[Perform-Talk] Look, braille music scores on IMSLP, seriously?

[Ella Yu]

Hi Leslie,

Well, a few hundred out of over 100,000 pieces on IMSLP now have braille
scores, so it's only a tiny fraction, but I hope that number grows over
time. I, too, frequently need violin/viola parts for ensemble music, so I
totally understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, it seems like
only full scores are being uploaded in braille. If the people producing
those braille scores are using MusicXML and software tools, they should
ideally upload the XML as well so parts can be extracted for conversion.

As I indicated in the message, Haipeng Hu, who supplied over 90% of the
currently available braille files on IMSLP, uploads transcriptions of
mainly braille ensemble scores to his website brailleorch.org. If you need
an individual part for performance, your best bet is to email him and ask
for a MusicXML, since he relies on MusicXML files and software tools to
transcribe stuff. I think he avoids releasing the notation files for
copyright reasons, but this is only really necessary for non public domain
works I think. He does check the results over for problems and fixes them.
My understanding is that he does strive for a high degree of accuracy.

I personally get much of my ensemble music from musescore.com, where I get
MuseScore/MusicXML files and use software to transcribe them for myself. Of
course I first use MuseScore to extract my part from the score before
conversion. I know musescore.com is a user sharing site, so the quality of
scores varies considerably. However, almost all of the stuff I've needed to
get from musescore.com at least has the notes pretty much correct, so
that's still huge. For anything that can't be located on musescore.com, I
have to resort to sighted assistance to get someone to transcribe the music
into notation software and give me an XML. I personally use the free Sao
Mai Braille software to convert MusicXML files to braille because I can't
justify spending money on Goodfeel/Dancing Dots personally. SMB's braille
music translation capabilities are actually pretty incredible. I highly
recommend anyone who reads this to go grab the software and try it out. SMB
was first released in late 2018, and braille music capabilities were added
in like 2020-2021 and only really hit prime time in 2022-2023, so it is a
really new offering that has not yet gotten a lot of notice. Previously, I
used the online service braillemuse.net to transcribe my MusicXMLs, which
produces decent, but not great results.

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 8:07 PM Leslie Hamric <lhamric930 at comcast.net>
wrote:

> Holy buckets! Are you serious? I use IMSLP all the time to download parts
> for my cello music. I do have some questions. Was the braille music score
> provided for just some pieces or all pieces? Second, can you download
> braille transcriptions of individual parts as well? Third, how accurate is
> the braille? I'm looking forward to hearing more about this and seeing it
> for myself. This could be a huge game changer!
> Leslie Hamric
> Cello and Braille Music Teacher
>
> > On Jan 12, 2024, at 9:44 PM, Ella Yu via Perform-Talk <
> perform-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hey everyone,
> >
> >
> > So I was doing some random poking around and just discovered that
> starting
> > in like what, I don’t know, 2023, IMSLP now accepts uploads of braille
> > scores. It caught me by surprise. My first reaction was “what? seriously?
> > really?” Anyway, this is a big win. Now that’s the way to get lots of
> > braille scores out to blind musicians, since everyone can use IMSLP
> instead
> > of relying on country/region-specific libraries for the blind, which are
> > arguably much more difficult to access. So far, just over 300 scores on
> > IMSLP have braille files, mostly uploaded by Haipeng Hu from the
> > BrailleOrch project. Transcribers and librarians, take note. The folks at
> > the DAISY music braille project, as well as transcribers and librarians,
> > should be aware, so they can get their work out to a much wider
> audience. I
> > hope any accompanying MusicXML and/or notation files, if available, get
> > uploaded too. That doesn’t seem to be the case right now, but it would be
> > great if both MusicXML and braille files were uploaded, especially for
> > ensemble scores, where individual part extraction is often necessary.
> >
> >
> > Links for evidence:
> >
> > https://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:File_formats
> >
> > https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Works_with_Braille_scores
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