Thanks to Jim Miller for providing the Jim Elfers AMICA Bulletin
article from December of 1969, which described Ed Hayden's Artrio piano
in San Francisco [170610 MMDigest].

I would like to expand on two areas of the article.  First, there is
this discussion: "At one time Ed thought he could easily add a device
to enable the Artrio to honor Duo-Art coding."

In fact, Ed did indeed design a very detailed conversion system, and he
sent me a long handwritten description of it at the end of September,
1969 -- very close to the time of the Jim Elfers interview.  His basic
description of the "Duo-Art Conversion" was as follows:

"All that is necessary is to have a sliding valve made which will
transfer the tracking bar connections to Duo-Art in one position and
Artrio in the other.  There are no other modifications necessary and
the valve could be made small enough to fit in the drawer.  I carefully
researched the piano, and did some fluid flow math and compared
identical performances on Duo-Art and Artrio rolls."

Ed then gave detailed tubing instructions for both systems, including
a drawing of his completed sliding valve.  Problems apparently arose
in translating how the rolls were originally coded, as explained later
in the article: "He is still working on it, hoping he can accommodate
a significant number of Duo-Art recordings, thereby enlarging the
instrument's repertoire potential."

So why did Ed bother to devote so much time and energy to this project?
The likely reason was that there were so many more known Duo-Art rolls
than Artrio rolls in 1969.  At the time of his letter, Ed had 67 Artrio
rolls.  Even today, Artrio collections are numbered in the hundreds of
rolls, not thousands.

Apparently, Ed was never successful with his conversion system, and
the only "Duo-Art" selections we have today are the early song roll
transcriptions from Mel-O-Dee.  (Both labels were made by Aeolian.)

That brings me to my second area of interest in the AMICA article.
I have long wondered how Wilcox and White "transcribed" the Mel-O-Dee
rolls into the Artrio system?  And why is the letter "D" after only
some numbers, which is supposed to indicate a "Duo-Art translation"?
(This may mean that a Duo-Art roll was used instead of a Mel-O-Dee
performance.)  And why didn't they transcribe any of the Duo-Art
classical rolls?

The AMICA article gives a clue as to how the rolls were transcribed:
"There seemed to be no difficulty in converting Duo-Art's Theme chamber
coding to the Artrio's Basic chamber, on the theory that as the Theme
rises and falls, the Accompaniment can't be too far behind.  This is
basically how the Duo-Art popular rolls were converted to Artrio in the
Melodee factory in Meriden, Conn."

The mystery of why more Duo-Art performances were not transcribed is
intensified by the Artrio release of 14 early Welte classical roll
transcriptions around 1920. They were not labeled as Welte; rather,
they were "From A Foreign Recording". (The AMICA article mentions these
Welte performances.)

How were the Welte rolls transcribed?  An Artrio catalog describes them
as "Scientifically adapted for use on the Artrio-Angelus by Percival K.
Van Yorx".  He was involved in development of the system, a pianist at
Artrio, and later a music director.

I wonder how these transcriptions compare to the original Welte
recordings?  And why couldn't the same technique be used to transcribe
Duo-Art classical performances?  Perhaps someone has more information
on these subjects!

Gary Watkins