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MMD > Archives > February 1997 > 1997.02.25 > 06Prev  Next


Leabarjan Music Roll Perforator
By Larry Lobel

I recently acquired a 1920 booklet, "Good Times With Your Gulbransen," and it mentions a device called "The Leabarjan Player-Roll Perforating Machine -- a portable instrument designed for the player-piano owner to use in the home," with which one could supposedly cut his own rolls.

There's an illustration showing a young woman using the device; it's a tabletop thing that looks like a small printing press. It has a music rack and she's hand-copying the music, note-for-note (seems like it would be pretty time-consuming and laborious). The company was located in Hamilton, Ohio. I'm curious to know if any MMD'ers have ever seen or used one of these, and if they really worked?

The same booklet describes the technique of synchronizing a player piano performance with a vocal phonograph record, and lists some specific player rolls and phonograph records for which the rolls were deliberately made to synchronize to the records. Have any MMD'ers ever tried this? I can put the list of rolls/records on the Digest, if anyone is interested; there are about a dozen of them.

Larry Lobel


(Message sent Tue 25 Feb 1997, 15:35:57 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.)

Key Words in Subject:  Leabarjan, Music, Perforator, Roll

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