My Free 20 Note MIDI Files

My MIDI files come from a number of sources. The files below come from public domain sources. You can download them by Right-Clicking on them. Feel free to play or punch them on your own organ, but do not distribute them to others. I work and print files using the "true" Carl Frei scale starting with a bass F (MIDI #053) and rising to a D (MIDI #086). Some other 20er arrangers, or punching services use shifted/transposed scales.

20 Note Tuning Roll - The notes in the Carl Frei scale.

The Star Spangled Banner - I started work on The Star Spangled Banner by preparing MIDI files from sheet music. I used a score for concert band as arranged by E. Beyer in 1886. The band score was obtained from the Royalton (Ohio) Community Band website http://www.bandmusicpdf.org as a set of individual parts within a large .PDF file. By listening to the 20 note and 31 note arrangements you can get a sense of how many limitations the Carl Frei 20er scale imposes on arrangers.

The Chattanooga Blues - The first COAA rally of the 2008 season was at Lake Winnie Amusement Park near Chattanooga, TN. My plan is to punch a tune or two for each rally location, and I found this piece while looking for Chattanooga Choo-Choo. It was a piano roll scan by Terry Smythe on one of the internet archives and created this file from it.

Beautiful Ohio - Our second COAA rally in 2008 was in Marietta, Ohio, where the overnight steamboats regularly play this one when stopping. This is derived from a Wurlitzer 150 scan in the player piano roll MIDI archives, but with a key transposition from C to Bb and a lot of detail editing.

The Jolly Blacksmith Polka - I found the sheet music for this on the Library of Congress site Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music. I printed the pages on paper, then scanned and processed them with Neuratron's PhotoScore MIDI Lite to create a base file. I then did a key transposition, eliminated out-of-range notes, and otherwise "arranged" the tune for a 20 note roll.

A Trip to Niagara - Around 1900 the Buffalo, NY area hosted a number events of national interest, and, as a result, became the subject of numerous tunes. I arranged this one for the Olcott Beach COAA Rally.

Pennsylvania (One Step) - Here's a tune with a Pennsylvania theme which is my piece for the Knobels Amusement Park COAA Rally.

Johnny Morgan - Ron Bopp featured a sheet music cover of this tune on the cover of the Carousel Organ. The lyrics speak of a young man who played a grind-organ in a family band which "often got a penny to go into another street." Johnny was a hit with the "servant girls." Finally, "Johnny played his instrument, and pleased the lady so, That when the time arrived to leave, she would not let him go. She asked if he would marry her, which John did very soon. Now on the organ Johnny plays her many a merry tune." I found the sheet music on the Library of Congress site.

Clarinet Polka - I was looking for the Pennsylvania Polka, and found a midi file with that name in the player piano collection. After punching it I found out that it was actually the Clarinet Polka. Oh, well, it's a good tune anyway.

Circus Life March - I found this nice march in the on-line collection of paper-to-midi scans of Wurlitzer 150 rolls which is posted online. First, I don't think this is the original title of the piece. If you can put another name to it, please let me know. Second, the Wurlitzer 150 roll scans are a pretty good starting point for 20er rolls. They require a bit of editing to move notes into the Frei scale, but the work of finding substitutions for "missing" accidentals and of improvising "the decorative bits" has been done.

Bombasto - Bombasto is considered a circus march. It was written by Orion R Farrar in 1895. Like most circus screamers, and a lot of  tunes good brass bands, it was hard to get even a fairly good fit to the Carl Frei scale. First, because there are a lot of chromatic runs. Second because of the key shift in the Trio section.

"Oktober Fest" Tunes - here are some simple German "sing-along" tunes.
Muss I Denn
Du, Du, Liegst Mir Im Hertzen
Die Lorelei
Die Gedanken Sind Frei
Lili Marleen
Wenn Die Soldaten