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

[Ella Yu]

Hello, PDF to XML requires some paid applications to do musical OCR, and
even then the results will never be 100% accurate and require sighted
assistance to correct in notation software. Other music-to-XML programs
include Sao Mai Braille, and MuseScore is a mainstream notation software
program that is accessible for screen reader users, which is more useful
for arranging/composition/writing music.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 6:49 PM Melissa Riccobono via Perform-Talk <
perform-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Sorry... I now see I need an XML score to make this work, but I'd guess I
> could get my hands on that fairly easily perhaps? I'll have to do some
> research.
> Melissa
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Perform-Talk <perform-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Judith
> Lung via Perform-Talk
> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2026 5:19 PM
> To: perform-talk at nfbnet.org
> Cc: judith at judithlung.com
> Subject: [Perform-Talk] DottedNotes — bidirectional braille ⇄
> LilyPond/MusicXML translator (built out of my own frustration transcribing
> orchestral scores)
>
> 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 export a proper braille
> edition — 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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