[ Editor's note:
 [
 [ MMDer Horst Mohr wrote me a nice letter about his adventures
 [ while demonstrating his "Electronic Ampico", which he designed
 [ and built.  It reads an actual roll in a spool-box, converts the
 [ Ampico coding to Midi with velocity data, and then plays the music
 [ on either a synthesizer or a solenoid piano, all in real-time.
 [
 [ -- Robbie

Hello Robbie,  After catching a cold with much coughing I felt ill
and depressed for many weeks.  Though I had to do my daily work, in
the last weeks I also prepared for my lecture about self-playing
pianos with musical examples at the music high-school of Karlsruhe
last Tuesday.  They called it:  "Rachmaninoff digital -- die von
Rachmaninow eingespielten Rollen fuer Selbstspielklaviere in digitaler
Uebertragung auf den Boesendorfer Computerfluegel".

 [ That title is a classic example of formal German -- I love it,
 [ after I figure what it means!  The phrase above is (word-for-word)
 [ "the by-Rachmaninoff-played rolls for self-playing piano, in digital
 [ translation on the Boesendorfer computer-grand-piano."  -- Robbie

I chose some Rachmaninoff pieces, and one piece re-coded from Hupfeld
to Ampico A, as an example.

My wife, Wilma, drove the car the 200 miles to Karlsruhe, and on her
demand we also carried not only one but both computers, the synths, the
mixer, amplifier and the large loud-speaker boxes with us.  (And of
course the "electronic Ampico A" with it's spool-box console and power
supply).

All that stuff came to my rescue, as I would see soon, because when
we arrived at 16:00 the Boesendorfer played MIDI-Velo 64 as 'pp' and
MIDI-Velo 127 only as 'forte', and there was nobody who could find me
a better Midi-to-velocity map on the Boesendorfer's PC.  Reloading each
new map took an endless time.

(Of course I had sent them a MIDI-file as an example, and they wrote
back that only the treble was too weak.  So I made new recordings with
the treble velocity increased, and sent also one to Wayne Stahnke to
learn his opinion).

 [ Almost 15 years ago, when the Boesendorfer SE solenoid piano was
 [ adapted to play from MIDI wireline signals, there existed no
 [ published standard to relate Midi-velocity commands to hammer
 [ velocity.  The engineers at Kimball chose to make a map (a table of
 [ all 127 possible MIDI values) to create the SE-format commands.
 [ Nowadays, fortunately, a de-facto standard has been established, so
 [ that all piano-synths (and, hopefully, solenoid pianos too) respond
 [ to the MIDI commands identically.  -- Robbie

The lecture was to be at 19:30 so I decided not to search for a better
map myself, but to shift the MIDI-Velo as high as possible and to play
only some best-suited pieces on the Boesendorfer and the other ones on
my synths.  I also recompiled the program of my "electronic Ampico A"
with a new scaling and played one roll directly into the Boesendorfer.

The re-coded Hupfeld-Ampico example roll I played was 52645-H, Chopin:
Valse Brillante As-Dur, played 1917 by Backhaus.  The lady rector
had a Russian guest with her who could not understand my words; she
said to the rector, "No, this is not Rachmaninoff playing, but 
Wilhelm Backhaus!"   ;-)

 [ That lady really knows piano music!  How did she recognize
 [ Backhaus?  From phonograph records?  Or did she recognize the
 [ Hupfeld roll-performance?  Amazing!  -- Robbie

At last the concert was good success.  If you want it for your German
studies, I will send you my script ;-).

Being glad to feel better now, hoping you and your wife are well too,
with best regards,

Horst Mohr

mohr@nemeter.dinoco.DE  H. Mohr Koelnerstr.49 51515 Kuerten 02268/1561