Hello, Mechanical Music Digest readers,  Recently, I was 'invited'
to join Gmail, the Google WebMail service which is free, so far, and
which offers 1 GB of storage space.  Google's new Gmail is still in
the beta stages, so is 'by invitation' from another user, which is
how I got my account, thanks to an overseas player roll customer.

The advantage of Gmail's large storage space became clear this week.
I was bidding on eBay on some ragtime/novelty sheet music which was in
the U.K.  Unfortunately for me, the price of the music books, of which
there were four, shot up to double what I would have paid for the
scores in the States.  (However, they wouldn't have turned up, over
here being based on English pianists of the 1930s and marketed
originally by a British publishing house.)

I wrote the seller, who had sent me an ultra-sharp JPEG image (about
950 KB in size) as a sample, and asked if I could purchase the
entire set in this form.  (Note: when buying sheet music on eBay,
I often request a sample page, in order to view what the score is like,
since this is for player roll arranging activities, not for a 'cover
page' to put in a picture frame, on one's wall!)

To my amazement, she sent me a really good image, one which printed up
as if it were almost the original copy, and with perfect alignment in
the frame, as well.

This involved signing up for PayPal and converting currencies, but
this morning two "monster sized" email, with 28 separate high-resolution
JPEG attachments, arrived in my new Gmail address.  What made it so
handy, for me, was that my regular (provider's) inbox wasn't being
clogged up for a long, long download.  Gmail, for that purpose,
certainly came along at the right time for me!

When the transfer of sheet music images is of this quality, I don't
mind paying for the images.  There was no postage (which would have
been high from Great Britain).  The postage costs were factored into
my bidding range previously, so I knew what to expect for shipping
printed paper.

Thus, the "new" meets the "old" in the Artcraft studio: hand operated
Leabarjan perforators and editing equipment share the activities with
international image file transfers, using modern computer technology.

Ever since I began perforating rolls in the early 1950s, I used the
newest electronics in tandem with my old equipment.  Thus, a Wilcox-Gay
Tape Recordio was my "audio analysis" method for perforation lengths
then, just as several Tandberg open reel decks are today, along with
a Sony-Marantz cassette deck which allows me to "tune" audio recordings
to my player grand pianos.  (Readers will note that Tandberg of Norway
went out of business in 1985, which is why I stocked up on them at that
time in order to keep on going with analogue audio for piano music,
which is still my preference.)

Who knows?  My next release might be from a JPEG image and not a faded
old score from an archives box!

Regards,
Douglas Henderson - Artcraft Music Rolls
Wiscasset, Maine, USA
http://wiscasset.nnei.net/artcraft/