Hi there,

I had a quite interesting discovery the other day!

In researching my article last year on Angelus 65-note repertoire, many
people I spoke with expressed the view that the red-labeled Melodant
Artistyle rolls inexplicably sounded far better than their equivalent,
but all were at a loss to say why. So, I decided to find out if the
statement had any basis.  Incidentally, for those who never knew,
"melodant" was Wilcox & White's version of Aeolian's "themodist".

I found I had two Angelus 65-note rolls from Beethoven's Pathetique
Sonata - one an ordinary Angelus and one a Melodant Artistyle Angelus
and both from the Meriden factory where they shared production with
Aeolian. My theory was that the Melodant themeing was added to earlier
un-themed masters and the Artistyle printing was just simply added over
the top. If the Melodant was added to existing masters then the
perforation pattern should match up. If a new dedicated master had been
made I expected to find the themed notes brought slightly forward or
back so that the theme perforation would catch it correctly.

Beethoven seemed a good choice as the notes, being classical piano
music, should remain the same in any edition.  What I found was very
unexpected indeed.

The first earlier roll, as expected, is just Beethoven exactly from the
sheet music plain and simple.

In the next roll where the roll is un-themed, Beethoven just goes
merrily along as it does on the earlier roll until it says "Melodant
on" and the themed section arrives at the tracker bar. To have themed
notes sound clearer against the rest of the notes they'd thinned out
the score. For example in the treble half two notes strike a chord
together in the original. In the themed roll one would expect the
themed note to be slightly advanced from the other. Not in this roll
they didn't! They moved the undesired note one octave down into the
bass half of the stack so it wouldn't be themed with the top note of
the chord! Unbelievable! Was this just a perforator error? No, I
unrolled the two rolls over each other and the same thing happened
time and time again! I placed my hands over the keys and played the
Beethoven from memory and what the Melodant roll played wasn't quite
what my fingers played. Following what the piano keys played against
the sheet music confirmed it beyond all doubt too!

But fancy hacking about with classical music in this manner...  and
you'd have least suspected it in a roll of classical music after all!

So why do folk reckon that the red-label Angelus rolls sound best of
the lot. It is now obvious why this is. These rolls theme the music
clearer than the system would be capable of in theory - simply by
chopping the music about to highlight the effect! They obviously knew
the system limitations from the outset; that the themeing system
(melodant or themodist) could highlight the theme but never successfully
isolate it within a chord.

It would be interesting to locate the corresponding 65-note ordinary
Aeolian American-made themodist and plain rolls and compare them with
these to see if Aeolian did the same thing or if, in fact, they used
separate masters but just shared roll equipment!

Sometimes people get very protective about their hobby and may ream off
pages of offended denial at suggestions Aeolian and other major
companies took commercial shortcuts whether these be watered-down
Duo-Art dynamic coding or being liberal with the score;- the reality
is rolls have flaws.  They were made on a commercial basis and the time
to take loving care over detail with which people may make rolls these
days simply wasn't commercially viable. A good roll project may take,
these days, a few months of spare time. The Aeolian factory would want
a newly released popular piece of music on roll by the end of the week
rather than the end of three months! I have a few which clearly
demonstrate this - bare essential arrangements with a verse and two
short choruses. With a minimum of notes and length the perforator
simply made more whole copies per hour.

So, we see companies prepared to seriously edit Beethoven to enhance
the effect their piano rolls were not really capable of achieving alone.
In retrospect it isn't really any worse than advancing or retarding the
notes to be themed as done in themodist rolls even to this day, at least
this odd method doesn't give every themed chord that "spread chord"
sound. And if chopping Beethoven about wasn't noticed in the 92 years
that have since elapsed it hasn't harmed anyone. The purists never
noticed and thus duped they sought out these rolls inexplicably
thinking them to sound "better"!

Best regards

Adam Ramet
agr@lineone.net.geentroep [ drop .geentroep to reply ]