How to Use player piano in a Sentence

player piano

noun
  • Gershwin wrote a number of piano rolls meant to be performed on a player piano.
    — Sheryl Devore, chicagotribune.com, 16 Feb. 2022
  • Each tome contains a single person's code, written in the format a player piano could read.
    — Sandra Upson, WIRED, 25 June 2018
  • Consider the player piano, a machine that takes rolls of paper as input.
    — Alex Reisner, The Atlantic, 29 Feb. 2024
  • There were a number of player pianos and other music-making machines, too.
    — Eric Bangeman, Ars Technica, 29 Sep. 2018
  • Key elements remain the same, like the player piano and the host’s hands that initially play the music.
    — Megan Friedman, Harper's BAZAAR, 23 Apr. 2018
  • There wasn’t a player piano in sight during the premiere episode, only sleek high rises and hovercraft.
    — Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2020
  • Moran made her new EP using a Yamaha Disklavier player piano.
    — Matthew Strauss, Pitchfork, 10 Nov. 2023
  • Lamarr had had the idea, and Antheil, a mechanical genius with player pianos, put it into practice.
    — Rachel Kaufman, Smithsonian, 26 Mar. 2018
  • And the most popular entertainment devices were the player piano and phonograph.
    — Janet Eastman, OregonLive.com, 13 Jan. 2018
  • Like today’s text-to-song systems, the player piano promised polished musical output for people with little or no training.
    — Steven Melendez, Scientific American, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Trail Distilling’s tasting room is decked out with gleaming antiques like a player piano and a ’53 Chevy pickup.
    — Kathleen Squires, WSJ, 27 Sep. 2018
  • For the next hour, Everest moved from fortune tellers to boxing matches to player pianos, laughing as mechanical wonders came alive.
    — Maggie Downs, Oc Register, 9 Sep. 2025
  • The normally bustling area fills with guests sipping drinks accented by a signature rubber ducky from the bar and listening to tunes from the player piano or artists singing lively carols.
    — Rebecca Angel Baer, Southern Living, 27 Nov. 2025
  • Our family has a thrilling story in its history about our grandfather and his brothers rescuing the family’s player piano from their burning house.
    — Abigail Van Buren, oregonlive, 24 Mar. 2023
  • About 130 years ago, the job of pianist was automated when Edwin Votey created the first player piano.
    — Adam Ozimek, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2026
  • The amusement park is auctioning hundreds of historic items, from a fortune-teller machine to a player piano to 1980s-era arcade games.
    — Susan Glaser, cleveland, 7 Nov. 2019
  • In the home section, Ted has a player piano, a phonograph and a Regina Music Box made in 1898.
    — Leann Burke, The Seattle Times, 15 Jan. 2018
  • That digital stream could be reverse-programmed into the animation in a way that worked almost like a player piano signaling to the animators which key was being played with each note.
    — New York Times, 25 Dec. 2020
  • More than a century ago the rise of the player piano prompted strikingly similar debates about automation, artistry and fair compensation.
    — Steven Melendez, Scientific American, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Unfortunately, the cash register and the player piano aren’t included—but they’re being offered separately at the same event.
    — Justin Ray, Robb Report, 11 May 2023
  • In the late 1890s, that technology was the piano roll, which allowed player pianos to produce music without humans touching the keys.
    — Kate Knibbs, WIRED, 22 Nov. 2023
  • The physics teacher, Jack Gibbs, is working on a history of the player piano—a project Gaddis himself labored over throughout his life—that has grown out of control.
    — Christopher Beha, Harper's Magazine, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Then came player piano rolls, vinyl records, CDs and now streaming, innovations that whittled the tangible contribution to music down to almost nothing.
    — Greg Ip, WSJ, 26 Dec. 2020
  • But Chadwick’s invention, possibly inspired by the player pianos that were popular at the time, added a warning sound to alert drivers of impending turns or hazards and displayed symbols to indicate what was ahead.
    — Betsy Mason, National Geographic, 29 Aug. 2017
  • Is this moment more like the invention of the calculator, saving me from the tedium of long division, or more like the invention of the player piano, robbing us of what can be communicated only through human emotion?
    — Daniel Herman, The Atlantic, 9 Dec. 2022
  • Stebbins chose the name to contrast with the popular pizzeria of that day, Papa's Pizza Parlor, a Shakey's-esque family restaurant with a player piano.
    — Bud Kennedy, star-telegram, 30 May 2018
  • By the early 1900s, player pianos had evolved to more fully reproduce a human performance, including subtle dynamics like tempo changes and the introduction of a damper pedal.
    — Adam Ozimek, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2026
  • During Knott’s Scary Farm, Fingers’ Ghost sits on an empty stool at a player piano on the Calico Saloon stage and plays requests shouted out by bar patrons.
    — Brady MacDonald, Oc Register, 24 Oct. 2025
  • In 2019, for example, the DOJ vacated consent decrees having to do with competition in the horseshoe, player piano, and phonograph sectors.
    — Kate Cox, Ars Technica, 11 Aug. 2020
  • Wolfe and Fritz also investigate John’s collection of player pianos, vehicles, mechanical items and some antiques that capture Wolfe’s interest (including one very famous advertising figure).
    — oregonlive, 7 Sep. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'player piano.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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