Craig Brougher writes that Robert Armbruster said:

> ... Pauline played so fast and profusely that he had to ask her to
> not play so many notes, because nobody would really believe it was
> hand-played for a Duo-Art.  (Not to mention the fact that they would
> have to record at about a 120-140 tempo...

As I've now seen this tempo figure more than once in the past week or
so, I got curious (as to whether this seemed plausible or just a new
"Internet urban legend") and broke out the calculator to see just how
fast is fast to actually *require* the use of a 120-140 tempo.

(The gist of this thread is that Pauline played lots of notes, and so
fast, that a higher roll tempo would be required to handle it.  Faster
tempo means more paper in the roll for the a given song, and her
company wanted to be economical in paper usage, so she was told to play
slower and with fewer notes.  If I've got this wrong, please ignore the
rest of this message!)

Using the 1911 American Music Roll Standard that .083" is the smallest
hole height and that .110" is the shortest bridge between playing
(repeating) notes, one note and its bridge will take up .193" of roll.
Doing the math, at a tempo of 120 (12 feet per minute), you can (at
most) fit about 12 notes per second on the roll (of the same note,
trilled).  (Likewise, about 14 notes/sec for 140 tempo, 9 notes/sec at
90 tempo.) So in order to actually *require* a 120 tempo, she would
have to be trilling the same note manually at 12 times per second,
presumably while continuing to play the other notes of the song.  Holy
Marimba Roll, Batman!  Her fingers are smoking!

When a normal variety of notes are involved (not counting trilling),
like in a real manually-played song, I don't see that there really is
any "speed" limitation of the paper/tempo, just how much vacuum your
reservoir holds, and how fast your pneumatics can respond/cycle.  It
has nothing to do with the roll tempo.   You can cut the same song at
60 or 90 or 120 tempo, the only difference would be the length of the
holes.  (As already touched upon by others...)

It seems that the tempo choice would have a lot to do with economics
of paper usage, roll size and tune program length, maybe your roll
replicating equipment, but NOT on the speed of the pianist's note
playing.  (As an example of this, I have the exact same song (Jingle
Bells), same arrangement/played-by, both QRS rolls, but different
tempos (one is a "single", the other small-diameter roll has 3 songs on
it).  They (of course) sound the same when played at their specified
tempos.)

So I guess I just don't get it ... I still don't see why the speed of
Pauline's note playing would require the roll to be cut at a higher
tempo.  So is this an Internet urban legend (that Pauline played so
fast that she required 120 tempo), or is there something I've missed
(or something that hasn't come out yet, like we're talking about
arranged rolls perhaps)?

Rick Inzero, Northern Telecom, Inc., Rochester, NY, rdi@cci.com