[Menvi-discuss] New member with a few questions

[Ella Yu]

Hi again, apologies for sending another email, but I echo everything Jeanie
said, and do feel free to ask me any questions as well, we're all on the
same wavelength here. I'd certainly be happy to connect with you more since
I'm also from Canada.

I was mainly responding to echo Jeanie's comments about MuseScore vs Lime,
which I 110% agree with. I've been told by another experienced person that
MuseScore is a vastly superior notation program to Lime because it is
mainstream software that is designed to be good for working with notation,
and this does not surprsie me at all. Sighted transcribers definitely don't
want to be dealing with Lime, and if you do work with a sighted assistant,
I would definitely let them use their preferred notation software of
choice, if they already use one. If not, MuseScore is the obvious choice
because of its free price tag. My brother, who currently does transcribing
for me, uses MuseScore purely because of the price tag. I also agree with
Jeanie's comments about music OCR software, and that if the scans/images
are clear enough, the music OCR will definitely get most things correct.
Also, PlayScore 2 and SharpEye are very affordable compared to the Goodfeel
suite, so I do think spending a bit of cash on either of those programs
could be beneficial.

On a side note, I am a pianist too and I don't mind not having access to
multi-line braille for piano music. In my case, I'm learning more advanced
music, where you really do have to go one hand at a time, and each hand
will usually be quite content heavy, so I find that one line at a time is
okay. It's a matter of personal preference, though, and the OP is a flute
player so this is beside the point.

On Tue, Dec 19, 2023 at 11:48 AM Jeanie Willis via Menvi-discuss <
menvi-discuss at menvi.org> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
> 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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