The Moeller Artiste player, along with the Skinner Automatic, Roesler-
Hunholz Concert and Wurlitzer R, is one of the best roll playing
systems invented.  The musical results are just fantastic when played
on a large enough organ to take full advantage of what the roll was
capable of using.  If the organ has 20 or more ranks, then the results
are just wonderful.

The very sophisticated multiplexing system, and the ability to snatch
sections of its tracker bar and use it for other purposes and then put
it back into playing service in a split second, is a real wonder and
the secret of the good musical reproduction the Moeller rolls are
capable of delivering.

Trying to play, say, the "9th Symphony" or the "Zampa Overture" on
a four-frank organ is absolutely ridiculous.  I once took some big
symphonic Duo-Art rolls to a gathering at the home of a doctor who had
just installed a 6-rank Aeolian Duo-Art organ.  The poor thing was
almost down on the blower starting windings trying to play all the
notes the rolls had going!  The results were laughable.  All these roll
systems really need a large and well equipped organ to reproduce the
music properly.

If you wish to read the only good article on the Moeller Artiste ever
written, then get a copy of the AMICA Bulletin for July and August
1992.  Jim Weisenborne wrote this absolutely definitive description
and story of the Artiste player.  And yes, he owns the masters and the
machinery.

The problem with Artiste rolls is that each and every one of them was
coded for the _specific_ organ it was intended to play.  Every organ
that had a player was listed at the factory and when the owner ordered
new rolls, they had their stop control punchings customized for that
organ.  For the most part, the rolls are totally non-interchangeable,
which makes collecting them a useless pursuit unless one is most
skilled at re-registering the rolls for the exact organ they are to
play.

Like the Aeolian, Welte, Skinner and the rest of the systems, Moeller
has a more or less ideal rank list, detailed in the Weisenborne
article.  One can (again, if the organ is large enough) substitute
different voices of the same tonal families and volume level and get
nice results.  At least the stop control punchings are dedicated to
specific ranks in these rolls.

The present project is to optically read the rolls and derive a
suitable stop list in the computer and then play back the rolls on
a MIDI interface.  One commercial organ computer system is capable
of interpreting the Moeller multiplexing, along with the individual
characteristics of the other roll systems, and deliver a common MIDI
data stream that can be read by an organ equipped with a MIDI
interface, such as the big theater organs in public environments that
seem to all be equipped with digital relay/switchstack systems.

This is an ongoing project that has not yet been finalized, although
good progress has been accomplished to date.

Jim Crank