music roll

American  

noun

1. a roll of perforated paper for actuating a player piano.

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music roll British  

noun

1. a roll of perforated paper for use in a mechanical instrument such as a player piano

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Etymology

Origin of music roll

First recorded in 1905–10

Example Sentences

It's exhausting but cathartic to take one's own first experience of love or jealousy or loss and blow it up wide-screen, cue the music, roll the thunder.

From Time Magazine Archive

Harry Truman was the one boy in Independence who never ducked his piano lessons and, worst of all, never seemed to mind being seen with his music roll under his arm.

From Time Magazine Archive

The music roll that he used for a briefcase was found about 30 yards away, rifled of its contents, together with his keys, his money, and a scattered flurry of visiting cards.

From Time Magazine Archive

The holes in the paper guide the machine to make the type much as a perforated music roll guides a piano to play a tune.

From Makers of Many Things by Tappan, Eva March

In Cursitor Street I cannot hear the streams warble, the birds chant, the music roll through the stately fane, let us say, of Lady Whittlesea's.

From Old Friends, Epistolary Parody by Lang, Andrew