In the last digest Dan Wilson wrote:

> <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.)

Hi Dan,  You have brought up a valid point.  However, as you pointed
out, a mechanical damper linkage is capable of half pedaling in the
hands of a skilled operator.  So I withdraw the statement as far as
those type of pianos are concerned.

But the fact is, a pneumatic damper device cannot half pedal: the
damper pedal is _not_ a substitute to compensate for short perforations
that should have been done properly in the first place.  The first roll
I did for Bam-Bam sounded fine on my piano at the time (it had a
pneumatic damper control) but on the next piano I rebuilt, (no damper
control) it sounded horrible due to my lack of understanding of roll
arranging at the time.

Raw, hand-played arrangements are always too choppy, (to say nothing
of the timing), and it would be a safe bet to say that the raw QRS
Celebrity masters suffered from this too.  I really don't view it as
fraudulent to edit them to play properly, as some have implied.  Believe
me, you do not want to listen music on a pneumatic piano "as played"!

Any good roll I have ever seen is arranged to produce passable music
without the damper rod lifting.  There is a reason for that: a roll
arranger never knows if the damper lift is present on the piano it is
used upon, and therefore will extend the perforations to keep the key
depressed and the damper for that note off the string.  The damper
perforations are used mainly for reverb effects and color.

It is true that if the dampers and hammer rails are used skillfully,
even a boring roll can come to life.

Despite all that has been said over the years about a player, there are
hundreds of people who will just put the roll on and grind it out with
no expression,  that was the reason for the reproducer people to go to
work and create the wonderful instruments we enjoy today.

But all these shortcomings in players, and the operators who are
unwilling to properly play them, just allows the arranger to tweak
the notes to produce at least acceptable music from these type of
operators.

Please do not misunderstand. I am not presenting myself as a expert
in this field; I am really just a serious student in music and roll
arranging.  What I have learned so far has came from countless hours
of study and experimenting and advice from people who do this.

There is a common misconception among player owners that the rolls
are just "played by" the artist and most are unaware of the work and
time it takes to produce a good roll.  Maybe someday I will produce
a good one! <grin>)

Best Regards
Andy Taylor
Tempola Music Rolls
http://www.bootheel.net/~tempola/