I went web surfing to find a program which would help me arrange
tune sheets for my very limited Sankyo 20 note music box.  I had
already arranged two tunes and had encouragement from several MMDers
on how to do this.  Their methods involved more musicianship than
I was likely to develop in this lifetime, so I hoped to find some
tools which would let me squash marvelous chromatic piano MIDI files
into twenty diatonic notes.

I discovered Harmony Assistant 9.3.0 by Myriad, written by Didier
and Olivier Guillon.  It seems to have been out for a decade and is
documented in five languages.  It has some real advantages and some
limitations which I will show you.  Find it at http://myriad-online.com/
The key to this discovery was seeing "street organ" in the description.

Expectedly, the trial version is limiting, but you can get a very
good idea how it will work for you.  For 70 dollars or euros, you
can actually own it and use all the features.

I started by viewing my MIDI file of "Suo Gan" which is in the MMD
Archives at  http://mmd.foxtail.com/Sounds/sankyo20.html  It was
composed directly for the 20-note scale and then entered into MIDI
by keyboard artist R. Rhodes.

It shows on the screen in three staves, the melody, the second voice
below, then the arpeggio accompaniment on a in the bass clef.  It was
extremely neat and editable.  I discovered that one copy had few
chromatics which I was able to adjust back to their proper places.
The program shows that all the notes will play on my box and outputs
a punch file which matches my hand made original!

But what about the custom scale for my instrument?  How would it know?
Click on Help, Documentation, Appendices, Street Organ Cards, and find
a good write-up by A. Meyer.  It tells you how to create a "pipe
definition" for your particular "organ."  In this case I did C3, D3,
E3... F5, G5 and A5.  Then I did "Save Organ" as "Sankyo 20er
diatonic".

Wanting to do something more useful, I closed "Suo Gan", which already
works fine, and opened the first piano roll scan on my computer, "Clair
de Lune", 52305A.mid, which was scanned by Larry Doe from the Ampico
roll played by Olga Samaroff.  One MMD thread discussed arranging this
piece for music box, and the idea was not encouraged, so I figured it
would at least show me the limitations of the program and the
difficulties in conversion.

The first step is to open the MIDI file.  It is displayed all on
one treble staff.  With the file loaded and displayed in page mode,
I switched to a straight time-line by clicking Score, Page Mode (off)
which I enlarged and found was easier to mouse over when editing.
I also dragged the expanded tool bars for rests, notes and editing over
from the left of the screen to the top of the screen so I could use
them more easily.

The next step, especially for instruments with a limited range, is to
duplicate the tune an octave down so you have lots of notes to fill the
staff even after you trim off the top and bottom edges like pie crust.
Click on Staff, Add Staff, Duplicate, OK.  Then highlight the second
staff you have created by clicking just in front of it on the first
line.  Once it is highlighted, click on the icon in the top group
showing a note and an arrow down, twelve times.  Now you have twice as
many notes.

Now fit this to your instrument.  Click Score, Apply, Street Organ
Filter.  If you did not already set up your own filter, now is the time
to enter your own "Street Organ Name" and save it.  This will stay as
your default Street Organ Setup even if you close and open the program.

Each time you use this filter, you will be asked if you want a Strict
Matching of Octaves.  When you answer <yes> or <no>, you will be given
a substantially different number of steps to transpose up or down, and
a different number of notes which do not fit your instrument.  I have
usually found <yes> to be the right answer, then I read how many steps
to transpose, cancel the filtering, select the whole music with cntl-A,
transpose the number of semitones indicated, and go back and do the
filter.

The first couple of times I selected the filter, I asked it to simply
delete the notes which did not fit.  It does not simply delete them,
but deletes their timing also, which usually gives horrible results
when you try to play it.  Now I just ask it to "colorize" and it turns
the unfitted notes red so I can move them around or delete them and,
sometimes, insert a rest to get the timing back where it belongs.

You can, of course, save the tune at every step, but in the trial mode
you will only get about two lines of music.  Wanting to see how the
whole piece came out, I did not save at all until I was quite finished
with messing with the piece.

To my surprise, "Clair de Lune" gave rather clean results.  In the
first half of the piece, before the arpeggios start, there are few
harmonics and a few notes above or below the scale merely needed to
be deleted and the tempo did not go nuts.  In the arpeggio section,
I dragged the offending chromatic notes into what I thought would be
harmonies so the ear would help continue the piece and the tempo would
be maintained.

Now, to print the music, you go into File, Print, Street Organ Cards
and set up the width, spacing, and I set the card speed to 8, the
pressure-time ratio to 10, and the hole to Circular Punches.  The
program also remembers these parameters and you can call them up by
name if you save them also.

Now you can punch them out and optimize the spacing and stuff.  Not
needing or wanting reiterating punches like a nickelodeon xylophone,
I think setting the Pressure Time Ratio control lower would give me
a clean starting punch and not make duplicate holes for the same note.

Once you have become adept at this program and have lots of files for
the Sankyo 20-note movement, please share with me.

I would really like to hear about your experiences and, from the depth
of the program and the obvious commitment of dozens of programmers and
volunteers, the makers would be delighted to hear how their work is
being applied also.

Karl Petersen
Washington, Illinois
email: karlp@firedragon.hypeandvitriol.com (omit hype and vitriol
when writing)