Robbie said: >[ Kudos to Rex Lawson for his research, Dan. In order to confirm his >[ findings on acceleration, could you please tell us the thickness of >[ the paper which he observed? Rex says that the short length of >[ leader paper wrapped upon a 6-inch diameter take-up spool will >[ increase th...

•About electric piano player solenoids. It is very difficult to softly play a piano by solenoid action. Solenoids require a minimum amount of power to start their acceleration, but then the velocity and power increases as the plunger enters the solenoid coil. A system must be devised to apply suffic...

•Following Julian Dyer's article in Digest 971219, I commented, "Irregardless of the paper acceleration debate, ... " MMD readers know that I take pride in proper English spelling and usage, and I received notes about it from well-known MMD authors, e.g.: > Robbie! "Irregardless" -- you will not fin...

•[ Karl Ellison wrote about Biograph Piano Roll CDs: [ [> I still was disappointed in their presentation. They seem to [> be played at a constant volume (loud), no expression whatsoever, [> and roll acceleration is very noticeable. Many of the pieces come [> across as monotonously disagreeable sound...

I (Mark Fontana) originally asked: > > Are the rolls generally encoded such that when played on a standard-sized > > takeup spool, the tempo will remain as intended despite the effect of > > othe increasing layers of paper accelerating the transport speed? BJELE@telxon.mis.telxon.com (JELEN BILL) re...

Great discussion! John Grant is answering Robbie: > I accept for the moment that a 50% blow distance DOES predict a > nominal 3 dB reduction in intensity (I see no reason to quarrel with your > analysis, PROVIDED ALL other factors are constant.) This can be shown to be so very easily, by "moment of ...

This topic was the subject of an enormous article by Rex Lawson in the July 1996 issue of the Player-Piano Group Bulletin. It will probably appear in the AMICA Bulletin in good time, so there is no need for me to quote it at length (the acknowledgements of help with research take half a page !), but...

What are the reasons (historical and practical) for the chaining patterns used on so many piano rolls? As long as the bridging is short enough to not drop the valve, what difference does the pattern between the note beginning and end have. I can see how the very first part might effect valve acceler...

•In response to Mr. Tuttle's submission about Neoprene valve facings collecting dust; valve theory suggests some insights. In any valve where the open-valve gap is small compared with the passages leading to or from it, there is a great increase in air velocity at the point where the restriction is ...

•The tempo of this piece ["Chaconne", played by Busoni] was the subject of much discussion in the Player Piano Group bulletin some two years back. There were two sides, with widely-differing and strongly-held views. Gerald Stonehill, back in the Winter 95/96 bulletin, gave the following figures for ...

•Another way to split a Duo-Art expression box emerged at the 1979 AMICA Convention in Philadelphia. John Grant gave us a startling demon- stration of splitting a grand box with a hammer. The technique was documented in the December 1979 issue of the AMICA Bulletin and again in Technicalities IV. Ve...

•Regarding Peter Neilsons story: > He said to himself, "That sucker's so heavy it's not going > anywhere," and didn't tie it at all. At the first corner > the piano (being top-heavy) jumped out of the truck. F = MA (Force = Mass x Acceleration) Since the force exerted on an object is proportional to...

•Robbie: I'm travelling to Jacksonville in two weeks to see the piano; the collector/owner simply told me they weren't ivory. It's possible that's it's very clean ivory, and they looked "fake" to him, but I'll report further when I've had a first hand look. The pics and video tape the owner sent mak...

•Production Dates of 65-Note Player Pianos Julian Dyer says about the general introduction of the 88-note roll standard: > However, the article is a bit misleading. Although the convention it > refers to was held in 1911, the standard itself dates back to 1908, > agreed at a convention in Buffalo, a...

•I've not heard many here in the UK who have anything but praise for Wayne's CD of Rachmaninoff's Ampico rolls. These people aren't uncritically praising it either, they are listening and comparing it to real live performances for musicality, old 78s for authenticity, and other recordings of the sam...

•Tim Baxter was wondering about how much compensation was ideal to keep tempo even. I started looking over my claim on the Cryin' For the Carolines roll and realized I somehow got a decimal pt. off on my measurement. So what it looks like to me now in that roll (alone) is only 1% in 30 ft. But I rea...

•In the past, I've purchased a number of Biograph (www.biograph.com) music CDs of their player piano roll recordings. The ads tout "... from rare piano rolls". Hmm!, I thought ... Knowing that these are mostly 88n rolls, I still was disappointed in their presentation. They seem to be played at a con...

•> "Was there a standard tempo used to produce "A" rolls? When I wrote the 10-tune A-roll, "New Chicago", I was informed that 60 was the target tempo. Since then, I've come to think that the actual playing tempo was whatever suited the bar-owner's taste. The actual playing tempo of "New Chicago" has...

•> I think there was a system which recorded a track, reversed the > tape in a hurry and then recorded another one parallel to it and > so on. I cannot remember who made it, possibly Loewe-Opta. I worked on the design of one such that used a tape cartridge similar to the 3M DC-300 (a little bigger t...

•I will be releasing some new CDs of MIDI and BAR/ANN files made from Original Duo-Art Piano Rolls. 504 new titles will be available soon. I am just making the final files conversions into the many different formats that will provided. I will then be the world leader in Duo-Art E-Rolls with nearly 9...