Roll O-1001, as numbered by Gottschalk Music and now first released
by Player Piano Company (PPCo) and Gottschalk Music, was a Christmas
roll arranged by Dave Junchen for Durrell Armstrong of PPCo.

I was recently engaged by Gottschalk Music (Capitol) to restore the
roll.  The original master, which was hand punched by Dave using a rail
type punch device, is missing, so the only copy that could be scanned
was a very early version from the original PPCo release and owned by
Paul Gottschalk.  This version suffers from inaccurate onsets and
offsets of slots.  Since the original is apparently lost (neither
Durrell nor Paul have it) its original accuracy can never be
ascertained.

First, Wayne Stahnke did the scan of Paul's copy.  Then, using his
amazing software, he was able to synchronize the roll transcription to
the point where one could see that Dave really did think as the old
masters did.  Absent the original scanning/perforating errors, one
could see how he targeted the arrangements for a perforator advancing
at 240/foot and in discreet steps-per-beat values of 8, 10, 12 and 18,
depending on the desired tempo and placement within the roll.  In
perforating the production roll from the master roll it suffered quite
a bit, however, and the result was a transcribed roll image that needed
further hand editing to bring it "up to spec."

Having read Dave's descriptions of Capitol coding technique in Bowers,
I knew that he really knew what he was doing, and so could eliminate
the ragged onsets and offsets of the slots with some confidence.  Where
these differed by one row, I felt I was justified in aligning them.
Where they differed by more than one row, and in an obvious arpeggiated
pattern, I tried to edit them to what I thought he intended.

Marimba effects were a problem.  When they occurred in a 10-per-beat
4/4 meter arrangement, it was impossible to make them an even division
into triplets or 8ths and so forth.  I always had to keep in mind the
"3 rows of land" rule when straightening them out.  All off-beat "pahs"
were adjusted to two rows, and so on and so forth.

The result, I believe is a version of the roll that accurately reflects
his intentions.  In fact, when I play the before and after results to
novices (non musicians and tin ears alike), everyone notices a
difference.  The edited version seems crisper and snappier.  To
musicians and people with educated ears, a lot of Dave's delicious
counterpoint and syncopation suddenly becomes apparent, whereas before
it was just muddled.  Some have even said that the original was blah
and unremarkable whereas the edited version, even though it's the same
notes, suddenly makes their faces light up.

As a demonstration of the results, I've put two RealAudio files of
tune 5, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" -- before and after -- at
Inlux.  This should put to bed once and for all, the argument over
whether re-cuts and re-editions of paper rolls should be as accurate
as possible, or simply "good enough."

Dave Saul is perforating a limited number of copies at a historically
accurate 240 rows/foot paper advance.  Copies of this new version will
be released exclusively by Capitol Music Rolls (Paul Gottschalk).

The HTML address for the sound samples is:

        http://www.inluxeditions.com/htmlfiles/1001.html

You'll have to type in this exact address as I have not placed a link
to it on the main page.

George Bogatko
http://www.inluxeditions.com/