Mark Reinhart is concerned about my view that academia is the way
forward in regard to the preservation and further use of the mechanical
music legacy.  Perhaps I should have also pointed out that museums are
an important part of this preservation, as are collectors who retain the
interest long after the current round of collectors pass on.

In regard to academia, I attended the first Global Piano Roll Conference
held in Leipzig in 2018.  Numerous curators and librarians spoke of the
roll collections they manage at their particular institution, and most
of them had some form of scanning apparatus to archive the rolls.  The
general consensus was the desire to share.  This is generally the view
of museums, but also of Stanford and other universities.

Right now, it is possible to download and examine highly detailed images
of Welte-Mignon rolls produced by Stanford.  Another institution doing
this is Bern University (Switzerland), which enjoys some level of
government support.  Universities in Italy are also using refined
optical methods to archive rolls.  Institutions in Barcelona are also
active in roll archiving.  In all cases, there is no financial benefit
to the organisation, simply a cost.  From a personal point of view, I am
throwing my support behind these institutions, again at my own expense.

Of course, as Mark rightly points out, there have been numerous
individuals who have contributed significantly to our knowledge of
mechanical musical instruments, in particular the reproducing piano and
its vast library of roll recordings.  Some of those people Mark listed
will be attending the upcoming Global Piano Roll Conference.  I too will
be attending, with a view of offering my roll reading equipment to make
recordings of rolls in a form that allows them to be listened to.

MIDI files derived directly from roll scans do not preserve a number
of factors such as paper acceleration, tempo and note length.  As such,
MIDI files from roll scans need a lot more processing to make them
useful to a musicologist.  I see my efforts in regard to producing
immediately useful MIDI files of rolls as a contribution to the overall
aim held by many to make expression piano roll recordings accessible to
all.

The upcoming conference is being organised by Bern University, but
attendance is not limited to academics.  In fact, there will be numerous
individuals as well as curators, professors and so forth.  For this
reason, I remain convinced that academia is now taking up the slack as
collectors pass on, and the general interest in mechanical music dies
down.  Without academic interest, I see little future for the legacy we
inherited as collectors.  My children, for example, have no interest,
despite being reared on a Pianola.

Peter Phillips
Sydney
https://petersmidi.com/ 
peter@petersmidi.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]