[Menvi-discuss] Grade 8 exam pieces

Sun Jun 4 04:00:52 EDT 2023

Thank you Genie and Ella, yes I agree what genie says that it will be
easy if I can have BRF or XML music file, but how to get and where to
get is my anxiety, I have written to Bill Mcann dancingdots whether
they can transcribe the book of grade 8  ABRSM the latest syllabus
2023-2024 for me, bill hasn't responded, perhaps I will write to
Albert today too if he can help me with the transcription. in the
website of ABRSM under specific needs and under partially sighted and
visually impaired, 2023-2024 syllabus isn't available of course, I did
not write to them if they can get the BRF file for grade 8  of this
latest syllabus, I'll try that as well today. The student is an adult,
a nun from the congrigation Daughters Of Charity, Sister Magdelena She
doesn't select on Her own anything but, leans on me too much. I told
Her to go to some other teacher, She isn't listening, I tried my best
to telling Her lot of obstacles are there, unless I have a copy in
Braille, I cannot teach, this She doesn't understand, has no notion of
what braille is, or what a blind person does to teach a student,
Anyway, I don't know what to do, I am in a bad soop.Besides the melody
of these pieces in grade Eight are not so much catchy, I like some of
the pieces of the alternative pieces, there is Danny   Boy,that is in
the list C and there is the second piece in list A   How to make Her
to buy  the alternative pieces I have to find a way. as Genie says, we
love to teach music, so, we keep searching for different ways that are
accessible for us. I'll let you know which pieces Sister and I choose.

Thank you a lot, I truely appreciate you both for your understanding
me and trying your best to support me.

Thank you again.

Ruby.

On 6/4/23, Jeanie Willis via Menvi-discuss <menvi-discuss at menvi.org> wrote:
> Yes I agree, Ruby, let us know what the specific pieces you are looking for
> are and we can try to find them.
>
>
>
> I have just been on ABC and downloaded a bunch more repertoire books.  My
> plan over time is to catalogue the individual pieces within all of these so
> that when someone needs an individual piece we will know if it is tucked
> away in a book.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately it doesn’t look like CNIB did a good cataloguing job of the
> RCM materials.  There are a lot of books just labelled as RCM examination
> with no idea what grade or whether they are even piano, voice, etc.  I will
> check our local library here in case they did any better when they received
> them from ABC.  Otherwise it would be a case of downloading them all and
> opening and reading.  I’m still a pretty slow Braille reader so not feeling
> very excited about this, but I might be somewhere quicker with notepad and
> screen reader, my askii interpretation is improving, lol.
>
>
>
> But I did notice hundreds of individual pieces of titles I recognised as
> exam pieces on ABC, so will be happy to do a search once we know those
> titles.
>
>
>
> Jeanie
>
> From: Menvi-discuss On Behalf Of Ella Yu via Menvi-discuss
> Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 11:04 AM
> To: This is for discussing music and braille literacy
> <menvi-discuss at menvi.org>
> Cc: Ella Yu <ellaxyu at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Menvi-discuss] Grade 8 exam pieces
>
>
>
> Hi all, RCM goes up to level 10 and then there's a grad level, just for
> reference. Sadly, finding the actual repertoire books in braille is very
> difficult, and is made worse by the new CNIB library thing which seems to
> have removed a lot of older braille music titles. I think the best course of
> action is to figure out which pieces you need, and we can try to help you
> source them. Finding braille music is very hard a lot of the time, and what
> is available is very restrictive. Having optical music recognition helps a
> lot, but you still need sighted assistance to get it to work.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 3:38 PM Jeanie Willis via Menvi-discuss
> <menvi-discuss at menvi.org <mailto:menvi-discuss at menvi.org> > wrote:
>
> Hi Ruby,
>
> Has your student chosen her pieces yet?  Can you tell us what they are and
> we can see if we can find a brf or even xml in another exam book or sheet
> music.
>
> Have you contacted ABRSM special needs and asked them for these specific
> pieces to be urgently transcribed?  Did you get a response?  You could also
> try contacting the publishers as listed in the print book directly and see
> if there is any way they can release the xml or similar file to you to
> convert to Braille.  I sometimes find that making an e-mail a CC to several
> different departments or people within an organisation makes it harder for
> them to all ignore, so keep trying.
>
> I think you should give up trying to find a way to convert the music from
> pdf or scanned image as this is just not going to be good enough for you as
> a teacher.  Even if you got all the notes, which is unlikely you will be
> missing essential articulation, fingering and many other things.  An
> existing brf or xml will be much closer.
>
> If we can help you find a brf or xml do you have a way set up to edit the
> Braille?  My suggestion is that you could either pay a transcriber to
> compare the brf that isn't the original ABRSM and edit it to add any small
> details that are different.  This should be much less expensive than
> transcribing from scratch.  Or, you could go through with your student
> either a few bars at a time or through a topic such as all the dynamics in
> a
> piece, or the pedal marks, or the articulation and get them to read out
> what
> it does so you can check and edit them.  This is a little time consuming,
> but also might help your student to become much more familiar with the
> pieces.
>
> The only other option is to pay to have them transcribed if you can.  I do
> understand how frustrating this all is.  I have been very frustrated myself
> this past year with just how little is available and I think over time it
> is
> easy to become desensitised to the hugegaping cavern between what is
> available to a teacher in print and what in Braille which is so crazily
> restrictive.  It is also impossible to even add up all the extra hours
> spent
> to get to the same starting point of having the music ready to begin
> teaching.  But, I guess we love what we do and so somehow we find a way!
>
> If someone can tell me whether the RCM exams are the same Grade level I can
> download the past ones from ABC and check through those also.
>
> Jeanie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Menvi-discuss On Behalf Of ruby alphonse via Menvi-discuss
> Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 6:24 AM
> To: This is for discussing music and braille literacy
> <menvi-discuss at menvi.org <mailto:menvi-discuss at menvi.org> >
> Cc: ruby alphonse <rubyalphonse at gmail.com <mailto:rubyalphonse at gmail.com> >
> Subject: [Menvi-discuss] Grade 8 exam pieces
>
> Hello list members, please can anyone tell me where to get braille
> transcribed I need very urgently grade 8  2023-2024 syllabus a braille copy
> to teach a student, there isn't BRF file available on the website of ABRSM
> specific needs. This student wants to prepare from now on to do the exams
> next year, so I cannot use the previous syllabus, so please anyone knows
> where I can get hard copy of this Grade 8  ABRSM
> 2023-2024 syllabus. or BRF file, I can get them embossed here. Any help is
> appreciated deeply.
>
> Thank you all in advance,
>
> Ruby.
>
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