Though dif­fer­ent mod­ern pianos may not sound exact­ly the same as one anoth­er, they all sound more or less like pianos to our ears. But the piano did­n’t appear ful­ly formed in the world of music as the instru­ment we know today: it has a vari­ety of pre­de­ces­sors, not all of which sound very sim­i­lar to the mod­ern piano at all, and a few dis­tinc­tive-sound­ing exam­ples of which you can hear demon­strat­ed in these videos from Baro­que­Band. In the first, musi­cian and edu­ca­tor David Schrad­er plays the first two: a repli­ca of a Ger­man clavi­chord, “the old­est stringed key­board instru­ment we know of,” dat­ing from around 1600, and a harp­si­chord, built accord­ing to plans dat­ing back to 1617.

The clavi­chord strikes its strings like a mod­ern piano, but the harp­si­chord plucks them, using a series of “tiny lit­tle gui­tar picks” called plec­trums. Schrad­er explains this while offer­ing a look inside the work­ings of these instru­ments, just as he does with their descen­dants in the sec­ond video: a repli­ca of an ear­ly Vien­nese piano built by Alton Wal­ter, who in the 1780s built an instru­ment for a cer­tain Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, and a mod­ern Stein­way grand piano made in Ham­burg.

The eight bars of one of Mozart’s piano sonata we hear on the Stein­way sound good, espe­cial­ly per­formed by Schrader’s skilled hands, but the Vien­nese piano offers addi­tion­al con­trols that enable the play­er to achieve a kind of “tone col­or” that mod­ern pianos don’t.

Hence the inter­est some musi­cians and groups (such as the Orches­tra of the Age of the Enlight­en­ment, recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) have in play­ing clas­si­cal music with the same instru­ments from the eras in which the pieces were com­posed. “Each of these his­tor­i­cal instru­ments served the music of its own time best,” as Schrad­er puts it. “After all, you would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly restore an old oil paint­ing with acrylic paint. Even if you choose not to play the his­tor­i­cal instru­ments, if you study them and how they work, it will mod­i­fy your approach to make for a clear­er, nicer per­for­mance on the mod­ern instru­ment.” But of course, “those of us who choose to eat every­thing on the plate will play all the instru­ments” — and will enjoy a per­form­ing expe­ri­ence clos­er to that which the com­pos­er intend­ed as a result.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Per­for­mance on a 1720 Cristo­fori Piano

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

Hear Music Played on the Vio­la Organ­ista, a Piano That Sounds Like a Vio­lin, Which Leonar­do da Vin­ci Invent­ed, But Nev­er Heard

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Hear the Sounds of the Actu­al Instru­ments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Han­del Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed Their Music

How an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Monk Invent­ed the First Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

There are, I guess, still many things peo­ple can do these days to tap into the lega­cy of CBGB, but I wouldn’t rec­om­mend going near most of them. The mer­chan­dis­ing empire (do, how­ev­er, new par­ents, get your tot a CBGB bib and one­sie); the “thud­ding­ly banal” 2013 film ver­sion, which… the less said about the bet­ter; yes, and CBGB, the restau­rant, in the Newark Air­port Ter­mi­nal C—proceed at your own risk.

We must sad­ly also men­tion this past summer’s “Potemkin vil­lage from hell,” a pop-up “TRGT” shop for the grand open­ing of the East Village’s new Tar­get at 14th St. and Avenue A. This abomination—which sold CBGB-styled “TRGT” shirts and prof­fered Tar­get-brand­ed Band-Aids (get it? Bands) sent “Van­ish­ing New York” blog­ger Jere­mi­ah Moss into “a state of con­fu­sion and dys­pho­ria… to see the arti­facts of my own life, my cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, my home, dis­played above the cash reg­is­ters in a Tar­get store.”

One can­not get too upset. The venue had been in a decline for a long time. The best of grass­roots Amer­i­can cul­ture all ends up in a Tar­get or Star­bucks even­tu­al­ly, gets green lit for a biopic and turned into an inter­ac­tive gallery. At least the CBGB build­ing was added to the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places in 2013. Maybe a boost for the sales of John Var­vatos who moved a store into the for­mer club in 2007, the very same year CBGB’s founder Hilly Kristal died of lung can­cer.

Ever-taste­ful New York Post announced the takeover with the head­line Hobo Goes Haute. “All of Man­hat­tan has lost its soul to mon­ey lords,” said Dead Boys gui­tarist Chee­tah Chrome. Twelve years lat­er, the lament seems under­stat­ed. But time moves on and so should we, the CBGB of the past was a moment in his­to­ry nev­er to be seen again, as fer­vid and fer­tile as late 19th cen­tu­ry Sym­bol­ism or the Beats—movements that just hap­pened to have very much influ­enced New York punk.

Like the life and work of Arthur Rim­baud or William S. Bur­roughs, the only way to com­mune with the leg­end of CBGB is through its pri­ma­ry sources. There is no short­age. Record­ings, pho­tographs, inter­views, and much excel­lent live footage of the bands that made the T‑shirt famous in the years of punk rock’s glo­ry: The Dead Boys and The Ramones in 1977, Bad Brains, invent­ing hard­core, in 1982, a very awk­ward Talk­ing Heads and con­fi­dent Blondie play­ing the Vel­vet Under­ground all the way back in 75….

Turn­ing cul­tur­al moments into mon­u­ments and mer­chan­dise is shal­low, of course, but it’s more than that—it’s impov­er­ish­ing. It makes us think we under­stand some­thing with­out ever hav­ing seen it. It’s not enough to know that it hap­pened, we should know how it hap­pened. How was the edgy elec­tri­fied dis­co stom­per “Psy­cho Killer” once a rick­ety, “tense and ner­vous” acoustic strum­mer? How did The Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators from Cleve­land more or less invent the moves front men and women in punk almost uni­ver­sal­ly adopt­ed? How did Wash­ing­ton DC’s Bad Brains break every unspo­ken rule of punk—with com­plex break­downs, tem­po shifts, and shred­ding solos—yet still con­quer every punk stage? How did the Ramones play entire live sets short­er than some of the sin­gle songs cer­tain oth­er bands played onstage at the time? How was it to wit­ness Blondie as a killer live cov­ers act? How was it to see The Ramones play “Judy is a Punk” in 1974?

For­get the grave­yard of CBGB kitsch out there. If you’re inter­est­ed in punk rock as a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, you owe it to your­self to see as much of this his­toric footage as pos­si­ble, and to lis­ten to as many live record­ings of far-too-often unsung CBGB bands like Tele­vi­sion. And if you were there, con­do­lences. Maybe you owe it to the rest of us to tell how it real­ly was.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

AC/DC Plays a Short Gig at CBGB in 1977: Hear Met­al Being Played on Punk’s Hal­lowed Grounds

1976 Film Blank Gen­er­a­tion Doc­u­ments CBGB Scene with Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Noth­ing could seem more ordi­nary to any­one who has grown up with a musi­cian in the house, or tak­en music class­es them­selves, than sheaves of sheet music: quar­ter, half, and whole notes trip­ping through order­ly staffs in chords, arpeg­gios, and melodies. But the process of mak­ing those sheets of music is prob­a­bly far less famil­iar to most of us. Music print­ing his­to­ry, as the site Music Print­ing His­to­ry shows, par­al­lels book print­ing, but uses the tech­nolo­gies dif­fer­ent­ly, from wood­block to lith­o­g­ra­phy to pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion to per­haps a rarely seen method—the music type­writer.

These inge­nious machines do exact­ly what it sounds like they do, in type­writer-like forms we’ll rec­og­nize and oth­er forms we will not. The first patent for such a device, filed in 1885 by Charles Spiro, shows an object resem­bling a sewing machine.

The next inven­tion, first patent­ed by F. Dogilbert in 1906, resem­bles a mechan­i­cal engrav­ing machine—and indeed, that’s more or less what it was. By con­trast, the 1946 Musicwriter, invent­ed by Cecil S. Effin­ger, looks just like an ear­ly IBM type­writer with a QWERTY key­board. The next ver­sion of the machine was, in fact, a word proces­sor made by IBM.

One inven­tion Music Print­ing His­to­ry does not men­tion was made by a woman, Miss Lil­lian Pavey, in 1961. In the British Pathé news­reel film above, you can see her type­writer in action as she tran­scribes music from a record in real time. In-between the ear­li­est music type­writ­ers, which were not mass-mar­ket­ed to con­sumers, and IBM’s slick, 1988 Musicwriter II, which was, there is the odd Keaton Music Type­writer, first patent­ed with 14 keys in 1936, then again in 1953 in a 33-key ver­sion.

See the Keaton’s clunky oper­a­tion at the top of the post. It looks a lit­tle like a seis­mo­graph or lie detec­tor machine with a semi­cir­cu­lar dou­ble ring of keys (in the 33-key design) in the cen­ter of a met­al car­riage. (See the orig­i­nal patent below.) Con­trary to the Pathé newsman’s claim that no one had suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing a work­ing music type­writer, the Keaton and oth­er mod­els to fol­low in the 40s and 50s sold, though not in large quan­ti­ties, and “made it eas­i­er for pub­lish­ers, edu­ca­tors, and oth­er musi­cians to pro­duce music copies in quan­ti­ty.” Typed sheet music could eas­i­ly be mass-repro­duced by pho­tog­ra­phy.

Nonethe­less, Music Print­ing His­to­ry notes, “com­posers… pre­ferred to write the music out by hand.” The type­writer was main­ly offered as a tool for mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion, not spon­ta­neous com­po­si­tion. Com­put­ers have changed things such that com­posers seem to have the same kinds of debates about hand­writ­ing vers­es dig­i­tal as writ­ers do. But where the type­writer is still a pow­er­ful sym­bol of lit­er­ary art—for some an instru­ment as dis­tinc­tive and wor­thy of study as the gui­tars of rock ‘n’ roll greats—the music type­writer is an odd­i­ty, a mechan­i­cal curios­i­ty no one asso­ciates with cre­ation.

Yet, as “the most vin­tage and won­der­ful­ly imprac­ti­cal thing ever,” as Clas­sic Fm dubs the device, unwieldy machines like the Keaton remain high on the list of cool, quirky inven­tions its most like­ly cus­tomers did­n’t real­ly seem to need.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball”

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Con­serve the Sound, an Online Muse­um Pre­serves the Sounds of Past Technologies–from Type­writ­ers, Elec­tric Shavers and Cas­sette Recorders, to Cam­eras & Clas­sic Nin­ten­do

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness