Scanned piano rolls database

zulko

This used to be one of my main hobbies, I listened to thousands of these and I am super grateful to the people scanning and hosting these collections.

Some software I wrote for piano roll analysis and transcription:

- Unroll: https://zulko.github.io/unroll-online/ - upload a piano roll midi file and have it quantized and converted to lilypond sheet music. More about the process in this blog: https://zulko.github.io/blog/2014/02/12/transcribing-piano-r...

- Pianola: https://zulko.github.io/pianola/ - upload a piano roll midi file, and it plays with the piano roll and keyboard animation (you can zoom on some parts, slow down etc).

Some transcriptions made with these tools:

- Hindustan: https://github.com/Zulko/sheet-music--hindustan

- Gershwin - Sweet and Lowdown: https://github.com/Zulko/sheet-music--Gershwin-sweet-and-low...

- Gershwin - Limehouse Nights: https://github.com/Zulko/-sheet-music--Gerhswin-Limehouse-Ni...

StarlaAtNight

Just curious, what made you go down that rabbit hole?

zulko

When I was about 10 I picked my first ever CD at a music shop, and it was a recording of the Gershwin piano rolls, because the cover photo caught my eye [1]. I didn't really understand what I was listening to, I assumed "piano roll" was a musical genre, like "rock'n'roll", until years later when my English became good enough to read the CD's booklet.

It was also a time when all these midi files started being available, like the 6000 rolls from Terry Smythe [2], and I figured out transcribing these could be a good way to learn old-school Jazz, which is otherwise difficult to find as sheet music.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX9MCyO6smk

[2] https://archive.org/details/terrysmythe.ca-archive/mp3s/Ampi...

masfuerte

If you want to play these in VLC you need a SoundFont (.sf2) file. There's a good list of SoundFont files here [1]. This VLC wiki page [2] explains how to configure VLC to use the SoundFont.

[1]: https://github.com/FluidSynth/fluidsynth/wiki/SoundFont

[2]: https://wiki.videolan.org/Midi/

(I'm posting this because the vlc wiki is stale and sent me down a pointless rabbit hole on fluidsynth's old sourceforge site. I'd rather update the wiki. It tells me I need to create an account. When I try it tells me I don't have permission.)

bluGill

If you find a duplicate it often isn't. They often cut a bunch of rolls and then threw the master. If the roll proved popular they made a new master which would be slightly difierent but have the same catalog number. Tracing these 'editions' is often part of the fun.

JKCalhoun

Super cool. Clicked on a title with the MIDI indicator and a MIDI file (.mid) downloaded. Came up in Garage Band and sounded nice.

ncr100

Awesome.

Did the same for Laugh Clown, Laugh - set the tempo to 110 bpm:

http://www.pianorollmusic.org/html/mjose/midifiles/NonPDfile...

irrational

It’s dead Jim.

I assume we hugged it to death.

ncr100

It's buckling. Keep trying if you're interested in it.

Or visit https://web.archive.org/web/20250716215135/http://www.pianor... to see SOME of the files. Sadly not the MIDI files ... which IMO are the meat of value of this HN post.

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