Phil's mechanism is adorable. It retains the old time piano roll
mystery in a modern format. Without, now very expensive, pneumatic
restoration and with the availability very good piano synthesizers,
this is a great option for experiencing the magic of player pianos,
which will probably be in museums only in the near future.

Emulation is one thing but a real mechanical marvel is another.
If I still had rolls I would be interested in owning one of these
machines. I hope that there are enough people interested in owning one
that it makes it feasible for Phil to market. Even if it is not your
primary source of music, how cool would it be to have one in your
music room.

In terms of the tracking issue with the camera based system, it is
definitely doable but I am not offering to do it. Warren Trachtman
was experimenting with web cam based scanning shortly before he died.
His fine scanning and conversion software had to tackle the problem of
tracking and he did it very well.

Warren was waiting for low cost high resolution web cameras to make
the project feasible and if he had lived a bit longer we would have them
now and they would be amazing.

I can't believe that there are not some young people who could solve the
problems of real time tracking. The problem is a matter of interest.

Best regards,

Spencer Chase
Garberville, California
http://www.spencerserolls.com/ 
spencer@poodlex.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]