A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. Piano rolls, like other music rolls, are continuous rolls of paper with holes punched into them. These perforations represent note control data. The roll moves over a reading system known as a tracker bar; the playing cycle for each musical note is triggered when a perforation crosses the bar.
Piano rolls have been in continuous production since at least 1896,[1][2] and are still being manufactured today; QRS Music offers 45,000 titles with "new titles being added on a regular basis",[3] although they are no longer mass-produced. MIDI files have generally supplanted piano rolls in storing and playing back performance data, accomplishing digitally and electronically what piano rolls do mechanically. MIDI editing software often features the ability to represent the music graphically as a piano roll.
The first paper rolls were used commercially by Welte & Sons in their orchestrions beginning in 1883.[4]
A rollography is a listing of piano rolls, especially made by a single performer, analogous to a discography.[5][full citation needed]
The Musical Museum in Brentford, London, England houses one of the world's largest collections of piano rolls, with over 20,000 rolls as well as an extensive collection of instruments which may be seen and heard.
- ^ "The Pianola Institute – History of the Pianola – Piano Players". www.pianola.org.
- ^ "The day the music died". The Buffalo News. 10 June 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-06-10.
- ^ "Music". QRS Music. Retrieved 12 September 2010.
- ^ "US Patent 287,599, Emil Welte, New York, 30 October 1883" (PDF). welte-mignon.de.
- ^ Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John, eds. (2001). "Rollography". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.