I have followed the thread, "Taylor-Aeolian Carillon Music Roll Player
System", with great interest.  A few years back, St. James' Anglican
Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, contacted me to re-cut a roll
they use to play their tower chime.  I had several questions for them,
one of which was who had made the instrument.  The firm was indeed
John Taylor & Co. of the United Kingdom.

The roll was sent and I tried to scan it.  It is the only roll the
church has and I discovered that it had been hand cut my someone who
had maintained the carillon for many years.

Since the carillon has only eight bells, I expected the roll to use
maybe 10 or 12 tracks of the standard 88-note tracker bar.  Imagine
my surprise when I unpacked the roll and found there were considerably
more than that number used.

When I attempted to scan the music roll, it wandered from side to side
but I calculated I could take care of that in my roll editing software.
When I imported the scanned file into Wind, I found that upon playback
all I got was noise.  The note tracks were spread out with approximately
6 to 8 tracks between each playing note.  Throughout the roll there
were other perforations that seemed to have no bearing on the notes
being played.

The roll had been very carefully prepared, and the name of the upcoming
selection was written on the roll.  It was apparent that the roll was
used for change ringing.

I contacted the church and also the member who sent me the roll asking
if they had more information as to how the tracker was tubed.  I never
received that information and as a result I was unable to duplicate the
roll.

If you would like to see the whole thing in operation, go to YouTube
and in the search box enter "Vancouver carillon".  On the right-hand
side of your screen you will see a video marked with the title "St.
James".  Click on it and you will be treated to a short video showing
some of the largest pneumatics I have ever seen.

While the video is of great interest, it would have been nice to see
the spool box that plays the roll, but such is not the case.  At one
point I had considered flying to Vancouver to examine the mechanism
myself.  Those plans did not work out.

Enjoy the short video and notice that at one point the camera passes by
what looks to be a homemade clavier for hand playing.

Kindest regards from South Texas,

Ed Gaida - Preserving musical history by punching holes in paper

 [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QrvC2vqITM  (roll player & keyboard)
 [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8RbInChl4w  (in the bell tower)
 [ http://www.towerbells.org/data/BCVANCSJ.HTM  (St. James' Traditional Chime)
 [
 [ The bells are hung "dead" (non-swinging) and so the huge pneumatics
 [ of the player system pull on the internal clappers.  The 8-bell
 [ diatonic instrument is correctly called a tower chime.  Ref.
 [ http://www.towerbells.org/data/Glossary_logic.html  -- Robbie