[accessibleimage] Re: Sight Reading of Braille Music

For sight-reading, Braille is the easy solution-and it has the advantage of
being exactly the same experience for sighted and blind students. Learning
new music is most easily accomplished with a combination of braille and an
audio recording of the music-again, the same method (sheet music plus
recording) used by sighted musicians.

 

The transposition exercises are slightly different. Obviously, a totally
blind student will not be able to do those by hand, and unless the
instructor reads braille, that will not be a solution. Fortunately, there
are a couple of computer solutions.

 

You might look at the Braille Music Editor plug-in for Finale:

http://www.dodiesis.com/index.php?q=whatisBME_en

 

Finale is the industry-standard music notation software used by sighted
musicians, and the BME plug-in makes it accessible for someone who is blind:

 

http://www.dodiesis.com/

 

The nice thing about this plug-in is that it allows the student to use
Finale, which is often required software in four-year music programs.

 

Dancing Dots is another option:

http://www.dancingdots.com/

 

One of the nice things about Dancing Dots is that they have programs that
allow a blind musician to scan musical scores into the computer to work with
them.

 

Hope this helps!

****************************************************** 
Gaeir (rhymes with "fire") Dietrich 
High Tech Center Training Unit of the 
California Community Colleges 
De Anza College, Cupertino, CA 
www.htctu.net 
408-996-6043 

  _____  

From: accessibleimage-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:accessibleimage-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Phillip M Minyard
(pminyard)
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 12:07 PM
To: 'accessibleimage@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [accessibleimage] Sight Reading of Braille Music

 

We are fortunate to be able to Email a great guy who Brailles music for a
student who is blind. The student is a music, voice, major at the
University, but an essential element of the music program is sight reading
music selections, learning and playing new selections on the piano, and
transposing music.

 

Can any of you offer suggestions as to how we can facilitate this by more
than just handing him sheets of Braille embossed music?

 

Phillip Minyard
Disability Services Coordinator

Student Disability <http://saweb.memphis.edu/sds/>  Services

University of Memphis
110 Wilder Tower
Memphis, TN  38152-3520
Voice 678-2880 - fax 678-3070

 

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."

B. F. Skinner

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