Music Boxes and Automatic Musical Instruments
A music box collectors' and hobbyists' club, the Musical Box Society, International, has had a long standing debate over what a music box is. Here is my definition of a music box.
Music Box
A mechanical device containing tuned metal teeth, prongs, bars or similar objects that render a musical performance by being plucked or struck either directly, or indirectly via linkages, using holes, pins, or projections arranged in a pattern on a juxtaposed appurtenant rotating or moving cylinder or plate.
Automatic Musical Instrument
A device containing one or more elements each capable of producing a small finite number of different sounds, together with a mechanism for stimulating said elements(s) using digitally encoded or multiplexed data generally representing the starting, stopping, and selecting of different sounds in time as a readily repeatable sequence considered to be performed music, and requiring no musical talent from a human performer or operator.
Is a computer with sound card an automatic musical instrument? If it is playing a .MID file, yes. If it is playing a .WAV file, no.
Elements: Some examples are strings that vibrate, as on a violin or piano, or whistles (organ pipes), or electronic circuits (typically oscillators), or the teeth on the music box comb.
Small and finite: A string may produce one sound when it is rubbed, as when a violin is bowed, and a different sound when it is plucked. Also the same string produces different pitches as [a violinist] presses it to the fingerboard in different places. This excludes loudspeakers that one moment may be reproducing speech and at other times may be reproducing other instrument sounds.
Mechanism: Typical mechanisms are the spring and gearing in a music box, the pedals, tubes, and bellows in a player piano, and even the circuits in a computer. Included are mechanisms to modify the sound in general, such as press the soft pedal on a piano, or to pull out a stop on an organ.
Digitally encoded: This means information that can be described as two states, on/off, or yes/no, or present/absent. On a player piano roll, any given spot on the paper either has a hole or does not. On a music box cylinder or disk, any given spot has a stud (or a pin or a hole but not both) or does not.
Digitally multiplexed: This means information which, although possibly represented using two states, is encoded as more than two but still as a small number of states. Instead of plucking two teeth side by side for a louder sound, a music box may use one longer pin to pluck one tooth harder. That spot on the program cylinder may therefore have more than two possibilities, such as: no pin, short pin, long pin.
Selecting: On a player piano roll, the holes to the left play bass notes and the holes to the right play treble notes. On some player pianos, one (or sometimes more) hole(s) along the edge activate a mechanism to adjust the loudness of all, or sometimes just the treble or bass half, of the notes.
Starting, Stopping: For a player organ, a note starts when a hole in the player roll begins and stops when the hole ends. For a music box, one pin plucks the tooth and (usually) the sound is allowed to die down by itself. Excluded are audio compact disk, where thousands or even millions of their microscopic pits are needed to describe the (undulating) waveform of just one particular sound or note and a loudspeaker is required to render it audible. However, included is the compact disk that plays a modern player piano, each note code could require more than one microscopic pit depending on how it was encoded.
In Time: As the player piano roll scrolls along, or as the music box cylinder or disk rotates, different notes are played in sequence.
Readily repeatable: You can play the same tune over and over again using the same disk or roll, and each time. Except for intentionally altering the speed, or wear and tear on the mechanism, the performance will be the same.
No musical talent: It may still be necessary to expend manual labor, such as turning a crank, or pumping pedals with the feet.
Other Music Box Web Sites
The Musical Box Society, International (http://www.mbsi.org) (not dot com!)
This is the largest music box collectors', hobbyists', and enthusiasts' club in the U.S.A. and has about 2500 members.
The Automatic Musical Instrument Collectors' Association (http://www.amica.org)
This club is smaller than the MBSI, has overlapping membership with MBSI, and its mission emphasizes instruments utilizing pneumatics, for example player pianos and fairground organs.
The Mechanical Music Digest (http://mmd.foxtail.com)
A vast collection of articles about music boxes including information on how to repair and restore them.
A good insurance company but they would not insure my music box collection (http://www.amica.com)
If their loss history for a branch of their insurance is lower than expected, they issue rebates to their policyholders. One year they gave me a 20% rebate on my car insurance. And their rates before rebate (dividend) are competitive in themselves. The name AMICA belongs to them.
Music Box Dealers
Mechantiques (Martin & Elise Roenigk) (http://www.mechantiques.com)
Cooley's Olde Tyme Piano Shop (Richard & Betty Cooley) (http://members.aol.com/cotps)
N. J. Dean & Co. (www.njdean.co.uk)
Take care of rare 78 RPM records
Be careful opening antique hinged doors and panels
Musical Baseball -- an essay (7/98)
Go to articles on other subjects.
All parts (c) Copyright 1997-2006, Allan W. Jayne, Jr. unless otherwise noted or other origin stated.
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