All these piano player bellows work either by electricity or by the feet. So in the latter, one cannot help playing with “sole”! The _reproducing piano_ is the third type of player. This is magical, for it reproduces the player’s performance as he plays it himself. Therefore we can entice Paderewski, Bauer, Rachmaninoff and all the other great players into our own drawing rooms and hear them with their superb skill. These are usually operated by electricity, yet the Æolian Company and probably others, have a _reproducing piano_ which is propelled by the pedals as were the old ones before the invention of the electric player. Furthermore, some of the reproducing pianos have a mechanism with which you yourself can interpret any piece you desire. This gives the music lover who has been denied the study of music a chance to enjoy interpreting great music. It is an impossibility to overestimate the value of the player piano to the young student, to increase his auditory repertoire, for the music of the world is his for the turning of a lever! THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO ART For a long time, the mechanical player has been looked on as a step-child, to be made fun of and scorned. Today, the great critics and best musicians recognize its value which is not as a substitute for a piano but as an instrument in itself. Sir Henry J. Wood of England says: “I realize the value ... of the pianola ... for a good many of the people in our audiences ... are acquiring by its means a closer acquaintance with the great musical masterpieces.” He says in another place, “It’s a foolish and a shortsighted policy to despise any means by which we may add to the sum total of musical appreciation.” And Edwin Evans, English critic and writer, says: “The player piano relieves the musician of the technical difficulties of the keyboard.... It does not relieve him from the duty of thinking musicianly, on the contrary, ... it makes it a point of honor with him to give ... fuller employment to his brain and sensibility.... There are dozens of scores nowadays which it is an impossibility to read at the piano and very trying to read on paper. Here the player piano is a boon and a blessing for it unravels every mystery and solves every problem.” Besides this, it can be played so skilfully by some that even musicians can be fooled as to whether human or mechanical fingers are playing. Gustave Kobbé said, in his _Pianolist_, something like this: “There are only about five professionals who can play the piano better than an accomplished pianolist.” To prove its artistic worth further, Percy Grainger, Alfredo Casella and Igor Stravinsky and other great moderns are writing music especially for the player piano because they can use the whole eighty-eight notes with full orchestral effects, without stopping to think of the meagre ten fingers of man! So we see in the future the possibility of this becoming one of the creative instruments.