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Music Roll Acceleration and Compensation
By Jon Polden

Acceleration of Music Rolls Whilst Playing

Twice recently I have played the YouTube examples of player piano rolls;
the latest was "The Ice Skaters" Fox Trot mentioned in MMD 31/01/17:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGXZdY0-h18
Attachment thumbnail In each case the music appeared to be playing considerably faster at the end of the roll than at the beginning. Was this a characteristic of music rolls that had to be controlled by the pianolist? I thought that I had read that the mechanism automatically compensated for the changing dimensions of the spools as the tune progressed. Jon Polden [ In all player pianos the take-up spool motor is regulated to maintain [ constant take-up spool revolutions per minute. Thus the paper speed [ increases during the performance as the take-up diameter increases. [ [ Classical performances recorded live at a recording piano generally [ were processed to compensate for the acceleration caused by the paper [ building up on the take-up spool. Virtually all other piano rolls [ had no such compensation and so it was left to the Pianolist to [ diminish the take-up spool speed during the performance. [ [ MMD articles on this topic are indexed at [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/KWIC/A/acceleration.html [ In particular, see the article by Wayne Stahnke concerning Ampico at [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/Digests/199811/1998.11.01.18.html [ -- Robbie

(Message sent Tue, 31 Jan 2017 10:48:48 -0800 , from time zone -0800.)

Key Words in Subject:  Acceleration, Compensation, Music, Roll

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