> From: aeolian@nyc.rr.com.geentroep (Randolph Herr)
> To: "Mechanical Music Digest" <rolls@foxtail.com>
> Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 10:43:23 -0400
>
> Subject: Same Melody Used For Different Songs
>
> It never fails to interest me how one article can suddenly bring
> up a multitude of related issues.  Jon Miller started by asking a
> question about similar arrangements on different roll labels.  This
> led to Joyce Brite's article on the same music appearing in different
> songs, in yesterdays MMD.  That led to this article.

And here you go... you mention something about the history of
programming and - voila - here you got my article :-)

> I have read in several books on computers that the Jacquard loom,
> invented in the 1700's to automate the weaving of complex patterns
> in cloth, is considered the earliest example of programming.  I think
> the honors should go to the field of automatic music.  If you look in
> Arthur Loesser's monumental book "Men, Women and Pianos" you will find
> records of such instruments going back to practically the Middle Ages!

Well, actually I think, that you can go even back to the old Greeks,
although I'm missing right now the historian background and the
reference to the piece of paper that would show so...
...but while being quite hypothetical(?):
If we had more prove and papers about "Atlanteans", I am sure they
might had some programming ideas as well.

I leave these theories for someone else, though, as I wanted to actually
point out something completely else:

(Uh, not this, but maybe someone can clear that point, too:
 Have there been pinned barrels _before_ those weaving automates?)

The point about the weaving-pattern cards is, that they were the first
to use (almost paradox isn't it?) to use *holes* in 'something' for
triggering reactions (in even complex ways).

This then led to all those things we know:
- cards with holes (uh, not in mechanical music I think, but this was
  used for programming the very first computers in the mid-1950(?)s,
  as well as for things like 'real' Databases and I think even the
  American voting system still runs on cards...?)
- discs (Wow! From all kind musical-box-discs to the CD-ROM :-))
- cardboard-books (the step from having just one card to having a
  whole row of - almost infinite number of - cards rowed up one
  after another. To my knowledge this was first done by Gavioli, Paris.
  The main key result of this was to eliminate the time-limit, that is
  present in discs.)
- (Piano-) Rolls (Would be nice if someone can list up the dates of:
  - the first books by Gavioli (I think the time of the Eiffel-Tower)
  - the first piano-roll
  The Roll took out the folds of the cardboard, making the whole thing
  a very very long (but again length-limited) "card")

> As a "Pianolist", my favorite quote concerns a "self-acting
> pianoforte" from the early 1800's:
>
> "Speed could be regulated at pleasure, while piano, forte, sforzato
>  and diminuendo were 'produced by the slightest motion of the hand
>  applied to a sliding ball at the side of the instrument' "

so - by not actually being a "Pianolist" in the first place - is this
as well operated by a piano-roll...? It sounds like, though...

> Randolph Herr

greetings by(e) InK - Ingmar Krause
--
ERlanger drehORGEL-Trio, Familie Krause,
erorgelt@erlangen.franken.de.geentroep
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