It also spelled the death knell for the theater musician. The success of the film when it opened in October of 1927 set all of the studios into a metamorphasis requiring new sound stages, new talents, etc. The Warner executives were quite impressed, enough that they signed Jolson to debut the following year in The Jazz Singer (over equally fine candidates Eddie Cantor and Georgie Jessel), the first "All singing, all talking," all sound with no musician required motion picture.
While experiments were done over the next few years, it was not until 1926 that Warner Brothers took a chance with a similar system that used 33 1/3 records designed to play synchronously with a reel of film, and with that they created a single-reel short with Al Jolson called A Plantation Act. In 1922 the prime developer of the vacuum tube that made electronic voice reproduction and radio possible, Lee DeForrest, presented a method of recording synchronized sound on film.
With a little bit of practice a pianist could prepare for the next week of music in just a couple of hours based on the contents of one of these collections. They provided music for varying cultures, using stereotypical musical motifs, as well as a variety of love scene schmaltz, military and Civil War tunes, mysterious melodies, and the inevitable chase or hurry scene music. In an effort to address this market, a few enterprising publishers created folios of mood music that was suited specifically for cinema. The rule remained that the keyboardist was often on his own. But the customized film score was an exception. In many cases, you were able to purchase sheet music in the lobby of a piece you heard inside that could be viewed as either a memento or an advertisement.
Ragtime movie firetruck scene professional#
It is little known that one of the more prolific composers of music for both comedy and pathos was Charlie Chaplin himself, who frequently composed music (notated by a professional arranger) for chase scenes, sad love scenes, and the like for distribution with his films. To facilitate the proper moods, some studios commissioned scores for their movies, or perhaps just specific songs, and sent these out with the prints. This would give the better pianists some time off (albeit permanently on many occasions) and allow the lesser pianists an opportunity to play on occasion between manipulating the rolls or where there was nothing else appropriate available.
To ease some of this pressure, and often to cut costs, automated orchestrions known widely as Fotoplayers (a trademarked name applied to most of them no matter the manufacturer) with multiple roll capability were manufactured specifically for the cinema. So in some ways, a good pianist/organist or orchestra could subtly affect the opinion of a movie reviewer or audience member. If you think about memorable movies of the past 40 years, you will often note how well you remember parts of the score. Some were even asked to play appropriate music under newsreels, a singular challenge that might be hard to imagine now. And if the movie was bad - well, they had to endure that bad movie and try to keep it fresh or improve on it with their music. The 1985 Dire Straits song Money For Nothing says about the perception of musicians, "That ain't workin', that's the way you do it, Money for nothin' and your chicks for free!" However, consider that not only was the performer captive for six or seven showings a day, up to ten hours, but they were further tasked to provide the proper mood music for a wide variety of genres, cultures, emotions and specific incidents. Many instruments, in addition to their many stops ranging from xylophone to diapason horns, also featured moos, quacks, barks and other sound effects at the performer's disposal. In other instances, in an effort to provide versatility and variety, special mechanical pianos and organs were installed in theaters that not only created a great venue for concerts, but also threw in a variety of sound effects and timbres not available on the standard upright piano. Many used elaborate organs or player pianos. A scene of a film within a film, showing the pianist hardly at work at an upright. Many premieres and some of the higher-end theaters used orchestras of varying size with pre-composed scores written specifically for a certain film. But even Aunt Myrtle could make a pretty decent income playing for the ten-cent shows on the corner. Many were able to make a career of this, not the least of which was Canada's fabulous ragtime composer/performer Willie Eckstein. So it was that nearly simultaneously, theater owners sought out pianists of either gender to provide entertainment between reels and accompany the action during.
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