Sheet music in one long "scroll"

April 7, 2016 3:57 PM

You know how a player piano uses a roll with the music inscribed on it? I'd like such a scroll, but for a regular piece of sheet music. One song and one treble clef. All of the notes in a continuous line. Does such an item exist? If not, how might I best go about having one made?
posted by jefficator to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

I don't know the answer to that, but I bet the Bagaduce Lending Library folk will know.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 4:30 PM on April 7, 2016

Should be pretty easy to put together from a regular piece of sheet music. Scan it, copy and paste everything into one line, print on a plotter (most print shops will have one).
posted by kindall at 5:27 PM on April 7, 2016

Do you mean one treble clef as in just one long horizontal score? That's interesting. I'm not sure that copying and pasting would do the trick effectively as there might be spacing issues.

If it's a one-off project that you have the sheet music for I might be able to typeset it for you using the software I use to generate sheet music with. As far as I can tell it allows one to set up a page to be any size you want and then makes it look perfect for that size page. PM me if you want to try it this way.
posted by bfootdav at 6:08 PM on April 7, 2016

I've done this before, but didn't print it. I basically did what bfootday suggested—retypeset it myself and told my engraving program that the page width was a gazillion inches.

The cut&paste method would work, but you'd need to cut the clef and key signature off each line. You'd get into a rhythm about spacing it…I'm more worried that it would either go crooked or have awkward seams. It also sounds very tedious to me.
posted by tmacdonald at 8:36 PM on April 7, 2016

Is this for piano music? Most piano music is two staves, treble and bass clef.
posted by KathrynT at 10:39 PM on April 7, 2016

How would you handle repeats and a coda? The layout of sheet music is quite difficult due to the requirements of turning pages as well as conviently having all repeats on one page if at all possible. Have you ever played an instrument?
posted by koolkat at 4:38 AM on April 8, 2016

I've seen piano music that scrolled sideways - a 3-page song would be printed just like normal on 3 pages, but the pages were all connected on the side edges so they lined up next to each other from left to right on one long sheet of paper. You spread the whole thing out and balance it across the music stand of the piano. To play it, you read down the first page, then look at the top of the second page, go down and then do the third page.

(This is impossible to Google for. All you get is sheet music for One Direction)
posted by CathyG at 7:46 AM on April 8, 2016

Response by poster: This is for an design project rather than music. The concept is to display an entire song along a hallway as one continuous piece.
posted by jefficator at 8:11 AM on April 8, 2016