You're right, it sounds like a mess!

Yes it's in the cracks. Kinda sounds like some of my piano skills. 😂

Definitely "Keel Row" but sounds like some missing notes. A few wrong notes possibly due to poor tuning.

@@lineshaftrestorations7903 it seems that would be a simple adjustment. The demonstration would be much more impressive if it were playing properly.

I know this film is edited, but still... look at how fast Mr. Tomasso could mark the positions for the pins on the cylinder for a new tune!: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mq6ToKyUtZ3TpaM.html

Often the cylinder would be taken out, old tunes/pins stripped off, put on a lathe to true it up, new marking paper wrapped around the cylinder, and then put back in the piano, marked while installed in the piano, and then taken out again and pinned. Here this British Pathe' film shows an edited version of this process, with Mr. Antonio Tomasso, the noteur (mechanical-music music arranger). Note that he uses a tattered copy of what appears to be the original commercial published sheet music for a tune. The other 'twiddly bits' (ornamentation) of his arrangement, appears to have been all in his head (!!!): kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mq6ToKyUtZ3TpaM.html

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These actually held tune fairly well when new. Not like those with a full perimeter iron piano plate, but still pretty good. If they lost tuning really quickly, they would not have sold/rented so many and they would not have originally been popular. The same goes for wood-framed hand played pianos. They HAD to hold a tune fairly well when new, or they would not have made it out of the showroom door. The phenomenon of street musicians playing a barrel piano in bad shape, and being paid 'to move on', came from tonedeaf and/or poor grinders, and/or unscrupulous rental agencies, which did not give instruments proper service, and thus allowed them to go out sounding poorly. Obviously that practice gave all street pianos a bad name (a similar thing happened with street barrel organs as well). However most of these instruments are between 90 and 150 years old (1870s-1920s), and thus I agree that a new pinblock is most likely needed, if it was never previously replaced. Driving in oversize pins might just widen the splits in the block and make it even less stable in tuning, so a new block is really the best way to go. Brian Thornton in TN has rebuilt many barrel pianos, and he almost always does extensive work on the frame of the instrument, before turning to the action, cylinder cosmetics etc so that it is ready to go for another several decades.

Actually most barrel pianos do not have dampers except sometimes gravity dampers on the lowest notes (triangular pieces of wood with felt, hinged at the top, which bounce away when the strings are played). A barrel piano is usually not a modern piano with a regular piano action as we know it today, with a few exceptions (the European Pianovo, and American Tonophone, are major exceptions, which use intermediate mechanical or pneumatic amplification to play a fairly normal upright piano with a fairly normal upright piano action). Instead, most barrel pianos, with springloaded hammers and mostly no dampers, are basically a loud mechanical hammered dulcimer. So although they were supposed to sound _good_ (well, in tune and musical), they were not intended to sound like a modern piano at all, as we think of it.