I have been working at scanning Duo-Art music for a while now.  I have
been contributing a huge percentage of my waking hours to this task in
the hopes of preserving this music for future generations.  I have
recently gotten my Duo-Art to play so well that I am truly convinced
this music needs to be preserved.

There are few people interested in piano music today but this may
change in the future.  It is understandable considering the poor
condition of most reproducing pianos today that there is little
interest.

My concern is that all interest will die out and the information to
recreate the music or restore the instruments will be gone.  Even if
interest develops in the future the information may be gone or too
difficult to obtain.  Archives, such as the MMD Archives, are a
wonderful repository for this information but, like any store of
knowledge, it may be beyond the interest of future restorers to attempt
to extract the information they need.

I am sure many MMD readers remember having questions about their
instruments and the difficulty of finding those answers.  Much basic
information was made available in the 1970's, but much was lost even
then.  I would be interested in hearing from people who have personal
knowledge of, or access to, this information who are willing to make
an effort to insure that it is not lost.

It would be great if each of the major reproducing piano systems could
find an individual interested in coordinating the effort of preserving
information for that system.  Other systems with complexity and subtle
detail that might not be obvious to the future observer would need this
sort of information preserved too.

Since I am only familiar with a few reproducing piano systems I do not
know what other mechanical music devices need to have this effort made.
I am sure there are individuals with their favorite systems who might
coordinate such efforts too.

We are in a period of very little general interest in mechanical music
right now.  Sure, there are collectors, but most of them are just that.
They are not the ones to preserve and share this information for all
in the future.

Spencer Chase
http://nt.mcn.org/spencer/