When I was a kid I taught myself to play piano by using the odd, ancient first-digital-music-delivery-system- ever thing known as a piano roll. Simply put, piano rolls are a rolled sheet of paper with cuts in it representing individual notes which, when run through what is known as a ‘player piano’, somehow cause the corresponding key to be depressed. Thus one can place their hands on a keyboard while a piano roll is being played and feel the notes underneath ones hands being depressed as the music plays, giving the young impressionable boy sitting at the keyboard (me, in this case) the general feel as to where to place ones fingers in order to play the music. Is this as boring for you to read as it is for me to write? Sorry, the process is a tedious one but is demonstrated in the very interesting above video from the late 80s–it was made for a show called ‘The Acme School Of Stuff’. Actually you’ll find this little doc more interesting than this little paragraph (I hope) and, if nothing else, you’ll be amused at the sight of a late 80s computer. I’m not sure why my father bought a player piano in the first place but it certainly got a workout in my youth, as I came home from school every day and spent an hour or more playing piano rolls with my hands held over the keyboard, acquiring a sizable repertoire of popular songs from the 20s and 30s. In closing I’d like to thank the inventors of the piano roll for giving me far better piano lessons than the ones I received from a real live person at a house in Van Nuys.I failed to learn to read music but didn’t really try that hard to begin with since the player piano awaited me at home , with piano rolls providing a far more entertaining method of learning to play the piano.