Nigel Perry said in the 100122 MMD: "There doesn't seem to have been
any correspondence concerning this subject since June 2007.  I am
wondering if anyone knows of any advances that have been made in the
intervening time."

For a couple of years I've been successfully using PhotoScore MIDI Lite
5 (see http://www.neuratron.com/photoscore.htm ) as a first step in
making 20-note MIDI files, and then using Midiboek to print templates
for John Smith rolls.

PhotoScore MIDI does a pretty good job of converting a lot of piano
sheet music to MIDI.  Yes, the cheaper Lite version has limits, but I'd
expect that the full version is REALLY powerful.

But remember that a MIDI file that precisely transcribes a piece of
sheet music is not one which can be played on just any instrument.  A
perfect transcription of a piano score is still music for a piano, not
a band organ or a brass quintet.

To go from a perfect MIDI file of sheet music to a "grind/band organ"
MIDI file you have to do some arranging.  Music is made by musicians;
even mechanical music is.  I enjoy using my limited abilities to do the
transposition, ornamentation, etc.  With my own rolls, I feel I can
"busk" as a real performing musician, just like the sidewalk blues-
guitarist or sax player.  I may be bad, but I'm not just playing
someone else's recording.

I think it is conceivable that a program could be written to scan
multi-line orchestral or band scores to MIDI for a chromatic band organ
like Trudy, and some Decaps or other dance organs.  The full PhotoScore
would do a lot of the required work.  You would still have to do some
transposition, map the range of percussion notes to fit the instrument,
and add stop controls.

On the other hand, I don't believe that it is possible to write a
program which will reliably transform piano sheet music to decent MIDI
files for something like the musically crippled Wurlitzer 125 or 150 or
any other instruments using a scale with short ranges and missing
notes.  My god, what the addition of, say, a B and a C# to the 20er
scale would do to simplify arranging for small organs.

I don't expect significant change in the technology over a period of
less than a decade, except perhaps in the cost of good scan-to-MIDI-
without-modification software.

Wallace Venable