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MMD
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wolff_Triola
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End-of-Year Fundraising Drive In Progress. Please visit our home page to see this and other announcements:
https://www.mmdigest.com Thank you. --Jody
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by John Wolff (020513 MMDigest) A "Triola" roll-playing mechanical zither in reasonable working order was sold at Christie's auction in Melbourne recently for a hammer price of $950 Australian. Add 17.5% for Christie's and 10% of 17.5% for the government, and the final price was close to $1200 Australian. Although that is only about $600 American (at the current exchange rate), it sure feels like $1200 to us Aussies. Of the 19 rolls sold with it, there were only ten additions to the list which I posted in MMD 2000.03.09: 1216 Hallo, la demoiselle du telephone (R. Stolz)
Would any other Triola owners care to contribute their roll details to this list? For those interested in what a Triola sounds like, I have attached a MIDI simulation of "Rule Britannia" from Triola roll number 1125. Recall that the Triola mechanism only plays the melody strings, and the operator has to play the accompaniment himself. The melody part for this file was transcribed from an original roll using my home-made optical scanner, which I intend to write more about later. The scanning software produces a playable MIDI file which was edited manually to remove the tempo compensation. (The Triola rolls gradually increase the note lengths by about one-third from beginning to end to compensate for paper build-up on the take-up spool). The bass and chord accompaniment were then added manually according to the instructions printed along the edge of the roll. Finally, the tremolo effect was added using a program called "miditrem", from a set of very useful freeware MIDI utilities by Guenter Nagler (now at www.gnmidi.com) The result sounds a lot cleaner than any Triola I've ever heard, and is really not too bad. For comparison, I have attached a rather rough MP3 file of a rank amateur attempting to play a real Triola - I obviously need a lot more practice! John Wolff
wolff_Lorelei.mp3 (135 kb - MPEG audio,
24 kbit/sec, 22050 Hz, Mono)
13 May 2002 |
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CONTACT FORM: Click HERE to write to the editor, or to post a message about Mechanical Musical Instruments to the MMD Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are those of the individual authors and may not represent those of the editors. Compilation copyright 1995-2024 by Jody Kravitz. Please read our Republication Policy before copying information from or creating links to this web site. Click HERE to contact the webmaster regarding problems with the website. |
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