Hi,  I am still looking for simple ways to put lyrics on piano rolls.
I haven't had any luck with computer printers.  For one thing, the
advance on the printer is incompatible with the advance on the rolls.
Also, I do not know of a program that would support such a long "page".
In most programs, the "next page" throws off the timing.

There is a way of doing it, though.  If a stencil belt could be made
from plain heavy brown wrapping paper, the roll could be laid flat on
a long table.  The oversize wrapping paper could be laid down over the
roll, masking it.  The stenciling could then be applied with spray ink
from a air brush, or an ink roller.

The problem with this is that it would require a punch that would make
a hole in the wrapping paper, in the form of a letter; there are lots
of cardboard stencils, but it would take the machine that actually
punched them out.  My search of the web has turned up nothing.

Any ideas?

Andy Taylor

 [ John Malone had a commercially-made stencil cutter machine for
 [ Play-Rite, with a standard typewriter keyboard.  It was fast!
 [
 [ The inherent paper advance of a dot matrix computer printer is
 [ 72 lines per inch or finer.  You can "write a little program"
 [ in BASIC to send 'escape codes' to the printer, and then you can
 [ create anything you want.  This is how Jody and others have made
 [ templates of any length for marking book music and music rolls.
 [ I wrote a program for the Macintosh printer which made an image
 [ of a piano roll and also printed the lyrics on the edge.
 [
 [ To get all that precision means you must use sprocket-feed paper.
 [ When I tried piano roll paper (without sprocket holes) it wandered
 [ impossibly, and the ink in the ribbon wouldn't stick to the waxy
 [ paper.  (I'm still hoping I can adapt a laser printer!  :)
 [
 [ -- Robbie