Nicholas Simons wrote about rolls & MIDI conversion (081031 MMDigest):

> As for fitting MIDI, please do not ruin any old instruments with this
> abomination.  It may well be reversible but it is not original.  Keep
> MIDI for new instruments.  Mechanical instruments were designed to be
> played mechanically.

Restoring to the "original state" should be the goal, but does this
include things like using a 133 Hz motor, as that's what was shipped
with the particular instrument?  By some thinking, this is what you
must do, thus you end up with an instrument that is screamingly
original and cannot be played at all (without a rare and expensive
frequency converter).

I don't subscribe to this.  If certain things must be replaced or
rebuilt to make the instrument usable, they should be carefully
considered and probably accepted, e.g., a 60 Hz motor.  In the same
vein, by refusing to add an adjunct, such as a MIDI player, you limit
yourself and your listeners to the existing body of music/media for
that instrument, which for some types may be quite a small selection.

No matter how wonderful some instrument is, I'm sure I'd get rather
bored listening to the same two rolls.  (During the summers that
I worked at Glen Echo Park we had maybe seven or eight rolls.  Try
listening to that for a couple of months.)

So, if a restorer can add something like a MIDI valve stack while
keeping all the original player parts functional, I'd certainly support
that.  While I'd much rather play from rolls, for some instruments
there will not be enough demand to punch new arrangements into paper
or cardboard, but there might be enough demand to create specific MIDI
encodings.

z!
Carl Zwanzig