I am Walter Tenten, living in Germany in a small location
in equal distance to Aachen, Cologne and Duesseldorf.
Grown up during a period, where nobody was interested in
music, and in a home which lacked any instrument apart from
a radio receiver, my first encounter with automatic musical
instruments was about 7 years ago, when I bought a pumper
player piano made by Mehlin, N.Y. As usual I had to do some
restoration on it prior to listening for the first time.

Looking for help, I came across the GSM, the German equivalent
to AMICA and/or MBSI. In 1993 I met Horst Mohr, who had built
an opto-electronic reader for piano-rolls. He introduced me to
Juergen Hocker (president of GSM), who owns two Ampico pianos.
The three of us joined in a project to make the first live
performance of Nancarrows Study Nr. 40 for two reproduction
pianos. This oeuvre had never been successfully played on two
pneumatic pianos because of obvious synchronization problems.
Horst Mohr was able to deliver a MIDI image of any piano roll
and together we developed what was necessary to control the
piano pneumatics by means of an electro-pneumatic controller.
The result was presented to the public during the famous
"Donaueschinger Musiktage" in Oktober 1994, where the above
mentioned Nancarrow composition was put on stage.

As another result of this very enjoying and successful cooperation
my interest for pneumatic pianos was extended to the line of
reproduction pianos. With the kind intervention of Terry Smythe
I could acquire a Haines Bros Ampico piano which is now the
center of my living room in every respect. Once again my thanks to
Terry for his share in this transaction!

As the owner of an Ampico piano and with a spare electro-pneumatic
controller I had the idea to reproduce MIDI compositions of any
origin on my piano as a sort of a supplement to the rolls which
I have. Here I found some problems which I will post later in this
group asking for advice and comments.

Meanwhile a lot of thanks and acknowledgement to Jody for
moderating this group so efficiently and successfully and
at the same time to Terry for his assistance in starting the
group early this year.

                    Walter

•--
Dr.-Ing. Walter Tenten                  business address:

home address:                           Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH
                                        (Research Center)
Bruchweg 13                             Zentrallabor fuer Elektronik
D-52441 Linnich                         (Central Laboratory for Electronics)
                                        D-52425 Juelich
Germany                                 phone:  **49-2461-61-6542
                                        fax:    **49-2461-61-3990
phone:  **49-2462-6601                  email:  W.Tenten@kfa-juelich.de