Wow! I hadn’t thought about the Eureka in a long time.
Yes, I think the music composer on that product was interesting but it had
nothing at all to do with Braille music. As I recall, you used the arrows
to set pitch and time values.
I use to play piano and did learn Braille music, but as I think about
complex arrangements for many voices or many instruments I have a hard time
even imagining it being efficient on a sheet of Braille paper. Many of the
blind musicians I know don’t even read Braille music. I wonder if now is the
time to rethink the way we write or lay out music in Braille. Consider the
potential of vibration, the tremendous benefit of not being forced to use a
42 by 26 page, and the things we might be able to do with dot 7 and 8.
I love Braille and will advocate for it any day of the week, but I wonder if
the Braille music paradigm is the best approach for composing or arranging
on a Braille Note? The fact that a sheet of paper in the bn could easily be
200 characters long and 100 lines down creates some interesting
possibilities. On the other hand, the fact that you can only see one line
of Braille at a time creates some huge challenges! Would it be better to
use intervals and try to display all pitches on one Braille line or would it
be better to use one line for each voice? I certainly don’t have the
answers, haven’t really thought enough about the question, but I would
suggest that using the paradigm of a normal sheet of Braille paper may not
be the best approach. Also, the paradigm of using traditional Braille music
notation would have to be evaluated. That may not be the most efficient
approach
Consider the idea of using vibration rather then the bottom 2 dots to show
time value. Also, consider the idea of moving vertically to see the voices
that play on a particular bar as in print.
I would suggest that this may be a better project for dancing dots then HW.
If this were to be done, it would be nice to see it be more then just a toy
as it was in the Eureka. I don’t mean to denigrate that product, but
serious blind musician couldn’t have used that to create full scores.
.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michele Thredgold" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Braillenote List'" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2007 7:58 AM
Subject: RE: [Braillenote] Music Composer
Hi Martin and others. I have been pushing for ages for the Braille
music code to be added as either an extra, like the multi-lingual
software, of incorporated onto the BN in the unicode table. There are
heaps of symbols in there I've never seen in my life and which I figure
are maths Braille.
The music composer would also be a great idea. I've currently having to
use Sibelius for my music theory assignments but would much prefer my
BN, even if it has to be connected up to something else, providing it's
still portable.
Another thing which would be great for blind muzos who play digital
keyboards, would be if there was some kind of thing which could feed
output to the BrailleNote as to what is on the screen of the keyboard.
It would bake programming and manipulation of keyboards much easier and
stress-free when performing.
Cheers!
Michele -----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Martin
Courcelles
Sent: Thursday, 1 February 2007 2:02 PM
To: Braillenote List
Subject: [Braillenote] Music Composer
Hi there,
I think the subject line says it all. Some of you may remember the
Eureka?
You know, the NoteTaker with the Nice sounding Australian woman with a
lisp?
I loved that thing. I had a chance to test drive one once and had a
great
old time composing music on it. It had a wapping 3 voice processor.
Well it
was wapping back then. I'm just wondering if the BrailleNotes could be
engineered to do that sort of thing. If not, then maybe they could be
coupled with a USB MIDI controller. You could then compose the music
and
have the BrailleNote spew it to a MIDI Keyboard.
Just throwing out ideas. I just figure that there are so many of us who
are
musician, it's nice to have a NoteTaker which can help you in htat sort
of
thing as well.
Cheers,
Martin
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