Robert Perry posed this question:

> Would re-editing QRS and other companies' rolls, to add many
> extra notes, and releasing them on your own company's label without
> credit, be legal, and/or an effective way of getting around
> mechanical music copyrights in the 1920s?

Hi Robert.  For just a little more time and effort, you could create
your own new arrangements.  Some of that old stuff has been copied
into rolls and MIDI files.

John Tuttle has an old QRS roll that I was just chomping at the bit to
reissue, and I wondered about the legalities myself.  So, while we were
up visiting QRS, I asked Bob Berkman if I could reissue it.  He said I
could do so if I put "used with permission" on the roll.  I was elated.

But, I also gave credit to the original arrangers, Max Kortlander & Ted
Baxter.  I photocopied their autograph and converted it into a file
that prints the roll leaders.  That roll was a masterpiece, and I did
not embellish it nor want to change it.  I simply wanted to make it
available because the originals were self-destructing, and QRS had no
plans to reissue it.

For the mere fact that these old arrangers did not have computers, but
labored hard and long and produced excellent piano pieces, why wouldn't
you want to give them credit?

I think preservation (and the fact that I actually asked) was the only
reason I got permission to recut this roll.  I don't think I would have
gotten permission if I was going to change it.

If you would recut the old rolls, give credits were credits are due.
You might be okay, but to embellish an original roll, even if it sounds
better, destroys the historical value of the piece.

Best Regards

Andy Taylor
Tempola Music Rolls
http://www.bootheel.net/~tempola/

 [ Editor's note:
 [
 [ Andy Taylor and Tim Baxter both decry re-editing or embellishing the
 [ arrangements on old rolls, yet pianist-composers such as Franz Liszt
 [ had lots of fun embellishing arrangements by other composers, like
 [ Mozart and Schubert.
 [
 [ I don't understand why Liszt's version of an earlier arrangement
 [ would destroy the value of the original piece.  And what about the
 [ QRS rolls which were highly embellished for orchestrion rolls?
 [
 [ -- Robbie