[ Michael Benz asked in 111016 MMDigest:

> Does anyone know where I can get MIDI files of modern music for
> a player piano?  All I can find are scanned rolls with old songs.

Finding MIDI files of modern music is not hard.  Just do a Google
search of the song you want followed by "MIDI", like "Piano Man MIDI".
This will bring up all kinds of MIDI files for Billy Joel's famous
song.

The hard part is finding something that is arranged for _your_ piano.
A lot of MIDI files are arranged for several instruments such as drums
and one or two other instruments.  "Piano Man" would likely be arranged
for a piano and a harmonica, at least, and maybe drums.  If your MIDI
setup only sees the piano instrument track then some things will be
missing in the song.  If your MIDI setup sees all of the instruments
in a song things may not sound right (like if your piano tries to
"play" the drum track on the piano keys).

You will need two things to play MIDI songs off the Internet: MIDI
editing software and an understanding of how your piano interprets
different instrument tracks for MIDI.  Then you can take a typical
MIDI file and erase or move tracks to the piano track and see how it
sounds on your piano.

What you can also do is Google for MIDI files formatted for piano.
Hopefully these will only have the piano track in the file and will
not need editing.

Probably the easiest thing to do is just to try different files and see
what sounds the best on your piano.  You might get lucky and find some
gems.

Ray Finch

 [ It may be worth adding "-ringtones" to your search to ignore all
 [ those sites that have stuff for your cellphone.  --Jody