Further to my article on the B.A.B. master rolls, I'd like to
clarify what exactly the collection of master rolls is at Virginia
City, Montana.  The curator of the collection inventoried what came
to be several hundred "master" rolls, which consisted of individual
tunes not yet selected and used on a normal ten-tune roll.

The master paper used was a light brown-colored paper with dots printed
in linear fashion that were used to help the arranger -- in this case,
J. Lawrence Cook -- in his setting off measures when arranging a piece
of music.  The paper was always heavier in texture than an actual roll
that is played through an organ.

Mr. Cook would use this heavier paper to plan each and every measure
of a tune.  He did this by hand-drawing vertical lines to set off the
different sections (e.g., A-B-A) of the tune.  This procedure is quite
different from arranging an 88-note roll where the arranger [Cook]
would actually use a special piano that had the ability to hold down
more than ten notes at a time through the use of stops.  This would give
the effect of having more than ten fingers playing at a time.

The arranger of an organ roll hears the arrangement in his head.
The first time that he would hear his arrangement would be after it
was perforated onto a roll and then he would either have it played on
an organ, or visually go through the perforations for accuracy.

The inaccuracies in the tempo that I previously mentioned were not due
to any fault in the original master, but instead in the re-cutting of
subsequent rolls.  An example of this would be one of the original
rolls (B.A.B. roll #41).  I've heard an original of this roll played
on a 66-key organ.  All the tunes played with consistent tempo.  But
when recuts were made of this roll, several tunes on the roll had the
tendency to speed up at inappropriate places.

Customers of these "faulty" rolls were either too non-musically inclined
or just didn't care enough to complain.  When I met Mr. Cook during his
employment at the Aeolian Piano store in New York City, he told me that
he always arranged his carousel tunes "for the musician" and not for
the average carousel rider.

George Karpel
Burnaby, B.C., Canada

 [ Thanks, George.  The specially marked master material you describe
 [ sounds very much like the master material used at Wurlitzer.
 [ -- Robbie