Introduction
By Jody Kravitz
Now that the work of getting this mailing list started is settling down, I thought I'd write a short message about what I'm doing and what my interests are. The "day job" is doing customer service (and some software development) for a company that manufactures large Unix boxes. We sell these as computational engines for real-time applications such as flight simulators, and we also sell them as "storage devices" for large mainframe and open-system shops in sizes ranging from 100 Megabytes to 3 Terabytes.
On the hobby end of things, my early training in piano and my frustration at not ever being able to sightread fluently made the computer a very exciting device. My first contact with computer music was a D/A system on the University of Illinois' Illiac II computer. The system had a monaural 12 bit D/A converter, and the input was punched cards. The computer filled two large rooms at the university and had a large staff to maintain it. While employed at the university I designed and built two 16bit stereo D/A systems for two differrent Unix boxes. Who would have guessed that 25 years later you could buy, for $200, a 16 bit stereo A/D interface and connect it to a $1500 computer, or that having such a thing would be as commonplace as it now is ?
I started experimenting with computer "archival" of mechanical musical instrument scores in the late 70's when a friend made a video "frame grabber" connected to a Unix system available to me. This was long before the appearance of graphic workstations. Using a Calcomp (india ink) plotter to test my programs was too slow and painful. I never did figure out how to "splice" the images together. In '84 I started assembling an electro- pneumatic roll reader. That project got stalled with a job transfer from Urbana Illinois to San Diego.
Once settled here, my wife and I went downtown to see "Cats" and happenned upon the Marquee at the California Theater advertising a Theater Organ concert the following weekend put on by the San Diego Theater Organ Society. A theater organ performance was my favorate recording in my dad's record collection, so I couldn't resist the concert. When we arrived for the concert, we found a van parked outside with a homemade band organ in it. The band organ was playing creatively arranged tunes from "hand-cut" rolls. I was impressed enough that I stayed in touch with David Wasson, the builder and arranger. Later he went to work for Mike Ames, a retired engineering manager and serious automatic musical instrument collector.
Mike had just completed a project to archive a large quantity of "book music" (fan-fold cardboard) from European Dance-hall organs. The archival was done as MIDI files. For me, this was the "sanity check" I needed that there were others interested in computer archival and computerized playback of scores from these old instruments. The files needed a little "clean-up" and I consequently wrote my first program to read and write a MIDI file. I also "reluctantly" ported the program from Unix to MS-DOS. Learning how to program on the PC was both a frustrating and humbling experience. I used to have a bad attitude about PCs and "segmented architectures" as a scholaraly issue. I now have a bad attitude about them from a practical hands-on point of view!
The three of us have done a variety of projects now related to archival. I write most of the software, David builds most of the hardware, and Mike provides moral support, a place to do the work and enjoy its results. Mike has installed MIDI interfaces on several instruments, including a Mortier dance-hall organ, an Aeolean Residence Organ, an Ampico (A) piano, and a Mills Violano. David has written some new arrangements for the Mortier and Mills instruments using a standard MIDI editor on the PC and then using one of my programs to "convert" the output to the correct format.
Our most ambitious project to date is an optical roll reader. With software I wrote, we can extract the score as a MIDI file, and then use a standard MIDI editor to edit out "bad spots" from the roll, and archive it. We can convert music from one instrument type to another, including making adjustments for the differrent percussion characteristics of differrent types of instruments. David has built a MIDI-driven roll perforator to make new rolls for his band organ. Regretably, David is not doing any custom perforating but he is doing custom arrangements. There are others associated with this mailing list who can do custom perforation.
I have also written a program which prints "perforation templates" for hand- punching book and roll music from MIDI files. There's at least one other person reading this list who has written a program to used a dot-matrix printer this way.
With all of that said, I'd like to try to encourage those of you who are interested in discussing things like file formats for the storage and retreival of music, MIDI and other interaces, and programming issues related to automatic musical instruments to make your interests known.
Thanks,
Jody
P.S. I'm currently a member of American Theater Organ Society (ATOS) and
the National Stereoscopic Association (NSA). I was a member of the
International Midi Association for several years but now, it looks
like they are in the process of folding. I've not been able to bring
myself to pay for a membership in the MIDI Manufacturer's Association,
but it would be appropriate considering how much MIDI software I write.
MMA _IS_ the correct place to get MIDI specifications.
I probably should join AMICA and MBSI. Are there other organizations
I've overlooked ? I'd appreciate it if someone would post the
addresses, phone numbers , and membership information for these groups. |
(Message sent Mon 8 May 1995, 00:39:48 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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