Okay, maybe the exact earliest, but the earliest mass-produced mass-distributed mechanism for song/composition playback.

I once got into a five person - three state - two day debate about whether player piano technology was actually a bona fide analog recording medium.

So I thought I'd take the general temperature here.

Mr. Chimp wrote:Okay, maybe the exact earliest, but the earliest mass-produced mass-distributed mechanism for song/composition playback.

I once got into a five person - three state - two day debate about whether player piano technology was actually a bona fide analog recording medium.

So I thought I'd take the general temperature here.

I saw a documentary about 10 years ago about old clay pots from whenever the potters wheel was invented, like 2000 years ago and how someone was able to take the grooves left by the fingers and reproduce 2000 year old sound with it. It sounded like a potters wheel spinning.
True story.

I would ask Jet, since her bands first album will only be released in this medium.

Read Agape Agape by William Gaddis.

If anybody is interested in this medium they should check out the music of Conlon Nancarrow. He spent the better part of his career in exile in Mexico hand punching player piano rolls to create some of the most intense fucked up paino music you have ever heard. His stuff is mostly from the 40's to early 60's, but there are a few cd reissues of his stuff and they are absolutely mind blowing. You have never, I repeat never, have heard music quite like this!!!

would you say it sounds more like the stuff from 8-bit Construction Set, or that symphony's version of the songs from Metroid? or does it sound more like a piano?

Piano. Very piano. A piano palyed by somebody with eight hands having a nervous breakdown.

and you ever come to olde london town, there's an extraordinary museum a short train ride away in brentford http://www.musicalmuseum.co.uk/ which has the most gigantic selection of automated musical instruments, including a full wurlitzer. better than that, it's run by dusty maniacs and is jammed to the ratfers with arcana - has a kind of city of lost childen / 5000 fingers of Dr. T / insert classic fantasy movie here feel about it. highly highly recommended.

Thanks capnreverb fot the info on Conlon Nancarrow. Very interesting music. You learn something new every day.

I'm not sure how old player pianos are, but there were clock-makers building music boxes as early as the late 1600s. That works on basically the same principles as a player piano, and some of them were actually built the same as a record player (preceeding the phonograph, of course). I would have to say that music boxes are the oldest recorded medium I can think of... except maybe that clay pot thing...