[musictlk] {Spam?} Braille tabs

[Sean Whalen]

Hey,

There's not a great way that I know of. Would love to learn of an easy way
to access tabs, but it isn't out there, as far as I can tell. Sucks and I
run up against it too. You can, if using JAWS, use information that you can
get about how far from the left edge of the page you are to figure out what
goes where. You can also use MS Excel to give the tabs a layout where it is
easier to see both the vertical and horizontal layout. Massively
inconvenient though. You could also have somebody put just the numbers in
Braille for you on four lines with dashes between the frettings on each
string, just as tabs appear in print. Or maybe you could even do this with
an embosser by copying tabs from the web into MS Word? I assume your issue
is that JAWS/NVDA will just read the E string's various frettings all in a
row, then you can down arrow and hear the A string, etc. You can't tell
whether there are notes on the A string that come between the notes on the E
string. Correct? It's even worse when you are playing guitar and need to
play chords and multiple simultaneous notes much more frequently.

I am often able to find tabs that just have the names of the chords written
above, which is much easier. But I suppose that this isn't really done for
bass because you'd be putting the name of the note over each fretting, which
would help you know what to play, but wouldn't really provide additional
information to sighted readers of the tabs. But do you know enough basic
music theory to know the various major and minor scales and how to fret, for
instance, a C# on your bass. Are you able to find resources that show how to
play various basslines with the letter names of the notes simply listed in
order rather than displayed in the standard tab layout?

Not sure if any of that helps at all. It is a tough problem and I know that
if I could read tabs I could know hundreds more songs and be able to figure
them out on the fly quicker and with more accuracy than playing by ear. It
is frustrating and if anybody has better ideas than mine, I would love to
hear them. Learning Braille music, while of course very useful in many
cases, is no answer at all here. It isn't as though you can readily access
the Braille music for millions upon millions of songs, whereas with tabs you
certainly can.

Take care,

Sean

-----Original Message-----
From: musictlk [mailto:musictlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Robert
Moore via musictlk
Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2016 8:45 AM
To: 'Music Talk Mailing List' <musictlk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Robert Moore <robertjmoore at embarqmail.com>
Subject: [musictlk] {Spam?} Braille tabs

I was talking with a friend of mine and I think the conclusion we came to
was that what I really need is some way to access tablature for the bass
guitar.  I don' don't need the full music score. Can any one shed any light
on this topic? 

Robert  

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