<div dir="ltr">Hi everyone,<div><br></div><div>The following is going to be lengthy, but here me out.</div><div><br></div><div>In light of the recent discussion on creating some kind of repository to catalogue/store all accessible music materials that have been transcribed worldwide, I would like to share a piece I wrote that highlights the unique challenges of dealing with and accessing music for ensembles. <span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt">The objective of this piece is to
explain to the DAISY Consortium why the concert band world is a good target
segment for their publishing outreach efforts in the event that they wish to
focus in more on a specific target audience.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt">Before I get to the main article, I would like to pose the following question. T</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt">o those of you who have lots of first hand experience participating in ensembles, especially concert/wind band, do you feel that what I
have said in this piece is accurate? Also, to anyone who plays or sings in a large ensemble,
do you use websites like <a href="http://musescore.com" target="_blank">musescore.com</a> to get at least some of your performance
parts in an accessible format? I would love to hear your input.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt">Now to the main piece.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt"><br></span></div><div><h1 style="line-height:normal;margin:0.25in 0in 4pt;break-after:avoid;font-size:20pt;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:rgb(15,71,97);font-weight:normal">Introduction</h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Obtaining accessible sheet music,
whether it be in braille, large print, or audio, is a constant challenge for
all blind and visually impaired (BVI) musicians. This is especially true for
performance parts for ensemble music, such as for orchestra, concert band,
choir, and smaller chamber ensembles. This is because most libraries for the
blind, which houses most of the world's accessible sheet music, is concentrated
on literature for solo instruments, anthologies, and method books. Even if
those libraries offer ensemble music in braille or large print, it may only
offer the full score, or it may be a huge stack of full score + all performance
parts, or worse yet, it may be something like just the first violin part of a
string quartet and nothing else. This makes it quite challenging for BVI
musicians to locate performance parts for their ensemble music. As a result,
the vast majority of BVI musicians who play in band and orchestra or sing in a
choir has to have someone constantly by their side transcribing their
performance parts for them. Finding a transcriber to do this kind of work, even
someone who is just typing up music in notation software, is not easy, which
means that finding ways for ensemble directors or BVI musicians themselves to
produce accessible sheet music using software tools becomes especially
important.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">For the last several years, the
<a href="http://daisy.org" target="_blank">DAISY Consortium</a> has been working on a project with various stakeholders from
around the world that is intended to make more sheet music available in
braille, large print, and other accessible formats. One of their key objectives
is to make high quality MusicXML files suitable for conversion into accessible
formats more readily available. In order to make this a reality, one critical
step that is being taken is consulting with publishers, composers, arrangers,
and engravers to find a way to make their materials available to a wider
audience in accessible formats, including MusicXML. You can find out more about
the DAISY music braille project <a href="http://daisy.org/musicbraille" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<h1 style="line-height:normal;margin:0.25in 0in 4pt;break-after:avoid;font-size:20pt;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:rgb(15,71,97);font-weight:normal">Why target concert bands?</h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Blind and visually impaired (BVI)
musicians participate in music making in all its shapes and forms, but one of
the most common places for music students to be, at least in North America, is
the school concert/marching band. Over 90% of American schools have a wind band
program of some kind, which makes it one of the most common places for children
and youth to receive their first exposure to playing an instrument. The other
main musical ensembles in the typical American school is the string orchestra and
the chorus. School choral programs are quite common, but choral participation
is, to some degree, more doable without musical literacy than instrumental
ensembles. Orchestral string programs are far less common in schools compared
to wind band programs.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Another issue is the musical
literature. As a violinist and violist who regularly plays in a fairly high
level community symphonic orchestra that performs standard orchestral
literature by composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, etc, I am
able to find a significant portion (though not all) of my orchestra music on
<a href="http://musescore.com" target="_blank">musescore.com</a>, thanks to their public domain status and popularity. Sure,
because everything on <a href="http://musescore.com" target="_blank">musescore.com</a> is user-created, quality does vary, and the
music I have may not exactly match that of my section-mates in terms of
markings and rehearsal letters/numbers, but it is still a significant help.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">On the other hand, the situation
for concert bands is very different. Unlike symphony orchestras who have a
long, established tradition spanning several hundred years, the concert band is
a relatively new ensemble for which the majority of its standard literature has
been written in the past 50-100 years, putting most of this music well under
copyright. Also, composers continue to write relatively large quantities of
music for concert band today. This means that it is very difficult to find
performance parts for standard concert band literature in accessible formats
without resorting to getting music individually transcribed by a braille music
specialist or family/friend, unless the band director happens to have
notation/MusicXML files of the music that is being learned and performed. Yes,
<a href="http://musescore.com" target="_blank">musescore.com</a> has quite a bit of sheet music for concert band, but the bulk of
that sheet music (and this applies to all of <a href="http://musescore.com" target="_blank">musescore.com</a>, really) consists of
original compositions and arrangements done mainly by amateurs, which is not
necessarily the material played by established ensembles.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Although many school, youth, and
community orchestras play specially made modern arrangements and compositions
for difficulty reasons, they still make up a significantly smaller segment than
the wind band world. Although woodwind, brass, and percussion players do play
in symphony orchestras, it is generally easier for string players to get into
orchestras compared to wind and percussion players simply due to numbers,
especially at the youth and amateur/community level, which is where the vast
majority of musicians end up post high school. This means that the vast
majority of amateur woodwind, brass, and percussion musicians end up in
community concert bands, rather than symphonic orchestras.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">For all of these reasons, I feel
that the DAISY Consortium should consider the concert band world to be one
important target segment in its efforts to make music scores more available to
BVI musicians. I must admit that I am by no means an expert in the wind band
world. My main instruments are piano, violin, and viola, but I do have some
first hand wind band experience, including one year of compulsory beginning
band on flute, and one year of high school band playing flute and oboe parts on
violin. I have also spent a lot of time in online communities where there is
plenty of discussion on school bands, concert bands, and their literature. I
have also perused several support groups for parents of blind and visually
impaired children, and I found that school ensemble participation is a very
common occurrence among BVI children who study music. For reference, here is a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm9675YTejs&pp=ygUkbWV0aG9kcyBmb3IgdGVhY2hpbmcgYmxpbmQgbXVzaWNpYW5z" style="color:rgb(70,120,134)" target="_blank">YouTube
video</a> of a blind American teenage girl describing her experience
participating in her high school’s band program. It is a pretty good
representation of what goes on in the trenches so to speak.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<h1 style="line-height:normal;margin:0.25in 0in 4pt;break-after:avoid;font-size:20pt;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:rgb(15,71,97);font-weight:normal">Solutions and Challenges</h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<h2 style="line-height:normal;margin:8pt 0in 4pt;break-after:avoid;font-size:16pt;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:rgb(15,71,97);font-weight:normal">1. Education and awareness</h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Most ensemble directors should be
familiar with popular notation programs such as Finale, Sibelius, and
MuseScore, as they use these programs for various reasons to produce material
for their ensembles. If they understand that anything created in notation
software can be easily used to create accessible music in some form, whether it
is MusicXML files for conversion to braille, modified stave notation for
partially sighted musicians, or MIDI audio tracks for those learning by ear,
they can easily get accessible music out to their musicians. Large print music
and audio tracks can generally be produced with just notation software alone,
but the automated conversion of printed notation to braille requires an
additional piece of specialized software. For many years, the <a href="https://www.dancingdots.com/main/goodfeel.htm" target="_blank">GOODFEEL suite byDancing Dots</a> has been the standard for converting print music to braille, but
the rise of the newly created and high quality <a href="https://saomaicenter.org/en/smsoft/smb" target="_blank">Sao Mai Braille</a> means there is a
far more economical (and ironically superior) solution out there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<h2 style="line-height:normal;margin:8pt 0in 4pt;break-after:avoid;font-size:16pt;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:rgb(15,71,97);font-weight:normal">2. The role of publishers, composers/arrangers,
engravers, and distributors</h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Digital sheet music is on the
rise. Given the relatively modern status of concert bands in particular, I
suspect the vast majority of concert band literature is out there in a notation
software file format of some kind. It's just that ensemble directors, who
usually purchase the music from distributors or publishers, does not get access
to those notation files. This is totally understandable given copyright
concerns. However, with the DAISY Consortium working to engage more mainstream
music publishers in getting MusicXML files out into the world, this issue needs
to be discussed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">One possible solution would be to
integrate Sao Mai's <a href="https://saomaicenter.org/en/smsoft/sm-music-braille" target="_blank">music braille translation library</a> into digital sheet music
systems. This is likely difficult to implement technically, although the rise of
AI could potentially help, but the end goal will be that whenever someone buys
a piece of sheet music from a digital distributor, they will have the option of
receiving an auto-generated braille music file of either the full score or
specified performance parts. Although the output will be unproofed, I think
this can still make a huge difference, though non-standard/complex notation
will be a problem. These digital distributors should also offer a way to
generate large print scores at the point of purchase, or incorporate
magnification features into their interactive sheet music applications.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Also, Muse Group, who is the
parent company of MuseScore, has acquired Hal Leonard, one of the world's
largest music publishers, especially in the educational music space. For one,
Hal Leonard has a large concert band division. I wonder if there is a meaningful
way for <a href="http://musescore.com" target="_blank">musescore.com</a> and the Hal Leonard group to make their offerings
accessible in a way that can enable ensemble directors and BVI musicians
themselves to easily acquire accessible sheet music.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<h2 style="line-height:normal;margin:8pt 0in 4pt;break-after:avoid;font-size:16pt;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:rgb(15,71,97);font-weight:normal">3. The role of the braille music transcriber</h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The other issue is the role of
specially trained braille music transcribers. Most braille music transcribers
spend most of their time transcribing music on request for specific
individuals, which means that many may not be meaningfully contributing to the
braille music that is readily available to the wider public. This becomes
especially problematic for ensemble music, where most transcribers are working
on individual performance parts for a scattering of pieces for specific people that ask and pay for it. (This is the main reason I find FMDG's <a href="https://fmdgmusicschool.org/digital-music-library" target="_blank">online accessible music library</a> to be less useful for a wider audience than it could
be). Even if there was some sort of catalogue of every single thing that is available in braille worldwide, I, for one, would still find it very frustrating searching through a whole pile of available transcriptions trying to locate the flute 1 part for a particular concert band piece, only to discover that yes, the piece has been transcribed, but it's only the 2nd trumpet part. Another example is when I'm looking for the first violin part for a symphony, only to discover that yes, it exists in braille, but only a selection of measures have been transcribed, most likely for the purpose of orchestra seating auditions. (I will say that audition excerpts are kinda another unique situation, but at least if you know what measure(s) the excerpt was pulled from, assuming the whole piece is available in an accessible format, you may be able to work from the full copy without resorting to getting it transcribed just for you).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In the mainstream music world, much effort is put into keeping all the parts and score of an ensemble work as close to each other as possible, and while I know this kind of parody is harder to achieve in the braille music world, I still find it a huge point of frustration. I just love being able to locate full scores of ensemble music in a format that lets me extract the performance parts I need on sites like <a href="http://musescore.com" target="_blank">musescore.com</a>, since I can rest easy knowing that, say, another BVI musician needs the same piece for their ensemble playing but they don't play the instrument I do, the score is available for them to extract their part from. I may be a little biased, but I just don't love seeing a loose collection of various performance parts for different pieces, and none of them have a full score or complete set of parts available. Transcribed excerpts and segments of method books and anthologies pose a similar problem, but the issues are somewhat different, so I won't go into it here. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Also, most braille music
transcribers continue to enter music by hand six-key entry style, which, in my
opinion, is a huge disadvantage to making accessible ensemble music more
available to a wider audience. If a transcriber goes the six-key entry route to
transcribe the full score, they'll have the full score, but what if someone
wants just the first flute part or the second violin part of that orchestra
score that was transcribed entirely by hand? The transcriber then has to do a
lot of extra additional work to provide the client with the single part score
they want. If, on the other hand, the score is in notation software, it is easy
to extract the part(s) that the client wants, use automated conversion to get a
braille score, and the braille music specialist can then check it over and fix
any problems that arise. With this approach, the transcriber can still
transcribe the full score using automated tools and get a pretty usable result
to edit further.</p></div></div>