I have corresponded with David Jameson about his wish to produce
sheet music from Friml's Duo-Art roll of "Indian Love Call" [060425
MMDigest].  The project involves two problems that I would like to
throw out for comment.

The adventure starts as we take a MIDI file resulting from scanning,
and bring it up in a notation program such as Finale.  The result is
certainly useful (all the notes are there), but not readable -- rubato
is rendered precisely with a vengeance, measure divisions are chaotic,
and runs are often bunched in wrongly-simultaneous groupings.

Changing resolution settings only aggravates the situation.
Therefore the best that can be done is to put together a new score the
old-fashioned way, using the printout as a source for notes and an
audio playback as a guide for rhythms.

So my first question is:  Can any of our readers manipulate MIDI files
in notation programs in a more sophisticated way to achieve better
results automatically?

The second challenge is actually playing the thing with your human
fingers.  Contrary to the roll company advertising, many if not most
non-classical rolls were heavily edited to achieve extreme results in
the home.  They know the public wants to have it pitched to them as the
realest of real human playing, but anyone who keeps track of all the
notes in a Luckey Roberts or James P. Johnson roll has a rude awakening
coming.  No conventional single pianist, or pair of pianists sitting on
a bench, can comfortably play the exact music at tempo.  The roll has
been treated as a canvas, in which the painter (editor) inserted, moved
and lengthened notes with the same freedom that a writer does sitting
at his computer and liberated from paper and typewriter.

Therefore that phase of preparing our sheet music depends on insight
into piano idiom, and an ability to organize everything so that it will
be within the technical means of the intended player.

So my first question is:  Would the piano players among us prefer that
octave-doublings, tremolos and extra voices be reproduced in the music
so that the score is "authentic" but requires further simplification?
Or, should we edit it down to a regular advanced level?  What would be
most desirable and helpful?

Jim Neher

 [ Pianists will appreciate the simplest possible notation that retains
 [ the flavor of the piano roll, and with two pianos the extra voices
 [ can be preserved.  It's easy to please the audience.  -- Robbie