[NABS-L] Senior Project on Braille Music

[Ella Yu]

Hello, You may want to post this on Music Talk or Perform Talk to get the
attention of more musicians, but here's my situation.

I'm in Canada (I know this is a US list), and I'm a non-music college
student. I am a pretty dedicated classical musician who has played piano
since age 4 and violin since age 7, and I added viola as a double when I
was 12. At first, I relied on recordings done by my music teachers to learn
new material. Then, my Mom and my vision teacher somehow agreed I should
learn braille music, I honestly don't remember the details, so Mom got me a
bunch of books that I read through when I was around 8 years old, and I was
able to pick up the code that way. It did take me several tries to get the
hang of things due to maturity issues, but ultimately, I managed to learn
braille music on my own, even though I know many wouldn't succeed. However,
back then, getting access to braille music was difficult, as we didn't
really know where to look, so I basically learned almost everything by ear
up until the last few years of high school. We didn't want to waste too
much lesson time on my teachers doing tapes for me, so Mom managed to rig
up a digital piano system that would play digital MIDI files, and I could
split the right and left hand parts and learn piano pieces that way. Mom
had to create those digital files using notation software. I had that set
up since around age 8 or so. For violin, since it's a single line
instrument, I still relied more on my violin teacher for doing recordings
for me, as it takes less time to do than piano recordings for learning (my
violin teacher tends to go overtime on lessons, whereas my piano teacher
doesn't). Then, when I got to high school, I started searching for those
digital MIDI files on my own because I was more independent, and I found
that I could locate that kind of stuff better than my Mom. It was around
that time that I discovered an online tool called BrailleMUSE that can
convert MusicXML files to braille. Over time, I did my own research, and
slowly started locating MusicXML files and converting them for myself. I
was also able to acquire a few piano pieces via the Canadian National
Institute for the Blind library back when it still had braille music titles.

Anyway, that was pretty long, but long story short, yes, I do use braille
music to learn classical pieces on all my instruments nowadays, whether for
solo or ensemble. I still learned a lot of violin/viola solo repertoire via
YouTube recordings or recordings done by my teacher mostly out of
convenience, since not everything is available in an accessible format,
which means I have to get certain things transcribed into notation software
before I get it turned into braille, and that does take time, so sometimes,
it just felt faster to go learn the piece straight from a recording. Piano
is a different story, and because it is two hands, it's much harder to
learn straight from internet recordings, so I went to greater lengths to
use braille music or the MIDI file system during the latter part of high
school.

Braille music is a highly applied code, which means that learning it in the
context of music theory is important. There aren't a whole lot of people
who actually teach braille music, so lack of access to instruction is a
major issue. Also, for instrumentalists, it is physically impossible to
read and play an instrument at the same time, as both things require the
hands. This is purely just due to human nature, but there's just no way for
us to sight read like typical sighted musicians do.

The following is quite subjective, so take this for what you will. The nice
thing about braille music is that clefs don't matter, and all notes and
note values have distinct symbols, and then, there's octave marks. On the
other hand, for advanced polyphonic piano repertoire with multiple chords
and voices in both hands, that kind of material can be kinda cumbersome to
read, and it takes a while to digest, on top of the need to memorize as
soon as possible. Intervals are written in such a way that you need to be
able to spell chords in your head at all times, as intervals are written
with signs telling you it's a third above, a fifth above, etc, unlike print
notation, where all notes of an interval are spelled out directly on the
staff.

On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 9:34 PM Luther Fuller via NABS-L <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Hi,
> I started learning Braille music at age ten, after I had been playing
> piano for about five years. Until then, my piano teacher would play a bit
> of right hand and I would copy it, then she would play the corresponding
> left hand part, I would copy it, and so on. My mom was referred to my
> Braille music teacher by the parents of a blind friend of mine. This
> teacher had taught at the Kansas State School for the Blind before she
> retired. I was lucky to be at the right age at the tail end of when she was
> still teaching before she stopped altogether (she was in her early 80s), as
> I don't know of anyone teaching Braille music in the area anymore. That
> said, a student can probably learn it with just a book and, at a young age
> like I was, some help from a TVI.
> I used Braille music for all my classical piano repertoire from middle
> school through college,  as well as in band from 6th through 9th grade. In
> band, I would usually hear, in recordings and in our first read-through,
> which sections of the piece featured my instrument (clarinet) prominently
> and skip to those sections in my score. I think the school used a
> transcription contractor in Wichita.
> I still use Braille music sometimes today, mostly for transcribing solos
> and writing down my own musical ideas.
> Hope this helps,
>
> —Luther
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Sep 15, 2024, at 8:34 PM, MaKenzie Love via NABS-L <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hello everyone,
> > I hope that everyone is having a wonderful weekend so far! I wanted to
> reach out because I am required to participate in a senior project for my
> AP Literature class, and I am thinking of possibly doing my topic on
> braille music. Before what I decide on however, I would love to hear from
> students who have learned braille music or who have always wanted to learn
> it but are unable to. For people who have learned braille music, how did
> you learn and where did you learn it from? Do you use it in your musical
> career or classes in high school or college? For people who have not
> learned braille music but would like to, what are some barriers that you
> have come across preventing you from picking up a score?
> >
> > Thank you and I can't wait to hear back with some feedback.
> > Sincerely,
> > MaKenzie Love
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