There are currently 3 original Banjo-Orchestra rolls up for bids on
eBay.  For those who have read the description, these are the only
known examples of rolls for this machine.  There is also an outrageous
"buy it now" price on the rolls, which, according to the description,
is not what the seller expects to get for the rolls but is instead
a way to ensure that he will be able to not part with them if he does
not receive an acceptable offer.

Because these are the only known original rolls for this machine, they
offer a unique opportunity to determine the original tracker bar scale
for the Banjo-Orchestra and to hear what an original arrangement would
have sounded like.  My understanding is that when Dave Ramey developed
his Banjo-Orchestra he could not determine the original tracker
configuration and so he developed one.

The reason I am writing this post is that I would be very interested in
participating in the effort to extract as much information as possible
from these rolls.  I have been actively scanning many different formats
of rolls over the past several years and I love a good puzzle.

If these rolls get sold to someone who reads this posting, I am
offering to provide the service of scanning them and helping to figure
out the scale.  This information would become the exclusive property
of the roll owner to do with as he or she sees fit.

However, once this encoding is determined, it would theoretically be
possible to create rolls that would play this music on a Ramey machine.
Hopefully, the owner would make the music available to the rest of the
mechanical music community by doing this.  Personally, I am interested
in saving what was thought to be a lost piece of our mechanical music
heritage.

Jack Breen
Southborough, Massachusetts

 [ At eBay, search on <banjo orchestra>; read about Jack's work
 [ transcribing Violano rolls at http://www.violanomusic.com/ 
 [ -- Robbie