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

[Cristina Jones]

Judith, 
This looks like an incredible website and tool you've created for the braille music reading community! I'm so excited to try it out myself, and I'm so stoked to test drive some of the PDF to XML hacks you've come upon. Thank you so much for sharing this! 
I'm curious to know ... I'm a vocalist myself, and I generally handle multiple languages. Does your fabulous tool have various language capabilities as well? 
Best:
Cristina Jones
+1(562) 308-7591
www.theblindsoprano.com



> On Jul 22, 2026, at 7:13 PM, Judith Lung via Perform-Talk <perform-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> For music scanning software I like using PlayScore 2, which costs about $30/year. It scans PDF scores I download from imslp.org and exports them as MusicXML or MIDI. MuseScore Studio is a free alternative. However I have not used it and therefore cannot attest to its quality.
> To correct errors, I just attach the original PDF and the MusicXML files to a chat with Claude AI. I would then prompt Claude to insert part names and fix code errors. It's not 100% accurate, but it gives me pretty usable results.
> Judith
>> On 2026-07-22 19:48, Melissa Riccobono via Perform-Talk 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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