NEW PIANO ROLLS from JULIAN DYER

For Duo-Art and 88-note player pianos

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New rolls let you choose the music for your player piano and buy it when you want it, not just make do with what turns up. New rolls don't have the damage and decay that old rolls suffer from. Buy your new rolls here!

Below are the catalogues of rolls for standard 88-note player pianos and automatic Duo-Art instruments. Not sure what rolls your player piano can use? Have a look at the page on compatibility.

Duo-Art rolls

These are special rolls needed to operate Duo-Art pianos that automatically reproduce the performance of the pianist. The copies here are exact replicas of original rolls, containing each and every punch in the original roll, all in the right place and of the right size, so the new rolls perform exactly the same as the original rolls. This is quite unlike the majority of roll copies, where the new perforations only approximate the originals, to the detriment of the music. For the specification of these new rolls, see The Anatomy of a Piano Roll.

A brief description about how the Aeolian Company made the original Duo-Art rolls can be found in the page about the Duo-Art recording process. If you want to know more about how Duo-Art pianos work, have a look at Understanding and Regulating the Pedal-Electric Duo-Art.

Standard 88-note rolls

Most player pianos use 88-note rolls, with the operator (or 'Pianolist') adding all timing and expression. Some instruments have an extra accenting mechanism to highlight certain notes, and the rolls here have accenting when this is appropriate. They will play perfectly on any standard 88-note player piano. The catalogue has a mixture of replica and new rolls, including titles newly arranged by Adam Ramet to play in a way that only the player piano can!

Special orders

I can only offer a fairly limited list of rolls off-the-shelf, but there are huge numbers of other rolls that could be cut. Ask for the titles you want: you probably don't have to find an original, because there are libraries of electronic scans that can be perforated to order! Anything obtainable can be cut for bulk purchase, where the buyer takes the entire perforator run of five copies, but if you want something popular I may introduce it into the catalogue so others can share it.

Rolls can also be custom-cut from MIDI files. These are cut in batches of five copies. It's not possible to supply single rolls, or proof rolls, although I can provide examples of how the MIDI will sound once it's been cut into a roll.

What's new?

November 2009 - new 88-note titles specially arranged for the Pianola by Adam Ramet

• Devil's Gallop - better known as the signature tune from BBC Radio's "Dick Barton", as exciting now as it was in the 1940s!
• Cole Porter's Let's Misbehave, a title little recorded on roll when it was new. Here it's in a lively new arrangement that pays homage to the great rolls of the 1920s.
• Scott Joplin's Leola and Rose Leaf Rag.
• Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a famous spiritual beautifully arranged by Samuel Coleridge Taylor.

August 2009 - Duo-Art rolls

• A Duo-Art test roll. This is based on the standard British test roll, with the arpeggios used to test playing at level zero extended to cover a wider range of notes. This is very similar to the American test roll #3, but lacks the musical excerpts at the end. Offered with the original printed descriptions of the tests on a separate sheet.
• Two superb Duo-Art dance rolls, George Gershwin playing That Certain Feeling and Freddie Rich's version of the Charleston - an interesting alternative to the well-known QRS version played by its composer, James P. Johnson.
• A Duo-Art roll of a famous piece of British 'novelty piano', Billy Mayerl's Eskimo Shivers.
• Two Etudes from Sergei Bortkiewicz, played by Carol Robinson. Superb Russian music, with echoes of Rachmaninoff and Medtner, that should be a lot better known than it is!
• Percy Grainger playing his own Colonial Song.
• Bach's Preludes & Fugue number 3, from the Well Tempered Clavichord, played by Ethel Leginska.
• Vincent d'Indy's Pleine Air, No. 3 from his Poème des montagnes, a gloriously-flowing movement from a symphonic poem for the piano. Played by Robert Lortat.
• Charles Griffes' Scherzo, Op 6 No 3, played by Rudolph Reuter. A virtuoso composition from 1915 embracing impressionism and avant-garde influences.
• Completing the release of the series of rolls issued for the Daily Express piano-playing competition, William Murdoch playing Serenata and Bal Poudre.

August 2009 - 88-note rolls

• No fewer than 10 new pianola arrangements from Adam Ramet. These are all a little beyond anything you could play by hand... just as rolls were arranged back in the glory days of the player piano! Jaroslav Ježek's Bugatti Step, a Czech novelty-piano masterpiece from 1931. Scott Joplin's Peacherine Rag, Rose Leaf Rag, Solace, The Entertainer, Sycamore Rag and Eugenia, and a couple of classic rags, Abe Olman's Wintergarden Rag and Paul Pratt's Hot House Rag. To finish, Eubie Blake's Troublesome Ivories.
• The first of a series of reissues of Mike Medding's "Monrovia" rolls, direct-to-roll transcriptions of Jelly Roll Morton's recordings. This starts with Frog-I-More Rag.
• Arcadi Volodos's nearly-impossible concert arrangement of Rachmaninoff's Italian Polka - a great workout for your pianola.

 

Replica Duo-Art rolls - list updated 11th November 2009

Bulk orders: take 20% off the listed prices if you order 10 or more rolls, or 10% off for more than 5 rolls.

Replica 88-note rolls

New 88-note rolls

Ordering information

All prices are in UK pounds sterling. Prices for off-the-shelf purchases:

• 1 to 4 rolls: price as shown above
• 5 to 9 rolls: deduct 10% from the total
• 10 or more rolls: deduct 20% from the total

Alternatively, order a bespoke perforator batch of any title (5 rolls) and deduct 20% for that particular title. Batch-buys do not count towards the off-the-shelf discount.

All orders are posted from the UK, or may be picked up from Wokingham. Postage is charged at cost, packing is free. To give some idea of postage costs at April 2009 prices:

• Within the UK, a 10-roll order typically falls into the £7.06 Royal Mail Standard Parcels range (4 to 6kg), and 2 rolls can normally go second class for £2.70.
• Via Royal Mail, overseas orders weighing up to 5kg (about 10 rolls) airmail to Europe or surface mail anywhere typically cost about 20% of the rolls' list price, double that for airmail outside Europe. This includes insurance of £38 for the parcel contents only (not postage costs). International Signed-for delivery is £3.70 extra and includes refund of postage costs if the parcel is lost. Additional Compensation up to £500 is an extra £2.20. Orders above 5 kg need to be split into several parcels, each of which must pay for compensation and signed-for.
• A more economical alternative for international orders between 5kg and 10kg is DHL or FedEx flat-rate delivery, costing around £25 to much of Europe and £45 to the USA, including signed-for delivery - this is slightly less than 5 kg sent via Royal Mail. Prices fluctuate somewhat thanks to fuel surcharges and VAT for European orders. Prices for other destinations will differ, and heavier ranges are offered, so please ask for more details. I am happy to put together orders that maximise the usage of these flat rate bands.

Please ask to confirm exact postage costs. Payment to be sent with order. Cheques must be in Pounds Sterling and drawn on a UK bank. PayPal is accepted for non-UK buyers - a payment request will be sent once the postage has been calculated. Remember to give me your address!

Julian Dyer, 5 Richmond Rise, Wokingham RG41 3XH, United Kingdom

email: enquiries <at> pianorolls.co.uk (using @ instead of <at>)