This is the Olympia Musicwriter that I made most of my living on for a good number of years. I owned an earlier model that I wore out. This one is still quite functional, though it's been sitting in my storage shed with only a cloth over it for fifteen years, and could use a cleaning and some adjustment.

The machine is a modified standard office typewriter with a dead carriage, meaning it doesn't advance when you press a key, only when you press the space bar, which does also half spaces. There is also a vernier left-right adjustment, visible as the big black knob below the left carriage knob. There is a pointer to the right of the center guide that lifts out of place, and that points to the center of the character to be typed. The operator keeps his left hand on the left knob to control the roller, the right thumb on the space bar, and the other four fingers on the home row.

Only so much can be done with the Musicwriter. After the basic typing is done, there is much to be done with pen and ink, typewriters to add text material, and pasteup for composition and titles. I did it all.