Treasures of Mechanical Music [Paperback]

This book contains over four hundred fifty tuning scales, tracker scales and key frame layouts for player and reproducing pianos, coin pianos and orchestrions, music boxes, table-top organettes, reed, pipe, and electronic organs, barrel organs and various other miscellaneous mechanical musical instruments.

In addition to the six hundred fifty pictures and illustrations, there are capsule histories of many of the companies which produced these instruments on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

There are numerous informative articles on such subjects as arranging piano rolls, how to decode an unknown scale, how "nickelodeon" rolls were originally made, selecting the type of roll to be used for a new orchestrion, arranging music for barrel organs, tuning antique instruments, how rolls are perforated and detailed pictorial tours of both the QRS and Play-Rite Music Roll factories as they manufactured rolls in the early 1980s.

There's a good bit of information on player pipe organs, and for the carousel buffs, a fascinating collection of pictures of Charles Looff, the carousel builder, and many of the fine machines he made—all of which were fitted with beautiful mechanical organs.Arthur A. Reblitzis recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on automatic pianos and organs. He is a 1968 high honors graduate of the University of Illinois with a Bachelor of Science in Music Education. Owner of Reblitz Restorations Inc., he and his employees have restored automatic instruments for many well-known private and public collections since 1964.

Mr. Reblitz is also known worldwide as a music arranger for these instruments. His work has appeared on nationwide educational and network television, the National Geographic specialTreasures from the Past, in the Rose Bowl Parade, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Radio City Music Hall, the 1981 Paramount motion pictureReds, and the television specialColS)