[Dixielandjazz] MIDI Piano Roll Source revisited.

[Lowell Busching]

In an issue of the American Rag, who's date I forgot to write down, an 
address was given by Chris Calabrese concerning a web site he had found 
that now as over 3,000 (currently 3,222) scanned piano rolls of all 
kinds in the MIDI format.  There were 2,000 when he noted it.

The total file size of the 19 batches, of various length, is several 
megs even in that format. It is quite a collection for those interested 
  in old piano roll music as Chris pointed out. The source also 
references other similar sites where free piano roll scans are available.

The url Chris gave ended in /library.htm which on Netscape, and similar 
browsers at least, takes you only to the Servers home page with a 
message saying that the personal site does not exist! This might 
discourage some "casual" users of the Internet, who generally do only 
email, from getting these files. The address that will work is:

http://members.shaw.ca/smythe/archive.htm

This should work for any browser.  On that page are listed the current 
19 batches and links to the individual pages for the batches. First the 
titles are listed, along with notes by the webmaster, and at the bottom 
of each batch page a link to download those files in ZIP format, using 
your download manager of choice.  They should automatically unzip with 
XP or you may have to do it manually. Keep track of the download 
location as the total is quite large!

Anyone else that has already gone through this might possibly tell me if 
the unzip pauses, that ask if you want to replace such and such file, 
are an indication of exact duplicate files or are alternate versions? 
They appear to have the same number. To speed things up, I responded 
with N for replacing the files and it continues. The further you get in 
the batches, the more of these seem to occur!

If they are alternate versions by different musicians of the same 
number, then the solution would be, of course, to download each batch in 
a separate folder so there is no conflict.  I would estimate that out of 
the over 3,000 titles currently, that there probably were not more then 
20-30 of these "duplicates" or so.

Most media players will  play the MIDI files and they are ideal for 
piano numbers.  On batch 17 and the final batch there is another ZIP 
file that those with Excel can download with a complete list of the 
titles so far, if you do not want to print out or consult the batch web 
pages.  You can also sort the titles with the spread sheet file.

All this may be old news or elementary to many of the DJML users who 
found their way through this process already, but it is NOT obvious "to 
the casual observer", of which there are still a few around. Thus they 
may miss out on this large archive of piano rolls that they may have 
heard as youths in their grand parents living rooms, as I did.

Lowell Busching