RE: Shaker Chimes and Concertolas
By Marc Sachnoff
Jody:
Welcome back. And what a load of mail in these last few digests.
A few thoughts:
Robbie mentions the Shaker chimes. I recall seeing these performed at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo Wisconsin. The chimes numbered at least 25 and were suspended on a rack. They produced an etherial, charming sound. I also recall seeing a similar although perhaps home made version of shaker chimes performed in the Santa Monica 2nd Street Promenade last year. A busker (a person who loves music more than money) had set up a similar rack and played traditional pop songs on the instrument for change. There's some fun stuff going on in the 2nd Street Promenade and I've heard many talented performers and unusual instruments played there. Seems like a great place for a street organ!
James Heyworth in his introduction mentions that he owns a Duo-Art with the concertola feature and hopes one day to make the MIDI connection. I've long been considering ways to make digital scanning of paper rolls more available to those of us who'd like to hear classic piano roll performances on MIDI instruments. In addition, a clock is ticking toward the ultimate disintegration of many paper rolls. There are at least a dozen in my collection that that are in such brittle condition that I am saving that "one last play" for a roll reading device to allow their preservation if only in a digital format.
Optical scanning seems to be the best technical approach to paper roll conversion to MIDI, but cost is prohibitive -- several thousand dollars minimum for a device with an acceptably high scan rate. Electro-pneumatic readers have been used with success by Wayne Stahnke and others yet are limited by the tracker bar/reader as to which kinds of rolls they can read. (Wayne certainly has done some excellent work with his.) Several folks have equipped standard reproducing pianos with Pianomation or Piano Disc keyboard recording strips allowing for MIDI conversions, but this records (for better of worse) the individual piano's interpretation of the timing, intensity and velocity encoded on the rolls. This is the method that has been reportedly used by Piano Disc for a number of their discs.
Mr. Heyworth may have come upon an excellent expedient solution. The Concertola converts paper roll data into electronic signals in a fairly straight forward manner. If a suitable MIDI conversion could be created, the entire library of Duo-Art rolls could be MIDI encoded and processed through a Duo-Art to MIDI emulator (Richard Brandle and other folks on this digest have created such software). As I recall, the Welte Mignon licensee system in its late version also included a similar device. This might also lead to the conversion of some of those great Welte rolls to MIDI.
Does anyone else out there share my interest in accurately converting reproducing rolls to MIDI? Also would the concertola provide a more accurate read than say the electro-pneumatic roll reader already in use by the Tonnesons for their recut services?
Robbie, Richard, Jody -- any thoughts on this?
Best regards,
-- Marc Sachnoff |
(Message sent Fri 17 Nov 1995, 20:12:35 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
|
|
Mechanical
Music Digest™ Archives
