Recently at the West Coast Ragtime Festival, I had a chat with a fellow
automusic enthusiast about the permanence of the paper roll.  His opinion
was that music preserved on computer disk was somehow less "permanent"
than on paper; and I agreed.  But after giving it much thought, I began
asking myself, "What is really permanent," and 100 years from now is the
paper going to be around?

I admit I was slow to accept MIDI.  I only did it on one instrument
I own only because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking
for the correct spoolbox for it (it was a remote reader, like a Duo-Art
Concertola or a Tel-Electric reader) and even rarer Seeburg-Smith
orchestrated pipe organ rolls.

So I succumbed to the ease and convenience of MIDI -- and for a guy
like me handy with adapting old time orchestra and band music to MIDI
files, it turned out to be a great choice for an almost endless supply
of the period music I enjoy, including allowing me to put things down
that were never found (so far) on orchestrion or organ rolls.  I store
the music on computer disks, which have their problems (one day a disk
just gave out, I suppose due to warpage giving me a disk read error).
Good thing I had the music backed up on a chip.  And that brings me to
the point.

I'm all for the scanning and preserving of the best of the era's music
digitally.  Paper may be cut, disks issued, I suppose even Tel-Electric
brass rolls could be punched from MIDI data if some clever person knew
a way, all from the master digital storage.  The world has radically
changed in he last 40 years.  Not since the invention of the printing
press has the conveyance of information so radically changed.  Things
that will be carried into the future must be transferred in some way 
to a digital media and stored -- the issuance media may come and go.

(When I first worked in electronic control of automated acoustical
structures, everything was put on 8-track tape, for those of you who
remember my automated musical sculpture exhibits at the California
Museum of Science & Industry and various art galleries in L.A. and NYC).

As far as paper outlasting computer disks, I once bid over $200 on a
paper roll, won it, got and put it on the piano, a piano that had a
perfectly aligned roll system and well-adjusted tracking mechanism and
had played thousands of rolls with no problems, and, you guessed it,
the roll shredded on rewind and by the time I ran across the room to
throw the shut-off switch, was pretty much ruined.

So much for paper.  Even the wax impregnated commercial coin operated
instrument rolls are aging fast. I doubt they will be playable in 100
years, assuming that there is anyone around who wants to play them and
anything working that will play them.

Nothing, absolutely nothing made by the hands of man lasts "forever".
Look at the pyramids and the Sphinx -- decomposing so badly that they
may not be around in a few hundred years.  In this season of Christmas,
remember the only one who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Merry Christmas to all, and may your holiday resound with automatic
musical instruments!

Stephen Kent Goodman