Re: Duo-Art Expression Coding
By Horst Mohr
[ W/R/T Dan Wilson's comments on this topic in digest 961025 ]
Hi MMD-readers,
concerning piano rolls to MIDI coding it must be avoided to mix up two fully different subjects.
One is the musical information which the rolls contain.
The other is how a reproducing piano is able to convert this information back to music.
The musical information in the roll was played and then edited by artists of our century's beginning and is therefore our legacy. For this reason we should try to get the original information as true as possible. Though MIDI has some drawbacks its benefits recommend it for this purposes.
There are different ways to do so. Some experts derive the data by computer after scanning a true image of the roll. Others read only the information given by the punches in the 65 or 98 or 100 rows. There is also the possibility to play a roll by a computer driven device leading its MIDI-output to a digital piano or a DisKlavier for control and save the MIDI-data with a sequencer program. The controlling computer program has to convert the intensity coding just as the reproducing piano does. In this case there is no image of the roll but the musical information, that the reproducing piano feels at its key- and pedal- pouches reading the roll it is playing, as MIDI-data.
The other subject depends on the instruments quality. But there are some limitations determined for example by solenoids. The electric pulse for low intensities must be not too short as the solenoid needs a certain time of power to fire its plunger but the time between fast repetited notes must be long enough to let the hammer (and the plunger) come to its rest position before the next pulse. (It would be probably better to controll the power (V/A) instead of the pulse's duration time).
Working since many years with electronics I admire still the technicians of that time working with pneumatics and their results, a playing reproducing piano.
Best regards, Horst Mohr
-- mohr@nemeter.dinoco.DE H. Mohr Koelnerstr.49 51515 Kuerten 02268/1561
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