About the Composer

This is via a friend of mine (who blogs in the form of an email list). Engineer and music lover Warren Trachtman has developed a way to scan old, deteriorating player piano rolls, and convert them to MIDI files that can be played on any device, or even used to create new paper rolls.

In his words…

There is a tremendous amount of wonderful music from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that is in danger of being lost as these old paper piano rolls deteriorate with age. I am able to optically scan these piano rolls and convert the scans to MIDI files which can then be used to play the music on modern solonoid pianos, digital pianos, computer soundcards, or any playback system that supports MIDI files.

Mr. Trachtman has converted nearly 2000 rolls so far, among which the ones published before 1923 (and there are many) can be downloaded from his site in MIDI format.

Didn’t Ravel, Debussy, Bartók et al record their own music on piano rolls? I remember hearing that somewhere. If so, I hope those rolls will make their way to preservation in this way. What great use of technology!

For more information, including eye-glazing technical details on how he does it as well as a complete list of songs preserved so far, visit Warren Trachtman’s Roll Scanning Information Page.

My old friend Chris Mandra appeared out of nowhere this weekend, announcing that he was in San Francisco and on the way to Burning Man. When I say “old”… he was among my first friends when I arrived at the University of the Arts as a freshman, so we’re talking exactly twenty years now. Holy moly.

So, Chris is an interesting guy. He has gone from affable, endearingly pretentious, bearded composition student to shaved-headed Executive Producer of NPR Online to red-streaked, wild-haired electro-acoustic performance, uh, wizardy guy. (OK, not quite sure what’s up with my obsession with Chris’ hairstyle.)

Chris now goes by the name of “kataStatik” (and I relentlessly taunted him by calling him “katatastic”), and he performs on an instrument he invented called the “manDrum”. If I understand correctly, the manDrum consists of sensors he wears under his clothing that interact with software he wrote to control a synthesizer when struck. (Sorry, I’m not hip to all the real terminology.) So, basically, he beats himself silly, and music comes out.

There’s more to it than that. More details and video of the manDrum in action can be found on Chris’ web site. This is all quite removed from the musical world I live in, but it sure is interesting. Plus, I have to say: “manDrum” is a great name.