[Menvi-discuss] New member with a few questions

[Jeanie Willis]

Hi Shannon,

 

My name is Jeanie, I live in New Zealand and have had a similar recent
journey to you and so wanted to share a bit of that and what I've found
worked best for me.  If this seems helpful I am more than happy to chat
further and share what resources I've got and you can contact me at
jeaniewillis at gmail.com <mailto:jeaniewillis at gmail.com> .

 

Like you I had been partially sighted for all my life and so had learnt to
read print music with a variety of gadgets, enlargements and other solutions
all through my life.  I did a Bachelor of music in the 90s and went on to
teachers college with the aim of mainly teaching secondary school (high
school music), but have ended up manly teaching private instrument tuition
in violin, piano and advanced theory with a bit of tutoring for school
students mixed in.  However, my sight slowly declined over the last 10 years
and I found myself first needing to use screen reading for all other tasks,
but still trying to peer at music blown up to a couple of notes at a time on
a CCTV screen and huge difficulties in finding where the pen was to write to
mark students work.  Then I spent a couple of years teaching just from
memory while being concerned that this wasn't a good long term solution.  So
I started the journey you are just embarking about 3-4 years ago to find the
best tech solutions and also learn Braille music.

 

I'm going to flip this around now and give you a backward view of what is
working for me now and briefly how I got there. I am findng that my best
solution is having access to my music in both Braille and on a MuseScore
file.  I can read the Braille if I am quietly reading slowly by myself and
for memorising, but for quick answers and to reinforce by ear what I'm
reading in Braille I love MuseScore.  I tested out lots of Tech options and
have the GoodFeel Suite but as others have pointed out the biggest issue is
how to get the music into these and that issue is the same regardless of
what the end reading result is.  My end solution is Sharp Eye to scan the
music in, a small amount of editing in MuseScore by someone sighted,
MuseScore for my own music entry and music notation and export to xml, Sao
Mai Braille (SMB) to transcribe the xml into Braille, I then use Duxbury to
further edit and do have an embosser also.

 

There are two scanning software packages you can buy that do a pretty good
job of getting the music into a digital form.  Sharp Eye (which comes with
GoodFeel, but is also available from the developers website for around
$150US) is what I use and works well, it is easy to scan into from a paper
piece of music.  Play Score 2, may have marginally better results an the
advantage that it imports pdfs if the music has been bought as a pdf.  I
would expect for flute music if you have a nice clear copy either in an
original pdf or that has been scanned correctly as grey scale 300-600dpi and
not gone through any other photo process in between you should expect to get
the vast majority of it correct.  You can then use a sighted person eiter
paid or volunteer to do a quick fix up of anything it has missed, but it
will be largely correct.

 

The advantages I found with MuseScore is 2 main things.  I just didn't like
Lime at all.  I think like a print reader and this programme doesn't.  yes
it produces print, but it thinks like a keyboard player and working by ear
rather than just entering notes and as a person who had used many other
notation software packages in the past it just seemed really inferior.  It
has huge advantages for low vision users wanting to manipulate the score for
different views and also for those working mainly by ear, but for someone
who just wanted a really good music notation software that works with a
screen reader at a professional level MuseScore delivered this.  The other
big big advantage is that MuseScore has a huge community of people who can
assist, anything you try to do can be Googled for a result and most of all
anyone can download it for free and so can do that editing process for you
after scanning.  Sighted people in my experience don't want to use Lime and
don't have it available to fix up your scores, plus it just couldn't do lots
of things I wanted it to do.  MuseScores playback of articulation, ornaments
etc is far superior and the sound is also considerably better.

 

For the Braille part I then use SMB and it does an awesome job of instantly
turning your xml file from MuseScore into very professional Braille.  You
have great timing as it has only really taken off in the last few years and
it is also free.  I prefer it over GoodFeels translation as it imports thngs
better from MuseScore (GoodFeel ismore optimised to work direct from Lime)
but also handles ornamentation, fingering, slurs, lyrics and other text and
a bunch of other things better in my opinion.

 

If you are playing mainly flute music and no lyrics then as your Braille is
generally only going to be 1 line at a time then I would suggest that a
Braille display is the easier option and you probably don't need an
embosser.  I like to have printed music for my piano music where it is both
hands bar over bar.  If you were wanting to read often what other musicians
in the parts next to you are doing you might want it in hard copy, but if
just your part then a single line Braille display will probably work well
for you.

 

For the Braille v. audio question my solution is basically both.  MuseScore
reads out all the notes and elements just like you have had the person
reading to you or the materials you could have transcribed through a service
to do this onto a recording.  But the advantage with MuseScore is once the
file is created you can edit it, easily get to just the bit you want to hear
over and over, hear the letter names read as well as the music playback, and
when you want and then also print, make into Braille, etc, so I can't see
the advantage of music just being read onto an mp3 that you can't do
anything else with.

 

One word of caution though about learning Braille music.  I did find that
although I could have quickly understood both literary Braille and music
braille to learn simultaneously it was necessary to spend 6 months learning
the literary first and getting my touch better.  When you start learning
literary Braille you start with letters with more space between and so are
easier to feel and to begin with the ones with more dots just seem
indistinguishable.  This took me about 30 minutes a day over several months
before I could tell every dot apart well enough to start learning music
which by nature uses dots on both sides of the cell for all music note
letters and so just can't be learnt in a way that makes it easier to feel.
You need to be able to tell all the dots apart before you start learning
music.  You can also guess a letter by context in a word, but not in music.
So if you haven't learnt to read Braille you might want to put the music
side of that on hold for a while and get in touch with CNIB to start a
standard literary course of Braille first while proceeding with some of the
tech music stuff.

 

Do get in touch with me if I can give you more details of any resources and
happy to help with how to use MuseScore if you go down that track.

 

Jeanie

 

 

 

From: Menvi-discuss On Behalf Of Shannon Williams via Menvi-discuss
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2023 1:48 AM
To: Menvi-discuss at menvi.org
Cc: Shannon Williams <shanahanw at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Menvi-discuss] New member with a few questions

 

Hi,

I'm fairly new to this list and am really enjoying the messages and topics
so far. When I was young I was able to read large print music and use a CCTV
to magnify what I needed to play. Recently I have started playing again (I
play the flute) and due to more vision loss have had to use audio recordings
to learn my parts. My parts are recorded on a piano by someone and she gives
all details of the music including notes, time and key signatures, and all
other important tempo markings and anything else I'll need and then I
memorize the pice of music. I also used to have someone put it into
MuseScore for me but she is no longer able to help me. I am looking at
learning music braille but it is hard to find training so I'd like to just
teach myself. I think learning music braille will be helpful for me. If
anyone can point me in the direction of resources for that I'd appreciate
it. I have access to an old Braille Sense U2. I also wanted to know if
there's a difference between MuseScore and the Good Feel software from
Dancing Dots? I know MuseScore is free and that Dancing Dots software also
has a braille translator and scanning software and a higher price tag. I've
been offered funding for anything I need that would help me to have an
easier time learning the music. So I'd like to poll the list to see what
works well for everyone-MuseScore or Dancing Dots? BrailleSense notetaker or
something multi-line? Would an embosser be a good investment to make hard
copies? If there are any flute players on the list I'd love to get in touch
with you. I live in Ontario Canada so using any resources from NLS is not
possible. I'm looking at software because the woman who currently records my
music is extremely busy and I'd like to be able to learn my pieces with more
independence instead of waiting for the recordings.

 

Thanks for any help you can give. I really appreciate any suggestions you
can offer.

 

Shannon

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