A Music Roll is used to operate a Mechanical organ or Orchestrion and contains the music to be played. Originally made of paper, modern rolls are sometimes made of thin plastic or mylar. The name orchestrion has been applied to three different kinds of musical instruments: A chamber organ, designed by Abt Vogler in 1785, which in a space of 9 cub. ... Mylar is a trade name of DuPont Teijin Films of Hopewell, VA, United States, for biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate (BOPET) polyester film used for its high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, and electrical insulation. ...

The music is stored by means of perforations. The mechanism of the instrument reads these, as the roll unwinds, using a pneumatic sensing device called a tracker bar, and the mechanism subsequently plays the instrument. Pneumatics, from the Greek πνευματικός (pneumatikos, coming from the wind) is the use of pressurized air in science and technology. ...

A piano roll is a specific type of music roll, and is designed to operate a player piano. A piano roll is the medium used to operate the player piano or pianola, band/fairground organs, calliopes and hand-cranked organs and orchestrions and pipe organs as well. ... The player piano is a type of piano that plays music without the need for a human pianist to depress the normal keys or pedals. ...

Selecting a paper roll of music. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (837x690, 114 KB) Description: rolls of a barrel organ Source: photographed --Immanuel Giel 12:54, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC) File links The following pages link to this file: Barrel organ Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital...

Music roll in place showing a pattern of holes representing notes. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (521x794, 66 KB) Description: Music roll of a barrel organ in place inside the organ. ...

Tracker bar, which reads the punched music roll. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (490x612, 84 KB) Description: valves of a barrel organ Source: photographed --Immanuel Giel 12:55, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC) File links The following pages link to this file: Barrel organ Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital...

Each hole is connected to a valve in the interior of the organ which operates the organ pipes such as these wooden ones. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (745x1057, 155 KB) Description: pipes of a barrel organ. ... An organ pipe is one of the tuned resonators that produces the main sound of a pipe organ. ...

See Also

Book music Book Music is the European version of making mechanical music medium for organs in Europe and it is actually similar to piano rolls, but book music is produced by thick cardboard, with perforated holes, and it is presented and played in a folded zig-zag style. ...