Dear Fellow MMD Readers:

Again Wayne Stahnke has amazed me.  He casully mentioned the other day
on the phone that he'd scanned some 500 Ampico rolls in the 1970s and
then cleaned the original files up almost a decade later -- without any
specific market intended -- just so the roll images would be archived.

For those of us who seek to study piano roll music or just enjoy the
availability of a large roll library, this was quite a pleasant
surprise.  I heartily implored him to share this resource with the
members of the Digest and was gratified (tho a bit shocked that he
mentioned me by name) that he responded so quickly with a posting.

I know that there's been some serious sniping recently about digitizing
piano rolls and the digital reproducing piano.  (See Larry Givens piece
in the recent AMICA Bulletin).  Rather than re-open that can of worms,
sufice it to say that it might be a long time before I am able to
aquire 500 "good" Ampico rolls ( I've traded away dozens of dogs over
the years).  And if Wayne has the courtesy and wherewithal to offer high
quality digitized replicas of good music I for one would love to have
access to this library.

I've been encouraged by recent postings about advances in optical
scanning for the digitization of paper piano rolls and hope that one
day a unit is available at a reasonable enough price that collectors
and enthusiasts around the world can scan their own rolls and trade
them freely.  In the meantime, I'm excited by Wayne's recent revelation
and am very curious to see a listing of the rolls that are included in
the library.

Thanks Wayne!

Best regards,¶
-- Marc S.