[MusicTlk] PlayScore2

Sun Aug 24 17:07:53 UTC 2025

Hi Ella,
I think you raise a really important question -- One that I ponder a lot as well. I think the right questions to ask are what help do you need, who has the musical/technical proficiency to give you that help, do they have time to help you, and is there something you can do to thank them in return. For what it's worth, I'll share a bit about my situation and how I get the music I need. It's not a perfect system, and sometimes I have to go outside my comfort zone or try something different, but it works reasonably well.

I play trumpet in a community orchestra and a brass quintet. I don't read Braille music, so I rely extensively on full ensemble recordings of pieces as well as recordings of my individual part. For brass quintet stuff, sometimes I'm lucky enough to find a stereo recording where the first trumpet is a little farther toward the left ear, and the second trumpet is a little more on the right ear. In those cases, I don't need a recording of my individual part at all. When I can't find that, the tuba player helps me out. He's retired and is also an arranger, so he's able to send me recordings generated by Finale very easily. And he has the time and doesn't mind helping me. He knows to change whichever trumpet part I'm playing to a weird instrument like ocarina which sticks out and makes it very easy to hear. My group knows that I need plenty of notice on what we're playing so that I can get a recording and have it learned before the first rehearsal. But they all use that time for individual practice as well, so we spend rehearsals working on ensemble stuff, not individual notes. There is another brass quintet in the area that operates a lot more on a spur of the moment basis. That's just their personality, and that works for them, but it wouldn't work for me. Sure it would be nice to do a pick-up gig now and then, but there's so much music to play, and so many groups to play with. It's okay with me that I can't sightread a show.

For orchestra music, I found a semi-pro player who is willing to record stuff for me at the rate of about $50 per concert. I've found that it's worth the expense to get the parts I need recorded in time. I had been relying on the other trumpeters in the section to help me out and record stuff, and sometimes I still do in a pinch when the conductor adds something at the last minute. But then I'm working around their schedule, and even if I really need to start working on a piece this weekend, if they couldn't get to it by then, I just have to wait. When they do record something for me, I take them out for a drink or have them over and get pizza or something. I'm in a position where I can afford $50 per concert for the pro guy to record, so I've just chosen to do that because then I don't feel like I'm asking a favor. And I got the guy a pretty sweet Christmas Eve gig this year, so even if he's kind of doing me a favor by recording my music for not a whole lot of money, it meant that a nice gig came his way. And while midi recordings are often not great for orchestral music because they don't do a great job of making clear rests, time signature changes, mute changes, etc., if I'm desperate, I can sometimes make one work. Now, I think I'll be using PlayScore to supplement all of these things, and it may lessen my reliance on other people.

I try to give back where I can. I'm on the personnel committee for the orchestra, so I do a lot of cat herding, spreadsheet updating, audition scheduling and organizing, and other things that many people hate doing. But those things are right in my wheelhouse, and I figure it's my way of giving back to the group as a whole. For the quintet, I help to line up gigs, buy sheet music, help organize rehearsal dates, and sometimes handle the payments to the group when we get paid in a lump sum.

I also have to remind myself sometimes that I probably practice at least two or three times as much as my colleagues because I have to build in that extra time for memorization. So while the work I put in isn't necessarily visible to others, it's still extra time I'm spending on a volunteer organization, and I'm giving it 100% which is all any of us can do.

I'm not sure if that helps in how to think about this. It's just how I go about it. And I think it's a struggle we all deal with. We have to figure out what works for us and for our friends and colleagues who make it possible for us to make great music with them.
Catherine

-----Original Message-----
From: MusicTlk <musictlk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Ella Yu via MusicTlk
Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2025 7:28 PM
To: Music Talk Mailing List for Blind Musicians <musictlk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Ella Yu <ellaxyu at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MusicTlk] PlayScore2

Hi, I use PlayScore 2 to OCR violin/viola parts for community orchestra and whatever else I want to work on if I can't find an XML file online. It's definitely not perfect, and I find that PDFs that come from notation software like typesets from IMSLP give me 90%+ note accuracy, while scanned PDFs vary far more and contain a lot more wrong notes. Music OCR will never be perfect. I export the XML and send it to someone to fix it up in MuseScore or whatever notation software and they send me back the corrected file. I don't use PlayScore's playback features much; I just learn my parts and practice along with YouTube a lot, just like you do. I never deal with ensemble scores, just single instrument parts. I use NVDA on Windows to access PlayScore and it's pretty accessible for the most part except for some sliders.

One related question, and I realize all of us blind musicians/ensemble nerds deal with this: am I being a burden by asking others to help transcribe music for me? I have been managing the burden of getting the music I need into the formats I need solely through the assistance of immediate family for a long time now, but I could be losing some of this support sometime in the foreseeable future. The problem is not at all a lack of resources or tools on my end, I'm able to find XML files online for a significant majority of what I'm playing, I have a free MusicXML to braille program I'm in love with, it's just the people problem. The person who I send my PlayScore-processed XMLs to is heading off to school shortly (though they'll be home on weekends), so they shouldn't have to help me with this forever. I honestly hate to be burdening busy people with this sort of thing, so that's why I would appreciate some input/validation.
Ideally finding someone in orchestra to help me with this would be great, but most of the people I've talked to don't really know anything about notation software. Thoughts? Yeah, I could just run with an imperfect XML file with multiple wrong notes, but string parts blend well together and they're not so easy to isolate through the texture unless I know with total certainty I've got the right notes. I know just how much trumpet/horn parts tend to stick out though.

On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 3:37 PM Catherine Samuel via MusicTlk < musictlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Has anyone tried PlayScore2? You can import PDF's and other sheet 
> music files, and it will run OCR on them. If you're importing a score 
> with multiple instruments, it can figure out which part is which, and 
> you can set each line as a different instrument. You can also change 
> the volume on one instrument, so for example if you play the French 
> horn and you need that part to stand out, you can make it louder. I 
> just started playing with it today. It's not perfect. You wouldn't 
> want to rely on it to get a perfect recording or make Braille music 
> for something. But it seems to be a great tool. I will use it in 
> combination with a professional ensemble recording to learn my part to 
> things. I imported a PDF of some brass quintet music into it, and it 
> did a pretty great job rendering a Midi file of it. If you've used 
> PlayScore2, I'd love to hear what you've used it for. Its 
> accessibility with JAWS isn't perfect, but it's workable. Thanks.
>
> Catherine
>
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