Re: Ampico Roll Images
By Marc Sachnoff
Dear Fellow MMD Readers:
Again Wayne Stahnke has amazed me. He casully mentioned the other day on the phone that he'd scanned some 500 Ampico rolls in the 1970s and then cleaned the original files up almost a decade later -- without any specific market intended -- just so the roll images would be archived.
For those of us who seek to study piano roll music or just enjoy the availability of a large roll library, this was quite a pleasant surprise. I heartily implored him to share this resource with the members of the Digest and was gratified (tho a bit shocked that he mentioned me by name) that he responded so quickly with a posting.
I know that there's been some serious sniping recently about digitizing piano rolls and the digital reproducing piano. (See Larry Givens piece in the recent AMICA Bulletin). Rather than re-open that can of worms, sufice it to say that it might be a long time before I am able to aquire 500 "good" Ampico rolls ( I've traded away dozens of dogs over the years). And if Wayne has the courtesy and wherewithal to offer high quality digitized replicas of good music I for one would love to have access to this library.
I've been encouraged by recent postings about advances in optical scanning for the digitization of paper piano rolls and hope that one day a unit is available at a reasonable enough price that collectors and enthusiasts around the world can scan their own rolls and trade them freely. In the meantime, I'm excited by Wayne's recent revelation and am very curious to see a listing of the rolls that are included in the library.
Thanks Wayne!
Best regards,
-- Marc S. |
(Message sent Thu 21 Nov 1996, 02:12:13 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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