[MusicTlk] DottedNotes — bidirectional braille ⇄ LilyPond/MusicXML translator (built out of my own frustration transcribing orchestral scores)

[judith at judithlung.com]

On 2026-07-21 14:06, Ella Yu via MusicTlk wrote:
> Hi Judith, I think this is a really interesting tool, and I definitely
> intend to experiment with it soon. Just out of curiosity, have you 
> looked
> into Sao Mai Braille and MuseScore? MuseScore, despite being fully
> mainstream notation software, supports braille music input/output at a 
> very
> basic level now, though this is slated to be improved in the future. 
> While
> Sao Mai Braille is a MusicXML to braille translator and does other 
> braille
> tasks as well outside of music, its translation is very high quality 
> for a
> free program. I know this may be a bit of a stretch, but you could 
> perhaps
> reach out to the Sao Mai Center for the Blind, since they are also the 
> ones
> responsible for MuseScore's braille features, and maybe your ideas and
> theirs could merge together to make your vision come true, since their
> BungSang translation engine is incredibly well-developed for braille 
> music
> and they appear open to working with developers.
> I know this may seem like a stretch, but just some thoughts.
> 
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2026 at 11:50 AM Judith Lung via MusicTlk <
> musictlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> I'm a blind composer, and for years my biggest bottleneck wasn't 
>> writing
>> the music — it was getting it out of braille and into something a
>> publisher, ensemble, or sighted collaborator could actually use.
>> Transcribing an orchestral score from braille into LilyPond by hand
>> could eat several days of work before I'd even gotten to the actual
>> engraving and proofing. That grind is what pushed me to build
>> DottedNotes.
>> 
>> It's a free, bidirectional translator between:
>> - Braille music (.brf / .brl)
>> - LilyPond (.ly, which compiles straight to publication-quality .pdf 
>> and
>> .midi)
>> - MusicXML (.musicxml / .mxl)
>> 
>> So you can go from a braille manuscript to a publisher-ready PDF and
>> MIDI in one pass, or take a print/MusicXML score and get a proper
>> braille edition out the other end — with BANA validation built in
>> (standard or strict profile), configurable compression levels, and
>> layout presets for solo piano, art song, chamber, orchestral, and lead
>> sheet scores, since orchestral formatting has its own headaches that a
>> generic converter won't get right.
>> 
>> It's also useful if you're a sighted composer, engraver, or publisher
>> who needs to move a score between these formats, or produce a braille
>> edition without knowing braille music code yourself.
>> 
>> Free to use here: https://www.dottednotes.net/
>> 
>> I built this to solve my own problem, but I know braille music 
>> workflows
>> vary a lot person to person, so I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from
>> other blind musicians — especially anyone who's dealt with the same
>> orchestral-score transcription slog. Bug reports, edge cases in the
>> braille code handling, feature requests all welcome.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Judith
>> 
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Hi Ella,
Thanks for trying out DottedNotes, I would love to get your feedback on 
it!
It has been several years since I tried out MuseScore. I was using a Mac 
with VoiceOver, which unfortunately was not compatible with MuseScore at 
the time. This is why I looked into and ultimately switched to using 
Lilypond. Lilypond is text-only and produces the highest quality of 
printed notation, compared to all the other major players in the space. 
Since it is also free and open-source, it was an obvious choice of 
format for DottedNotes to support. The only drawback is that Lilypond 
require the user to either set up a programming environment or compile 
the file via command-line, which may be more overhead than composers 
want to deal with. Therefore, I put DottedNotes on the web, so that 
users can avoid downloading another desktop app or setting up a coding 
environment altogether. Since DottedNotes also supports import and 
export of MusicXML, it's possible to import into MuseScore for editing 
if that's what a composer prefers.
I tried out Sao Mai Braille recently, and it is very good! I used one of 
its output files, an orchestral score, to stress-test DottedNotes's own 
braille transcription. However, SMB doesn't support parsing of braille 
music files, which was what I most wanted. I didn't want to have to type 
in my music twice, once on my braille notetaker and again into the 
notation program. This is what I used to do, and it more than doubled 
the number of mistakes I had to fix. It was also necessary for 
DottedNotes to support Lilypond export, which would allow blind 
composers to adjust layout via text instead of having to deal with drag 
and drop. DottedNotes is also open-sourced on GitHub, so anyone can 
submit a bug, request a feature, or open pull requests with changes to 
improve the program.
Having said all that, I am quite impressed with the features of Sao Mai 
Braille, although I think the problems we solve are different. Whereas 
SMB is a multi-purpose braille transcription program, DottedNotes is 
focused on parsing and rendering between different digital music 
formats. Best of all, though, both are free, so you can experiment and 
switch between these programs as much as you want!
Thanks again for your suggestions, Ella, and please let me know if you 
have any more questions!
Cheers,
Judith