When I was growing up (I am talking maybe 80 years ago) we had a piano (and I had lessons). It was basically a standard issue upright, but with one difference. On one end of the keyboard there was a lever and if you pushed that lever and quarter cylinder descended just adjacent to the top of keyboard. It was maybe an inch in radius and the length of the keyboard and had musical staffs inscribed on it. And above each key the corresponding note was marked. This may have been only for the notes near the middle, because it seems unlikely to be able to do this for all 88 notes–I just don’t remember. This was obviously made for teaching. Does anyone here remember seeing such a device on a piano?
Are you describing a transposing piano?
It definitely was not transposing. In all other respects it was ordinary.
If you google “upright pianos for beginners” you will see a few photos of a separate paper overlay that sits on the top of the backs of the keys and has the name of each note on it. That’s as close as I could find to what you described.
Are you talking about a player piano?
What the OP describes sounds nothing like a player piano to me. He’s describing a piano which was undoubtedly made for piano instruction, on which a teaching tool (to teach a beginning student the notes corresponding with the keys) can be deployed:
Noted, and thank you. I couldn’t quite picture what he was talking about – even player pianos were something I’d only ever seen long ago and couldn’t quite remember. Thank you for the correction.
Player pianos typically had/have an opening in the center of the upright section of the case, in which the player “roll” was threaded (see pictures below). Modern ones probably operate via electricity, but old ones usually had special foot pedals (see the lower photo) which the person “playing” the piano would pump to make the mechanism turn.
They were mostly a way for people who owned a piano, but weren’t necessarily skilled piano players, to easily listen to popular music on their pianos.
That’s exactly right. Not a player piano and certainly not a transposing piano. I’ve only heard of one of those and it was built for Irving Berlin who never learned to read music and could play only on the black keys. It was doubtless extremely expensive.
I am really curious what eventually happened to it, since when my parents moved later on when I was in college what they wound up with actually was a baby grand player piano that was my mother’s cousin’s, but I guess couldn’t fit into her house.
I guess this will remain a mystery. I didn’t think to search for teaching piano, but I guess that doesn’t lead to to it anyway.
I’ve never seen such a piano, and I learned at age ~4 on an upright much as shown and described. Probably an after-market teaching tool.
Here’s an excerpt from a Google inquiry (multiple options and layered inquiries, so I can’t provide an exact link):
“A standard acoustic piano manufactured before the 1960s with the note names permanently stamped, printed, or engraved onto the ivory or celluloid keys did not exist as a mainstream production model.”
Blockquote
3. A “Player Piano” Roll Guide or Fallboard Chart
Many full-sized acoustic player pianos from the 1920s through the 1950s featured a removable wooden or metal indicator strip that sat directly on the felt shelf just behind the keys. This strip aligned perfectly with the 88 keys to show note names, chords, or scale alignments for the player roll system, giving the strong visual impression that the keys themselves were labeled.
Blockquote
I couldn’t find a vintage graphic example. I suggest you use a time machine and take a pic with your smartphone.
TIL (by doing a Google image search on “piano indicator bar”) that turning old pianos into hidden home bars is all the rage.
Except for the player piano bit, this seems the closest to what I recall.