Greetings to all and thanks to Jody & Terry for starting a great list. I
have been a fan of player pianos since I could reach the pedals to pump my
folk's player piano 25 years ago. I bought an old pumper of my own about 7
years ago. Although the roll collection at home was mostly ragtime, I
started collecting the newer "rock" releases offered by QRS. When neither
QRS nor Playrite offered one song I really wanted, I wrote a program to print
the holes on blank roll paper and used an exacto knife to cut the roll by
hand. Later, I was introduced to Richard Tonnesen. His computer controlled
perforator eliminated the exacto knife from the process. Since then, I have
been releasing a few tunes each year on the Bam-Bam label. Initially I
released rock and roll, but added a few rags and marches to the catalog last
year. My main interest is releasing songs that were never available
elsewhere on piano roll.¶
I do roll arranging on an IBM PC equipped with a Gravis Ultrasound Max
soundcard. I use Midiscan music recognition software to get the score into
the computer (a time-saver, but a lot of editing is required). I also have a
MIDI keyboard which I occassionally use to record a live performance.
Clean-up and further arranging is accomplished by bouncing the file back and
forth from MIDI to a spreadsheet. When editing is finished, I have a
program to spin off the event files that are sent to Richard for perforating.
I'm looking forward to great discussions in the AMI list.
--Bill Jelen (bjelen8875@aol.com / bjele@telxon.com)
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