Art Reblitz wrote in 080908 MMDigest, "Wurlitzer Band Organ
Registration Controls",

> This finally resulted in Wurlitzer using QRS piano rolls -- based on
> arrangements by some of the finest popular pianists of the day like
> Pete Wendling, Victor Arden, Max Kortlander and others -- as the basis
> for many of its 65-note APP rolls used on coin piano and orchestrions
> in the 1920s.

Interesting that this should come up.  At the recent AMICA meeting
hosted at my parents' house on August 24th, 2008, I played a MIDI file
of "I'll See You in C-U-B-A."  I knew this to be a favorite of one of
the members attending the meeting.  She was quick to pick up that this
was the same exact arrangement, down to the improvisation interludes,
as the Q.R.S. roll.  This arrangement sounds quite nice when played on
my Caliola.

While indexing the master list of APP roll catalogs I noticed that
Max Kortlander did a number of other arrangements as far back as the
mid-1920s catalog.  While this was on APP roll 20463 and issued by
Play-Rite on roll 14, it is not listed in either Wurlitzer APP Catalog
#7 or Catalog #8 even though it should be.  There is a rather large gap
between rolls 20457 and 20471.

I am forming a theory that APP rolls are for the most part arranged
to play on the pipes first, with the piano as an addition.  Perhaps Art
Reblitz can confirm this.  From the register tubing diagram (obtained
from Marian Roehl) one rank of pipes always plays.  Emails exchanged
with another MMD reader indicated that this is the case.

Since I have now about 3,000 MIDI files of the bulk of the surviving
APP Roll Catalog, I plan to make an emulator to implement the
multiplexing registration in order to test some of this theory.

Looking at the image of these rolls in the Macintosh equivalent of
Cakewalk makes for some interesting observations.  The most interesting
is how easy it is to convert the registration of the Style 165 band
organ music rolls to the APP registration.  Note that this is the
opposite of what was done, which was to cut the 165 scale down to play
APP Rolls.

I did a quick test using Warren Trachtman's roll-scan converter
program.  I made a table to map a Wurlitzer 165 roll to play on my
Caliola.  Not only did the resulting MIDI file play, it sounded better
than some actual Caliola rolls which were used to play 165 instruments.
The tests were done with "Entry of the Gladiators" and Waldteufel's
"Dolores Waltz".  These tunes were played for the AMICA members.

This pretty much puts to rest any arguments of what scale is better.
The real measure of a roll is how the music is arranged onto the roll.

I do find it ironic that, while I may have close to 3,000 MIDI files
for my Caliola, there are still about five classic songs (which are on
Paul Eaken's Caliola CD) that I do not have yet.  I guess that is what
makes one a collector -- the more one has the more one wants.  Even so,
there are really only about fifty songs of these which are really
outstanding on the Caliola, and probably another 250 which are
listenable.  The rest were popular for at least a week...

I do feel that this collection of MIDI data does give a fair sampling
of the styles used in arranging the rolls.  Currently these are tracker
bar dumps [MIDI file of the tracker bar data] so they do not sound good
at all on a computer.  Emulating the registration, so the full effect
of all the bells and whistles is heard, should make for a better
analysis of the music.

The dominant use of pipes may be why the APP scale -- apart from the
weird spacing between the tracker bar ports -- has been a stepchild
to the style 'A' and 'O' rolls, which are first a piano roll, then
a showoff roll.  The APP roll puts the focus on the pipes, thus
invalidating the notion that a Caliola roll can be separated from
a DX roll by the length of the perforations.

Julie Porter

 [ The cover of the "Revised Catalog of Music Rolls for the Wurlitzer
 [ Player Piano, Catalog No. 7", states that APP rolls are "Used on
 [ Styles I, B, S, C and D [pianos] and "F", "G" and "O" Theatre
 [ Orchestras".  An article by Julie about cataloging APP rolls will
 [ appear in the next MMDigest.  -- Robbie