Dear MMDers,  A few days ago, Julie Porter wrote asking about choosing
a scale for a band, fair or street organ and said that her preference
was for classical and operatic music.  Russell Wattam pointed out that
it is not necessary to have a fully chromatic scale to render good
arrangements of this type of music.  Julie continues with some
additional comments:

> I am not sure I agree here.  A tracker scale defines the instrument.
> The above is fine for the casual net surfer who wants to play the file
> with General Midi.  I am not so sure it is appropriate to force music
> not intended any more than using a small screwdriver to turn a big
> screw; it bungs up both the tool and the screw...
>
> I spent some time looking at the list of Wurlitzer 180 rolls posted
> here a few days ago Digest 000903 in looking through the 165 catalog.
> I can see this is not what I want.
>
> The question then, is there similar lists for other instruments? ...
>
> What I think the MMD needs is a 'Top 25' list which lists the 25 most
> accessible A, G, and O rolls, for the 12 most accessible instruments.

Sorry for the long copies but I wanted to set the stage.  First, I
agree with Russell Wattam that it isn't necessary for a machine,
particularly a band organ, to be fully chromatic to be able to play
classical music.  Furthermore, even small Wurlitzers and monkey organs
have a few sharps and flats.  However, if you want the music to sound
like the original music, the scale must be big enough to cover all the
parts as originally written.  It must also have enough notes so that
it is not constantly "wrapping around octaves".

To accomplish this with the normal repertoire of classical music,
23 notes or more of completely chromatic melody and another 12 notes
of chromatic accompaniment are needed.  The eight bass notes of the
87- 89-key Gavioli are adequate, but I can say that my own 81-key
Wilhelm Bruder, with 11 bass notes, allows melody to be played in the
bass section of the instrument.  Additionally, 16 or more notes of
countermelody will allow a very nice alternation in the arrangement.
To achieve this, an organ should be generally 70 keys or more.  Less
than this and you will definitely hear compromises in the music,
whether they be missing sharps and flats or octave wraparound.

If you want to listen to a "carousel organ" which includes its unique
changes to the music, a small Wurlitzer will sound fine.  If you want
to hear classical music in its original orchestrated form, you must
have a larger machine.

Now, a couple comments about the music.  Yes, a good arranger can take
into account the specific keys, registers and tonal qualities of a
particular organ.  However, it is certainly possible to "rearrange"
music for a similar but different scale.

My organ is based on the Carl Frei 79-key scale.  I have successfully
rearranged music from the Ruth 78-keyless scale, the Gebruder 80-key
scale, the 89-key Gavioli scale, and a number of others.  The closer
the scale, the easier it is.  Usually a difficulty comes when applying
a smaller scale to a larger organ.  If the smaller scale music is
simply played on the larger organ then much is lost.

When doing my rearrangements, however, I have added countermelodies,
extended octave runs, added missing sharps and flats (sometimes by
listening to orchestral arrangements of the same music) and the music
comes out sounding fine on my organ.  For this reason, I think it is
possible for Keller and Kern to adapt music from one scale to another
particularly if the scales are similar in size to begin with.

Finally, the question of the list of tunes to select from.  First of
all, most of the classical music for the larger organs is book music,
not rolls.  There are several rolls in the Wurlitzer 165 list which
have very nice classical music but there are not many of them.

The Kern and Keller list is probably the largest of the existing
repertoires but it is missing many tunes which exist on machines today.
There is a list of MIDI music for the various Mortier machines which
Mike Ames supplies to people who use his MIDI system on their Mortier
organ.

Beyond these, no "master lists" exist that I know of.  There are few
classical pieces that have not been done at one time or another for
some organ somewhere.  Much of my own knowledge of what tunes have been
arranged has come from collecting LPs, tapes and CDs for many years.

My suggestion, if you intend to build your own fair organ and you want
to listen to a lot of classical music, is to pick a real organ scale of
at least 75 keys and copy that.  The 78 key Ruth is an excellent choice
although it is a scrambled scale.  The Carl Frei 79 key fair organ
scale is equivalent but is a linear scale and therefore much easier to
understand.  Musically, they are nearly identical.

These are about the smallest scales which I think would be completely
satisfying playing a classical repertoire.  This is just my opinion and
I will be interested to hear other comments.

Bob Conant
Endicott, NY