Greetings!  I recently posted about my interest in carillons, and
after reading some things about what people have been doing with
player piano rolls, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be
possible to also preserve the recordings on old carillon rolls by
making digital versions of the music on them.

What I do not know is how this is being done and what types of systems
are required to make a "capture" of the music on the rolls.  I would
greatly appreciate any input/advice/help that is out there on this
topic.  The enthusiast crowd for these instruments is very small, and
making an archive of the rolls that are still in existence would allow
for me to eventually build a digital roll player with hundreds more
songs than one carillon owner could ever have in rolls.  Also, that
would break the monotony of six songs per roll and continuous roll
changing!  The digital system would be able to be controlled by the
original mechanical clock mechanisms, and also started manually, just
as if someone was playing a roll.

Additionally, I am guessing there is some "slack" in the motor driven
mechanisms, and as a result one would have to slightly analyze the
music in order to determine its proper musical timing, as opposed to
making some type of "recording of notes in time" of what is being
played, which would allow for error due to the mechanisms.  I would
like to be able to have a copy of the songs, properly timed, so that
I can program the digital unit as accurately as possible.  How
difficult would that be?

Finally, I was curious if anyone had recordings or sheet-music/note
type information on the various chime [songs] produced by clocks,
such as Westminster, Whittington, Winchester, St. Michael's, etc.

Any advice that can be offered is greatly appreciated, as I am not sure
where to start, but would love to do a service for all the carillon
owners by possibly creating the biggest library of carillon roll music
anywhere.

Thanks,
Chris Riedl
Cincinnati, Ohio