In occasion of the inauguration of Musicalia Museum on 4th and 5th
May 2013 (see our post in 130308 MMDigest) AMMI invites you to
participate at the conference "Mechanical Music: Who? What? Where?"

Participation is free, free lunch is provided by AMMI, subscribe at
info@ammi-italia.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply].  See
more at http://www.museomusicalia.it/ 

Here is the abstract of the AMMI's SISAR Project:

SISAR is a project, supported by the Italian Mechanical Music
Association (AMMI), devoted to the conception and development of
systems for scanning, listening and recording various types of music
storage media for mechanical music instruments.  According to the
specific characteristics of the supports proper hardware and software
architectures have been developed.

The Pinned Barrel Scanner (PBS) has been developed to scan music
of pinned storage media for instruments as barrel pianos and barrel
organs, including helicoidal barrels.  It can be exploited in
applications as missing scale identification, digitalization and
instrument pre-repair evaluation.

The Perforated music storage Media Scanner (PMS) is based on a modular
architecture properly conceived to be easily adapted to various types
of perforated music storage media.  Images of the linear ones are
obtained by a scanner equipped with a linear camera and whose traction
control system is implemented in the Arduino microcontroller board.
Two distinct interchangeable mechanical traction systems are dedicated
to scan both paper music rolls and cardboard music books.

The obtained images can be successively elaborated by a proper computer
program to convert images into MIDI file format.  Notes, dynamics,
tempo changes (not necessarily perforated but also printed), mechanical
music peculiarities as Themodist and other customizable music effects
are digitally recorded and can be successively faithfully reproduced.

Also perforated discs as Ariston and Polyphon can be digitally
converted by a piece of software properly realized to "straighten"
their geometry and be treated as other linear music storage media.

During the presentation technical aspects, programs and developed
algorithms will be shown.  A live demonstration of the system will be
given and an unpublished piece of music of the Italian rolls producer
"FIRST", converted by the realized scanner, will be reproduced through
a music expander to appreciate the conversion quality.

Franco Severi, Presidente,
AMMI Associazione musica meccanica italiana