Roll Digitisation
Original piano rolls from the 1900 - 1940 era have become rare and fragile. As early as the 1980s, first enthusiasts began to scan rolls to punch copies. Since the early 2000s, the focus has shifted to systematic optical scanning (esp. by the HKB team) in order to use the data for analytical research.
The topic of standardizing scans and agreed minimum requirements was already discussed at the first GPRM conference. Since then, a small group (e.g. Sebastian Bausch, Peter Phillips, Kumaran Arul, Marc Widuch) has been working closely together to systematically digitize the still-existent artist rolls. Digitization is much more than just capturing the punched holes, as it is not just about scanning a piano roll in a defined high quality, but also about the digital capturing and archiving of all associated metadata, images of the rolls, boxes, labels, documents on the provenience, etc.. Knowing that every roll is unique, systematic digitization also includes the effort to scan multiple copies of same pieces esp. on artist rolls.
The Deutsches Museum (Munich) will complete a brief market analysis on the status of scanning technology and processes in 2024, which will help to further develop a consistent approach. During the Prelude #7 J. Kemp / S. Berdux (Munich) presented the status. Another very important work is done by e.g. the HKB team and the Stanford Archive team in defining standards for archiving rolls and roll data. Nathan Coy (Stanford) has presented very promising aspects during 3rd GPRM. John McClelland does great work on roll types, manufacturers and labels. All these activities and many more will help to set-up the global roll archive with all ever produced rolls. In addition new rolls are produced, may it be transfers from one type to another, or even newly recorded pieces.
GPRM has set-up a network to share data on rolls for research purposes, and to identify significant collections or single rolls, to gather step by step the entire repertoire of the various artist roll types. We have made major progress with e.g. Welte, Philipps, Hupfeld, Ampico, Duo-Art, etc. which allows many projects to work with the valuable data. Even though the heydays of these rolls (ca. 1900 – 1940) are gone, with our approach of digitization and e.g. virtual pianola apps like the Stanford ‘Pianolatron’ we see the rise of a new era of unlimited availability to the huge global roll repertoire.
Every punched roll is unique, even Welte-Mignon rolls as e.g. Hermann Gottschewski documented with roll No 548. There are considerable differences in the roll copies due to editing and production changes. For that reason, we specifically digitize as many rolls as possible, esp. of the artist rolls.
It is quite a huge investment in time and money to gather all this data, to do the scans and to work with the data. If you can contribute to this effort with scans, rolls, resources, or anything else, we are happy to receive your message.