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?

Then Robbie asked:

>[ And what about the QRS rolls which were highly embellished
>[ for orchestrion rolls?

I can answer some of that one.  Cremona M rolls and Seeburg H rolls
were re-edits of QRS originals.

1)  The original was chopped down to fit about a 2 minute limit.  This
was so the final 10-tune roll would fit on a spool.

2)  What was left was embellished to make it "hot".  This was not a
hard and fast rule, but occurred a lot.

3)  Percussion and other nickelodeon effects were added.  This is
usually the least artistic part of the effort.  These things had to be
churned out like juke-box singles.  Every now and then some inspired
work occurs, but it's not the rule.


When Wayne Stahnke and I re-edited an M-roll for Durrell Armstrong,
it involved:

1)  Deriving an accurate production master from the original roll.
Wayne's the only one I know that can get this accurate.   The "WEB"
images are exact down to the number of rows in a note.

2)  Fixing imperfections introduced by badly maintained equipment.
Once the above accuracy is available, you can see the effects of "stuck
interposers."   The result is holes that are too short, too long, or
missing altogether.   In addition, there would be entire rows missing,
causing a noticeable hiccup.


In the one M-roll I worked on, one tune had a whole beat missing in
the beginning -- it was restored by searching forward to find a similar
passage in the repeated section.   In another, an important counter-
melody was seriously mangled out for almost a full measure.   In
another, a double-time section had entire rows dropping out producing
a syncopation that I doubt was intended.  That was fixed as well.

You can hear two examples of QRS-to-'M'-roll conversions on my WWW
page.   One is original, and one is by me.   See if you can tell which
is original.  The direct link to the page is:

    http://www.intac.com/~gbogatko/htmlfiles/nickel.html

They are on the bottom of the page.   You'll need RealAudio to play
them.

Cheers,

George Bogatko - http://www.intac.com/~gbogatko

 [ Note that George mentions two different forms of "re-editing":
 [
 [ (1) Removing transcription and copying errors to recover the
 [ roll as originally issued, and
 [
 [ (2) Modifying an old QRS 88-note performance to the "hot"
 [ musical style of the orchestrion.
 [
 [ -- Robbie