We recently saved about 50 piano rolls from an artist’s estate that was going to toss them in the trash. In looking for a place to send them for preservation, I found Stanford University’s amazing piano roll collection where they digitize the rolls with a special scanner and software that converts the scans into MIDI files.

Watching their scanner in action is pretty mesmerizing.

The SUPRA site is where you can play the digitized rolls. May I suggest starting with Hans Sommers’s version of Vincent Youman’s “Hallelujah!: fox-trot from ‘Hit the deck’"?

And the SUPRA site notes fun stats at the top, which is always a plus:

456 scanned piano rolls
476,179,021,824 pixels
6.12 miles (9.84 km)
1,596,721 notes
46:29:09 hours of music