Stephen Simpson questions the longevity of the MIDI music system,
and for all we know his concerns may be well founded, considering the
rapidity of the progress of technology.  However, one thing is clear,
once music has been encoded onto computer files, it is a simple matter
to convert the file format into whatever we want.

If you consider the multitude of digital picture formats available,
there are almost as many different programs one can use to convert
pictures from one format into any of the others.  In view of this,
and the fact that computer files can be readily duplicated, there is
no fear of the archiving of music (and pictures etc.) being lost as
a result of fire, flood, or computer crash.

For the sake of originality, I conclude that any archived paper roll
music stored on computer files of any format, can be re-converted into
new paper rolls without loss of accuracy.  Now, that's progress!  :-)

Regards,
John Page, UK