Roger Waring asked, in 000626 MMDigest:

> What medium is best for all practical purposes for the recording
> of new rolls:  A keyboard with MIDI interface?  A [real-time]
> roll-cutting player (if one exists)?  Something else?

A very good system is available from Rex Lawson <pianola@lineone.net>
which (because they come free from schools) uses Apple IIe computers
equipped with a MIDI interface.

You plug your keyboard in at the back and get raving.  A piano roll
gravely appears on the screen which you can then edit for several hours
using a piano unit (or of course, the keyboard if it has audio output).

I saw an early version of this at Mike Boyd's former roll works at
St Leonards-on-Sea about five years ago, when Olga Dellaway performed
Eric Satie's Gymnopaedie No 2 on a Clavinova belonging to me which
Rex uses for occasional gigs.  I think two notes required correcting,
after which a floppy disk (5-1/4" !) was placed in Mike's similar
computer which has a perforator interface with his ex-Aeolian,
ex-Artona, ex-Ambassador 88-note theme perforator.  Two sets of rolls
were produced on the spot which Olga signed and we all took home as
a memento.

These were, however, 88-note only.  Rex is still tinkering with a
flexible MIDI-to-Duo-Art computer "lookup table" for the dynamics.
It's quite a problem matching different keyboards to a standard
Duo-Art dynamic curve.  A 1922 Weber Duo-Art grand with MIDI output
(for mobility, dangling from a balloon) as the input device would
actually work rather better, as it would at least stay the same.

However, UK roll material economics are austere in the extreme at
present and Mike Boyd can't match American prices (in any case his
piano work has grown more than calculated and rather taken over).
So Rex is hand-in-glove with Keystone Music Rolls, of whom we all
have great hopes.  There is a lot of Rachmaninov to be cut ...

Dan Wilson, London

 [ A lengthy article by Rex Lawson about his recording system appears
 [ in Player Piano Group Bulletin 134, March 1995.  For availability
 [ contact Julian Dyer <jrd@ngcscd.demon.co.uk>