Music Arranged for Mechanical Instruments
By Robbie Rhodes
Rich, I'm impressed with your description of the Radio Seaway products and your dedication to classical music. The demographics and tastes of your targeted audience is probably equivalent to our MMD membership, and this gives me an idea:
Would you care to produce an occasional radio program featuring the music which is unique to our mechanical musical instruments? One category is music arranged especially for the keyboard limitations of the small- to medium-sized instruments, e.g., the Wurlitzer band organ with only three bass notes.
Another category is the music box, in which the music is arranged especially to capitalize upon the delightful glissandi and tinkling unique to that instrument. (In the symphony orchestra it can only be approximated by the harp or the celesta.)
Yet another category is the piano-based nickelodeons and orchestrions, which allude to "duplicating a small orchestra", but in fact have their own unique character due to the limitations of the mechanical percussion.
The arrangements for these instruments were, and still are, accomplished by Masters of the Art, and there are still a few Masters around, plying their skills. I'm not aware that this musical specialty has been explored and presented to any radio audience. The tunes themselves -- those heard on music boxes, organs, coin-pianos and orchestrions -- are the familiar classics and pop hits of the day.
We certainly have the experts here at MMD who might help with production.
Sincerely yours,
Robbie Rhodes
Mechanical Music Digest |
(Message sent Sun 16 Feb 1997, 00:06:58 GMT, from time zone GMT-0800.) |
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