Discussion in the MMD over the last few issues has mentioned scanning
music rolls and printing out the results on paper.  Unless things have
changed, you cannot print the Piano Roll section in Cakewalk.  "Harmony
Assistant" WILL print out your results.  I tried a evaluation copy of
the software which allowed you to print one page.  The licensed version
lets you print out a whole roll, or book, and then you paste the pages
together.

I wanted a program that would scan perforated rolls.  I had seen
the scanner at Custom Music Rolls and looked at Richard Tonnesen's
excellent pictures posted to the MMD.  All I needed was the software
to do the work.

I contacted Richard Brandle whose "WindPlay" program  is used with
the "Power Roll".  After a flurry of emails, telephone calls and
a visit by Richard to my home, I finally have a program that works
for me.  Richard wrote the software and I built the hardware.
Here's what it does.

The scanner is a simple pneumatic device that "reads" the roll and
converts the pneumatic signal to an electrical one.  (See  Tonnesen's
photos in the MMD archives for his version of the contacts.)  Richard
Brandle suggested using the UM-1 originally developed by Octet Designs.
It has the capability of both input and output signals.  The software,
of course, is the key.

When Richard visited, he brought his trusty laptop (notebook) computer
and revisions to the software were done on the spot.  What evolved over
the next five hours was the "Rollrdr" software.  The signal read by the
contacts and interpreted by the UM-1 is read into a file with the
extension .scn.  It is raw data, for want of a better word.  Parameters
for the scan are contained in an .ini file, i.e., the type of sound
card your computer has, the MIDI note mapping to the UM-1, the paper
speed over the scanning tracker bar, the size of the holes in the
tracker bar and other information necessary for accuracy.  The software
runs in the DOS window of "Windows".

Once the roll is scanned, you can convert the data (the .scn file) into
a .rol file which is used by Richard's editing program "Wind".  There
is another .ini file in which you specify the PPF (punches per foot),
the MIDI note map, etc.  Once the roll is in "Wind" you can edit it and
convert it to three types of files:  Standard MIDI, Wayne Stahnke's WEB
files, or Tonnesen's perforator file.

Richard came up with the idea of a program to print the results.  The
second program, "Rollprt" does just that.  It does banner printing --
in my case on an old dot matrix printer.  Again there is complete
flexibility.  You specify the width of the paper (or cardboard) the
note spacing starting with the distance of the first punch from the
left hand edge of the paper, the punch size, etc.  The result can be
used as a template for punching whatever roll you want.

The printout actually prints images of "holes" and not just lines.
There are distance marks in the margins and the roll information,
title, etc., printed on every page.  I will send photos of the output
to the MMD for posting in the pictures section.

Since organ rolls have different characteristics than player piano
rolls, Richard had to change several things in the "Wind" program so
that I could edit my scans.  As written in version .78, Wind will not
accept scans with less than a certain number of punches per foot.  The
result was version .79 which will take just about any parameters that
I feed it.

You might say the software is still being "Beta" tested, but in all
cases it has worked well for me.

If you need more information, I will try to answer your questions or
post answers of general interest to the MMD.  Richard Brandle can be
contacted concerning all aspects of the various software.  It is NOT
shareware or freeware so you will have to deal with Richard if you want
a copy.  Keep in mind there are three separate software packages
necessary to make the whole project work.

Ed Gaida
egaida@txdirect.net