[MusicTlk] An idea - what are your thoughts?

[Donald Winiecki]

The 'Lime Lighter' apparatus from *Dancing Dots* seems to have the features
you describe, and more.

See the following URL:
http://www.dancingdots.com/limelighter/limelightermain.htm

_don


On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 7:15 AM Mike Jolls via MusicTlk <musictlk at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Hi everyone
>
> I have an idea for a product that could help some people.  I wanted to
> find out what everyone thought.
>
> First, let me tell you about myself.  I’m a visually impaired musician.
> I’m very nearsighted.  I use a pair of telescopic glasses to read my
> music.  Due to the magnification I require to read a standard piece of
> music, I can only see a measure at a time.  It makes learning the music
> slow, and if I ever wanted to just sit down and read and play, it’s almost
> impossible to do that in a performance situation.  Consequently, with this
> experience, I’ve been thinking there has to be a better way.
>
> My idea is to have some software that allows you to read your music from
> an electronic file, then render and magnify the music and display it on say
> a 26” monitor.  The user should be able to set the magnification level in
> the software as desired. Plus, have a footswitch tied to the monitor
> (probably wirelessly) so that you just tap the footswitch, and the page
> advances or goes back.  I’ve been thinking about this for several months
> and the technology to do this appears to all be there.  The big problem is
> having the software that will render the magnified view.
>
> Here’s how it might be accomplished.
>
>   1.  Scan your music to graphic form
>   2.  Have software that “rips the music” from the graphic form and
> converts it to electronic format … maybe XML format (it appears this is
> already available)
>   3.  Store the music on a small flash card
>   4.  Have software running on a very small device such as Raspberry Pi
> computer which can read the files and render the music on a 26” monitor
> which is connected to the Pi.
>   5.  Have a wireless footswitch communicating with the Pi.
>   6.  Have the software recognizes the footswitch clicks, which are used
> to turn the pages forward and back.
>   7.  Have the software programmed so that it allows the user to increase
> the magnification / decrease as desired and updates the monitor display.
>
> The  Pi is a small device.  The footswitch is small also.  Therefore, it
> could be easily transported to a gig, or to a music lesson.  Or if you’re
> practicing, you put the monitor on your music stand or piano and you’re
> ready to read your music.  The software would allow you to pick which music
> you wanted to play from your stored music library.  If you were playing a
> gig, you’d want to be able select and sequence multiple pieces so you  can
> move seamlessly from one song to the next.
>
> All of this technology is relatively inexpensive.  The software would be
> the big undertaking.  From what I’ve seen, the only thing that approaches
> what I’m talking about is the LimeLighter / Dancing Dots system, and it’s
> like $4000.  That’s really unfortunate, because I think it prices a lot of
> people out.  What I would see is that the software I’m talking about would
> be a couple of hundred bucks, plus the hardware the end user would buy.  In
> addition to the Pi, the monitor, and software, you’d also need a good
> scanner.  One caveat, however, is that this software would probably not
> allow composition.  You’d have to use a different product to write the
> music, and then export the music to XML (or other) electronic format.  But
> once created, the electronic file could be read and rendered.
>
> So again, let me say this would be a VISUAL system.  Based on what I’ve
> said, would there be interest for such a system?  It would take a
> tremendous amount of work to do.  I’d be interested in in it.  Being a
> retired software engineer, it’s something I might be interested in working
> on for myself.  And if others could benefit, that would be even better.
>
> So, what kind of interest would there be in something like this?
>
> Thanks for listening.
>
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>