With regard to 'new music for old machines', and what may or may not be "appropriate", has anyone taken a look at the QRS Piano Roll Catalog anytime recently ?
https://www.qrsmusic.com/music.asp?cid1=28
I see they
do offer that great Tin Pan Alley classic, "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" ...
https://www.qrsmusic.com/music.asp?cid1 ... 37&pid=828
Back in the 1970's, during the Ragtime Revival, player pianos experienced kind of a fleeting renaissance, frequently in pubs and "theme restaurants" (anybody from the Baltimore area remember "Pappy's Pizza", with their glass-front, glitter & Day-Glo fluorescent coin-op upright player pianos, with a stack of rolls on top ? ).
Even as a grade schooler then, it kind of seemed "not right" to me to hear songs like "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the old Oak Tree", or "Raindrops keep fallin' on my head" coming from a big upright player-piano.
By now, I'm sure QRS has Britney Spears and Lady Gaga in their catalog...
For the music producers / marketers, it's about "selling music", in whatever format will sell best.
I have three of the original Jenkins 12" Melotones, and they are indeed horrific to listen to, yet somewhat fun in a macabre way... at least to this Music Major.
Putting them on new cylinders would not be too far removed from a brown-wax home recording of a well-intentioned, but not very proficient amateur soprano from before the Great War...
How many people would be interested in cylinder versions of FFJ ? Well, maybe not enough to be worth the trouble, but it would be interesting to hear.
Another way to look at the question, is that the supply of original recordings of both cylinder and disc records is finite, and diminishing every day.
Many of us who play our machines are always (?) on the look-out for material to play on them.
That there are people out there like Shawn Borrie, Norm Bruderhoffer, Donnie J, and others who are making new records to play on ancient phonographs is a wonderful gift.
To have the opportunity to buy fresh, new recordings for century-old, obsolete equipment is wonderful indeed.
And there are some musicians out there who have a lot of fun doing "old" versions of "modern" music...
My favorite example of this last genre is German band leader Max Raabe and Der Palastorchester, who are fantastic musicians and showmen, and do really fun "covers" of things like, "Oops, I did it again", "Sex Bomb", and "Super Trouper", as well as their wonderful repertoire of Weimar-era German "schlager" club music.
Just one more opinion to throw on the fire on a cold, wet February evening...
