Gordon Ramsey asked whether the B.A.B. 66-key organ transcriptions to the

Wurlitzer 165 scale worked well.  The answer depends on your musical

perspective, and your values in playing music originally arranged for one

scale on another scale.



The B.A.B. Organ Company was formed as a small and mostly unsuccessful

competitor to Wurlitzer to produce music mainly for Artizan band organs,

and, to some extent, other organs, including some European organs.  Since

Artizan organs weren't as dominant as Wurlitzers, and since Artizan organs

weren't produced for as many years, B.A.B. music and its market gradually

frittered away.  But even so, B.A.B. made rolls into the 1950's.



As to the note comparison between Wurlitzer 165 and B.A.B. scales,they are

quite similar.  Neither is fully chromatic, both have some note omissions,

but bass, accompaniment, melody, and counter-melody are quite similar.

That makes mapping the sections relatively easy.  Registers have a greater

degree of difference.  But the difference is not one that destroys the

musicality of the resulting conversion.  Percussion is also a little

different, but not so much that most people would notice.



John Malone did a really good job in making some register transcription

judgments, when designing his Play-Rite B.A.B./W165 conversions back in

the 1960's.  The resulting sound is quite good, differing mostly because

of the types of pipes in the instruments.



Wurlitzer 165 rolls also had six registers that B.A.B. rolls lacked and

specific percussion perforations that were lacking in B.A.B rolls, which

B.A.B. handled by multiplexing.  Those features were ignored in making the

B.A.B.-to-wurlitzer transcriptions



The musical result, in my opinion, is quite good. There are no incorrect

note transcriptions, and the register and percussion decisions were very

reasonable.



Anyone wanting to make detailed comparisons can study these scales in Dave

Bowers' "Treasures of Mechanical Music."



But the greater reason for creating these transcriptions was to take about

forty-four rolls that had almost no use or playability (with virtually all

the organs that could play them long gone) and make their music available

once again on legions of organs playing the Wurlitzer 165 scale.



B.A.B. music sounds very different from Wurlitzer arrangements.  Early

B.A.B. rolls were made by unknown arrangers with a different style from

Wurlitzer's.  Later B.A.B. rolls were mostly arranged by J. Lawrence Cook.

The result is preservation of music and arranging style that would otherwise

be lost to band organ music history.



Glenn Thomas

Princeton, NJ



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