It would be most interesting to learn if the process used to make
the Duo-Art piano rolls was also carried over to making the Duo-Art
residence pipe organ rolls.

A great many were certainly draft board arrangements -- the infamous
"Aeolian Organ Guild" -- but what about the hand played organ rolls?
Was there a high speed master punching machine, or were they all simply
marked for later punching?  The best evidence to date seems to say that
they were only marked first and punched later.

The Aeolian recording organ was in the New York studio; but to date,
nothing is accurately known just how the master recorder worked.
The best guess is that it only marked the roll as the organist played.
However, there was one statement made that the recorder was in a
separate room because of the noise it made during a performance
recording.  Does this imply that they were directly punched as the
organist played?

Only the Austin organ rolls were directly punched, as far as anyone
knows, since the machine still exists and has been used in recent
times.

This same question applied to the Welte Philharmonic organ rolls
earlier; but recent information confirms that they were made the same
way as the T-100 rolls: marked first and then punched later.  One Welte
master organ recorder exists in a museum in Europe.  It uses the same
rubber wheel marking system as the T-100 piano rolls, only no variable
expression, as it was not needed.  The magnets were designed to only
mark the roll, and not show any key stroke dynamics, as with the piano
rolls.

The console's expression system was simply electrical contacts on the
swell pedals and they were marked the same way as the notes on the
roll, yes or no and when.  The supposition is that the Wurlitzer R,
Estey, Skinner, Möller, Kimball, Roesler-Hunholz, and other organ rolls
were all made the same way: marked first then punched later, when the
mistakes were edited out of the performance.

There certainly exists a need for a book on the residence pipe organ
players, how they really worked and how the rolls were made; but as
this subject gets short shift with enthusiasts today, such a book will
probably not be written.  Some of these organ roll players were simply
astonishing in their complexity and range of operation, especially the
Skinner Full Automatic, the Möller Artiste, and the Wurlitzer R.

It's unfortunate, because there is a grand library of splendid music on
these rolls.  Only those few of us who are now starting to digitize
this big library of music seem to care enough to save them.

Jim Crank