Introduction – Precisionsound Naeshult Table Piano User Manual

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Introduction

Out of the flames, so to speak, we saved this odd crank-driven automatic piano instrument. It’s like an

oversized music box, using a rotating roll with pins to activate wooden clubs that hit horizontal strings.

These so-called table pianos, or piano harps, were made in Småland in the south of Sweden from about

1880 until 1929, when the manufacturing plant was burnt.

During this period there was a use for self-playing instruments in schools, churches, and other groups.

You could call them ”sing-along machines of the 1800s”. Naturally, the demand declined in conjunction

with the introduction of gramophone records.

Now, a hundred years later, we have taken this limited but charming contraption and made it a flexible

and playable instrument for software samplers. Our aim was to honour the instrument’s original

characteristics – the clapping of the clubs, the sonorous sound of the strings coming out of the box.

Unfortunately it’s impossible ask the original builders what they would have thought of this

development, but we hope they would have liked it!

The tonal range of the instrument is C2-C5. We also recorded the sound of the piano’s crank being

turned, which we mapped from C#5-C6.