It is possible to do most post 50's tunes for player -- QRS is the
proof of that possibility.   The difficulty comes when you arrive
in the period of the late 70's onward when the trend moved from
songwriters and artists as separate entities to their combination into
one entity.  More specifically, when the produced recording became the
total gestalt of the song -- the song and it's production were fused
into a single organism, one and inseparable.   The medium really became
the message.

If you listen to home-town up-and-coming bands playing the tunes of
today, you will hear that they clone the recording, not because they
cannot come up with anything better, but because the public will not
tolerate anything else.  How does one "interpret" a heavy-metal tune
into a ballad without confusing the audience?  I can assure you that
it's impossible.  When you hear a tune that has been hammered into your
head on a daily basis played on a different medium, the reality will
never live up to your expectations.  It will sound like a parody --
second rate at best -- no matter how adept the arrangement.

That leaves the other type of material authored by pure songwriters;
material that is expected to be adapted to other media.   Tunes by the
Beatles and Elton John are examples that spring to mind.  I'm sure
others can come up with other varieties.   The important considerations
are that the tunes must be ones that were authored with the expectation
that they would be adapted to other media and more importantly, that
the audience will readily accept that adaptation.

In the golden era of live music -- when live bands were expected to do
their own version of the tune -- clever and artistic adaptations were
expected, not just rehashings of someone else's arrangement.  Goodman,
Herman, Tatum, etc., were expected to produce adaptations that sounded
different.  Radio, jukeboxes, and now CD's, home stereos, and boom
boxes have destroyed that expectation.  We expect the songs to sound
the same as the last time we heard them because they always have.
We expect live juke-boxes.

One other topic that is rarely discussed is that there is considerable
time and technique involved in producing paper rolls that are
artistically arranged, and _also_ coded for sophisticated pneumatic
devices; nickelodeons, reproducing pianos, etc.  Don't forget that
even in its heyday a typical classic roll took multiple months or more
to create ("Leibesfreud" took 3 months to edit).

Those, such as myself, who attempt it, make barely a token amount of
money doing it (Doug Henderson is the only exception that I can think
of).   We do it as a hobby, not as a living.   Were we offered the
going commercial rate for arrangements, roughly $1500 per finished
minute (at 10-year-old rates), it would be worth the time to produce
clever and artistic arrangements even though we didn't really like the
material we had to work with.

Since it _is_ a hobby, and we're basically doing it for free, we
reserve the right to pick material that "lights us up", and projects
that we find interesting and stimulating -- otherwise it becomes unpaid
drudgery.  My most favorite piano style in the world is jazz from the
mid 1920's to early 30's, so that is what I do almost exclusively,
in my hobby.

The final consideration is that new material involves dealing with
the licensing organizations.   That's when it really becomes work --
dealing with bureaucrats.   That's totally outside the realm of fun
-- the primary requirement for a hobby.

George Bogatko