Andy Taylor said:

> Regular player pianos are not capable of half pedaling, nor shading
> music.  The only way to get any rubato effect I have found is to
> advance the melody line by two perforations (or retard the
> counter-melody).

<Cough>.   Ninety percent of the Aeolian Co pushups and pianos sold
in England had direct pedal linkage from the leftmost lever, enabling
entirely subtle effects to be obtained.  (On the other hand, 90% of the
Standard actions had pneumatic pedal actuation, whether from the levers
or from roll.  This is either on or off.  Enough said.)

I spent three months in 1992 putting the two 20/25-minute versions of
Rachmaninov's Second sonata onto rolls, using Rex Lawson's Apple IIe
program.  There are some passages in this where all pianists put in a
marked rallentando, so it seemed permissible to put a mild version of
this onto the roll to assist interpretation.

After some experimentation -- using Rex's MIDI output to a piano tone
unit (where you "play" the electronic roll on a non-existent piano) --
it became easy to guess the quarter-note (crotchet) stretching and you
could almost do it to a formula.

Suppose an unmodified 4/4 bar occupies 48 rows or advances of the
punch, an elegant expectant rallentando in the last bar coming up to a
new section might require 12, 13, 15 and 18 rows.  I certainly wouldn't
put it past professional roll editors to be able to do this kind of
thing to order after one hearing of a cassette or disk recording.

Dan Wilson, London