piano roll
Punched paper melody
A piano roll is a roll of paper with perforations that encode a musical performance, used to operate a player piano mechanically.
The holes trigger specific notes as the roll passes over a tracker bar.
In modern music software, a piano roll is a grid-based interface for editing MIDI notes, with pitch on one axis and time on the other: I drew in the melody on the piano roll.
- perforationsSeries of small holes
- pianolaAutomatic keyboard instrument
- pump organBellows-driven reed keyboard
- instrumentDevice for specific tasks
- ragtimeSyncopated piano genre
Scott Joplin · Tin Pan Alley · early 20th century · dynamic range · spooling · boogie-woogie · quantization · syncopation · cut time · DAW · honky-tonk · wax cylinder · sequencer · digital audio · cakewalk · vaudeville · two-step · MIDI
- mechanical musicmusic box, barrel organ, calliope, street organ, hand organ
- RagtimeScott Joplin, Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer, syncopation, rags
- sheet musicsheet music, treble clef, score, notes, scores
- DAWMIDI, tracks, mixing, recording, plugins
- Sequencersdrum machine, arpeggiator, tracker
- music notationtreble clef, bass clef, clef, clefs, staff
piano rolllive performance
Unrecorded staged entertainment
human performance · concert performance · recital · live concert · sight-reading
piano rollimprovisation
Spontaneous, unplanned creation
jazz improvisation · extemporization · ad-lib · jamming · rubato
piano, roll, pianos, rolls, rolled, rolling, roller, pianissimo, pianoforte