[musictlk] Berklee College of Music Initiates New Course for Blind Musicians

[Dancing Dots]

Enjoy the article below from today's Boston Globe.  All of us who champion
the use of braille can take a moment and celebrate today.

Congratulations to all concerned.  We at Dancing Dots were pleased to be one
of the consultants to the Berklee College of music administrators, staff and
students during the planning stages of this new course.  We are delighted
that they made the decision to move ahead with this project and we are proud
to say that much of the accessible music technology they are using came from
Dancing Dots.  In particular, I want to credit and thank two old friends of
mine and of Dancing Dots for also being involved in the planning stages and
for keeping the folks from Berklee focused on the importance of reading
music in braille; they are Mike Mandel and Gordon Kent, two outstanding
musicians who are blind. 

***

Berklee adds a Braille beat   Students testing program for blind   
By Natalie Southwick, Globe Correspondent      August 9, 2010 

Wayne Pearcy, a Berklee College of Music student, sits hunched before a
console buried under a mountain of keyboards, wires, computer monitors, and
microphones. A thin 23-year-old Louisianan with strawberry-blond hair,
Pearcy is enthusiastically explaining his plan to write the next number one
hit single. 


I'm making the next big pop hit,' the trumpet performance major says. I will
have Christina Aguilera at my door. 


He is simultaneously reading lines of music from a sheet in his lap,
composing two drum segments to accompany the bass line he has just finished,
and cracking jokes about the merits of bubble gum pop. Behind him, two other
students sit at identical desks, counting quarter rests and adding hi-hat
cymbal fills. 


They are finishing a composition lesson, though none of the students can see
a single note they have written. 


Pearcy and his classmates, all of whom are blind, are the first students to
test a new program that aims to make a Berklee education more accessible to
blind and visually impaired students, who have been applying to - and
enrolling in - the school with increasing frequency. In an effort to improve
their experience, administrators have developed a new curriculum and a
state-of-the-art lab to go along with it. A former and current student, both
of whom are blind, are running this summer's pilot program, which will be
offered as a for-credit Berklee class starting in the fall. 


We're really just trying to give students with blindness or visual
disabilities the same opportunities as sighted students,' said Bob Mulvey,
the associate director and disabilities service coordinator at Berklee's
Counseling and Advising Center. We've always had blind students and they've
always had a positive experience at Berklee, but it hasn't been equal to the
sighted students. We want to give them as many options, musically, as we
can. 


For several years, both students and administrators like Mulvey had
advocated for increased access for blind students, but they had seen little
progress. That changed in the spring of 2009, when the school brought in
consultants for a daylong seminar on music study for blind students. After
that meeting, Mulvey's office spent six months planning a proposal for the
pilot program. When Berklee's president, Roger Brown, gave his approval, the
team immediately began working, and barely a year after the initial meeting
blind students gathered in a second-floor lab to read music for the first
time. 


Now, more than halfway through the five-week program, which meets for four
hours daily, Tuesday through Friday, the five test students are comfortable
around equipment and tasks that were unfamiliar to them when they began. 


In the lab, they focus on three main skills: notation, music composition,
and reading Braille music. Their lessons range from reading a line of
Braille music and singing the notes, to composing a piece for multiple
instruments by listening to the screen reader, which narrates text that
appears on laptop screens. 


While there are still some areas where the students' inexperience shows, the
mood is lighthearted and supportive, and students and teachers seem to be
enjoying themselves. Most of the students plan to take the course when it is
offered in the fall, and the school intends to offer it in the future to all
incoming freshman who are blind. 


The teacher, Chi Kim, a pianist and songwriter who graduated from Berklee
with a dual major in songwriting and contemporary writing and production,
returned to his alma mater to teach after completing a master's degree in
music technology at New York University. During his years at Berklee, Kim,
28, had to teach himself many of the programs and skills that are now
offered in the course. On the recommendation of a former professor, he
returned to Berklee to help design the curriculum and supervise technology
purchases. 


I just came and we planned this whole thing,' he said. I started getting
involved last summer - my job was to create a whole new curriculum so they
can learn this technology. 


In addition to the music and technology skills, Kim is enthusiastic about
teaching Braille music. After losing his sight at age 3 in an accident
during heart surgery, Kim learned Braille as a child in his native South
Korea. When he moved to the United States during high school, his Braille
literacy placed him in a national minority. Braille literacy among the blind
in America is declining due to advancements in technology, but the Berklee
instructors say blind musicians have few other options for reading music. 


It's very important to know how to read Braille music, because there's no
other way to read music for blind people,' said Ozgur Altinok, a student who
is acting as Kim's teaching assistant for the summer course. You can hear
the music, you could follow the music on your computer, but you can't read
the music. You basically need to touch the paper and feel the dots. That's
the only way. 


Like Kim, Altinok learned to read Braille music before entering Berklee.
He's a 27-year-old violinist and music production and engineering major who
arrived at Berklee with a degree in music education from a conservatory in
Turkey. He hopes to teach in a school for the blind someday. 


It's really exciting,' he said. Lots of things are going to change. Other
schools hopefully are going to start these kinds of things, or we're going
to be an example for them. 


Pearcy, who was raised by two blind parents and has been blind since birth,
came to Berklee in the fall of 2007. Though he could graduate next year,
Pearcy intends to stay and remain involved with the new program. 


I don't want to leave just yet,' he said. I've still got work to do here. It
means a lot to me. It's something that's been needing to happen at Berklee
for a really long time and I want to be in the thick of it, completely. 


He paused, like a jazz player inhaling before a high note. I don't want to
miss a beat of it. 


Natalie Southwick can be reached at  nsouthwick at globe.com . 

***
 

Regards,
Bill 

Bill McCann 
Founder and President of Dancing Dots since 1992
www.DancingDots.com
Tel: [001] 610-783-6692