatively mature, in this decade a wider variety of rolls became available.\nTwo major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll.\nThe other major advance was the arrival in America of two commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano: the [Ampico](https://bliptext.com/articles/ampico) (from 1911 but fully 're-enacting' by 1916) and the Duo-Art (1914).\nArtrio-Angelus also introduced a reproducing player from 1916.\nWhen World War I came in 1914, German patents were seized in the US.\nIn England, Aeolian had a huge factory and sales network and easily outsold the Ampico.\nOther makers of Reproducing systems, Hupfeld Meisterspiel DEA (1907) and Philipps Duca (c 1909), were successful in Europe.\nHupfeld perfected an 88 note reproducing system, the Triphonola, in 1919, and around 5% of players sold were Reproducing Pianos.\nIn America by the end of the decade, the new 'jazz age' and the rise of the fox-trot confirmed the player piano as the instrument of popular music, with classical music increasingly relegated to the reproducing piano.\nMost American roll companies stopped offering large classical catalogs before 1920, and abandoned 'instrumental' rolls (those without words) within a few years.\nIn England, the Aeolian Company continued to sell classical material, and customers remained willing to contribute to performances by following directions printed on the rolls and operate the hand and foot controls themselves.\nSydney Grew, in his manual The Art of the Piano Player, published in London in 1922, said that \"it takes about three years to make a good player-pianist of a man or woman of average musical intelligence. It takes about seven years to make a good pianist, or organist, or singer\".\nWord rolls never became popular in England, as they cost 20% more than non-word rolls.\nAs a result, post-World War I American and British roll collections looked very different.\n# [The mechanism of a player piano. \n Pedal.\n Pedal connection.\n Exhauster (one only shown).\n Reservoir; high tension (low-tension reservoir not shown.)\n Exhaust trunk.\n Exhaust tube to motor.\n Air space above primary valves.\n Secondary valves.\n Striking pneumatic.\n Connection from pneumatic to action of piano.\n Piano action.\n Pneumatic motor.\n Trackerboard (music roll passes over trackerboard). | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Pneumatic///piano.png]\n\n## 1950–present\nIn the early 1950s, player pianos and other instruments of the 1920s and earlier became collectable.\nAn enthusiast, Frank Holland, who had collected player pianos while working in Canada, returned to England and held meetings of like-minded enthusiasts at his house in London.\nIn 1959 this gathering was formalized as 'The Player Piano Group', and in the early 1960s Holland founded the British Piano Museum (now the [Musical Museum](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-museum-brentford)) in Brentford.\nIn America, another collector, Harvey Roehl, published a book called Player Piano Treasury in 1961.\nThis sold in large numbers and was followed by books published by Roehl's Vestal Press on how to rebuild and restore the instruments.\nOther societies were formed worldwide to preserve and study all aspects of mechanical music, among them the Musical Box Society International (MBSI) and the [Automatic Musical Instruments Collector's Association](https://bliptext.com/articles/automatic-musical-instruments-collector-s-association) (AMICA) in the USA.\nThe revival of interest in player pianos in the 1960s led to renewed production.\nAeolian revived the Pianola, this time in a small spinet piano suited to post-war housing, and other manufacturers followed.\nQRS offered a traditional player piano in its Story and Clark piano.\nEarly enthusiasts could often get by with limited patching and repairs, although original 1920s instruments could still be found in working order.\nComplete rebuilding of old instruments to original condition became possible.\n# [A player piano performing | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Player///piano///keyboard.jpg]\n\n# Types\nA player piano is a piano that contains a manually controlled, pneumatically operated piano player mechanism.\nThe operator manipulates control levers to produce a musical performance.\nVarious aids were developed:\n# [Steinway Welte-Mignon reproducing piano (1919) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/SteinwayWelte1919.jpg]\n\n# Music rolls\n[Music rolls](https://bliptext.com/articles/music-roll) for pneumatic player pianos, often known as piano rolls, consist of a continuous sheet of paper rolled on to a spool.\nThe spool fits into the player piano spool box whereupon the free end of the music sheet is hooked onto the take-up spool which will unwind the roll at an even pace across the reading mechanism (the \"[tracker bar](https://bliptext.com/articles/tracker-bar)\") The music score to be played is programmed onto the paper by means of perforations.\nDifferent player systems have different perforation sizes, channel layouts and spool fittings though the majority conform to one or two predominant formats latterly adopted as the industry standard.\nMusic is programmed via a number of methods.\nThe player piano sold globally in its heyday, and music rolls were manufactured extensively in the US, as well as most European countries, South America, Australia and New Zealand.\nA large number of titles from all manufacturers survive to this day, and rolls still turn up regularly in large quantities.\nIt was reported that the last remaining mass producer of piano rolls in the world, QRS Music, temporarily halted production of the rolls on December 31, 2008.\nHowever, QRS Music still list themselves as the only roll manufacturer remaining, and claim to have 45,000 titles available with \"new titles being added on a regular basis\".\nThe [Musical Museum](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-museum-brentford) in Brentford, London, England houses a nationally significant collection of piano rolls, with over 20,000 rolls, as well as an extensive collection of instruments which may be seen and heard.\n# [A player piano roll being played | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/PlayerPianoRoll.jpg]\n\n# Modern implementations\nLater developments of the **reproducing piano** include the use of [magnetic tape](https://bliptext.com/articles/magnetic-tape) and [floppy disks](https://bliptext.com/articles/floppy-disk), rather than piano rolls, to record and play back the music; and, in the case of one instrument made by [Bösendorfer](https://bliptext.com/articles/b-sendorfer), [computer](https://bliptext.com/articles/computer) assisted playback.\nIn 1982, [Yamaha Corporation](https://bliptext.com/articles/yamaha-corporation) introduced the \"[Piano Player](https://bliptext.com/articles/disklavier)\", which was the first mass-produced, commercially available reproducing piano that was capable of digitally capturing and reproducing a piano performance using floppy disk as a storage medium.\nThe Piano Player was replaced in 1987 by the Yamaha [Disklavier](https://bliptext.com/articles/disklavier) and since 1998, the [Disklavier](https://bliptext.com/articles/disklavier) PRO models are capable of capturing and reproducing \"high-resolution\" piano performances of up to 1024 velocity levels and 256 increments of positional pedaling using Yamaha's proprietary XP (Extended Precision) MIDI specification.\nAlmost all modern player pianos use [MIDI](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-instrument-digital-interface) to interface with computer equipment.\nMost modern player pianos come with an electronic device that can record and playback MIDI files on floppy disks and/or [CD-ROMs](https://bliptext.com/articles/cd-rom), and a MIDI interface that enables computers to drive the piano directly for more advanced operations.\nThe MIDI files can trigger [solenoids](https://bliptext.com/articles/solenoid-engineering), which use electric current to drive small mechanical plungers mounted to the key action inside the piano.\nLive performance or computer generated music can be recorded in MIDI file format for accurate reproduction later on such instruments.\nMIDI files containing converted antique piano-rolls can be purchased on the Internet.\n, several player piano conversion kits are available (PianoDisc, PNOmation, etc.), allowing the owners of normal pianos to convert them into computer controlled instruments.\nThe conversion process usually involves cutting open the bottom of the piano to install mechanical parts under the keyboard, although one organization—[Logos Foundation](https://bliptext.com/articles/logos-foundation)—has manufactured a portable, external kit.\nA new player piano conversion kit was introduced in 2007-08 by Wayne Stahnke, the inventor of the Bösendorfer SE reproducing system, called the \"LX\".\n[Steinway](https://bliptext.com/articles/steinway) manufactures a player piano based on Wayne Stahnke's Live Performance LX system, which was sold to [Steinway](https://bliptext.com/articles/steinway) in 2014 and re-branded as Spirio.\nUnlike other piano brands, a recording option was not originally available, but in 2019 Steinway introduced Spirio | r models, which can also record.\n[Edelweiss](https://bliptext.com/articles/edelweiss-pianos) is a British music upcomer on the player piano market offering totally bespoke pianos, available in luxury department store [Harrods](https://bliptext.com/articles/harrods) since 2017 and according to the [Financial Times](https://bliptext.com/articles/financial-times) [YouTube](https://bliptext.com/articles/youtube) channel 'How to Spend it', [Edelweiss](https://bliptext.com/articles/edelweiss-pianos) is \"regarded as the most upmarket of today's breed of the self-playing piano\".\n# [Player and control unit of Yamaha Disklavier Mark III | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/DisklavierPlayer.jpg]\n# [Sequencer control unit of Yamaha Disklavier Mark III | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/DisklavierSilencer.jpg]\n\n# Comparison to electric pianos\nA player piano is not an [electric piano](https://bliptext.com/articles/electric-piano), [electronic piano](https://bliptext.com/articles/electronic-piano), or a [digital piano](https://bliptext.com/articles/digital-piano).\nThe distinction between these instruments lies in the way sounds are produced.\nA player piano is an acoustic piano where the sound is produced by hammer strikes on the piano strings.\nElectrical components in post-pneumatic versions are limited to moving the keys or hammers mimicking the actions of a person; sound is not generated or amplified electronically.","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}