Three years earlier, he gave this circuitous, hour-long talk, laying out the long-running war between evolving information technologies from the piano roll to the telegraph to the modem, and how the established institutions that are disrupted by those technologies have sought to stifle them.

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The software interface is also familiar enough, offering piano-roll and block-style notations that most music production platforms have standardized around.

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Lamarr and Antheil proposed using a punched-paper roll like that of a player piano.

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Mr. MYERS: Even before Jerry Lee and the dawning of rock 'n' roll, boogie-woogie was shifting away from the piano to electric guitar.

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Merritt's music is hard to pin down: She incorporates gospel, soul, '70s California rock 'n' roll and warm echoes of Joni Mitchell's brand of folk music into her piano-based country songs.

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