The discussion going on about getting the younger generations
interested in automatic instruments and their music is interesting
to say the least.  But, what do they call music?  Is it Broadway show
tunes?  Light classical?  Vintage popular?  Or is it some collection of
"whatevers" on stage making as much noise as possible while shrieking
at the top of their voices?  Usually five or six notes in random
sequence suffice, that is the extent of the "artistry", while some
percussion is being attacked with maximum strength.  And they get paid
millions for this stuff!  Can you leave the theater whistling the
melody line of any selection they mangle?  I seriously doubt it.

Automatic music today is niche music, like the theater organ, or
some baroque string ensemble, a bagpipe band or even an accordion band.
Automatic music and the instruments that play it will survive -- there
are enough of us to insure that happening.  Enjoy it for the pleasure
it gives and the ability of some instruments to really do a fine job
of playing good music.  The kids are going to use those iPods and the
other digital toys and play this so-called music of theirs anyhow.
Then do realize that the attention spans only last for a few moments
and how pointless it is to try to interest them -- if it isn't _now_,
then they simply walk away.

I have run across only two students (both were mechanical engineering
students) and the fact that the instrument was actually a one-hundred-
year-old pneumatic binary computer simply astounded them.  Then the
fine aspects of how the instrument was reproducing the music so well
became the focus.

Jim Crank