Hello Linda,
At 11:56 09/12/97 GMT, you wrote:
>I have received an enquiry from a prospective music student who is
concerned about the availability of Braille
>music.
I am a research student at the University of York where I am
exploring the possibility of a computer based alternative to Braille music.
If you are not familiar with Braille music then you should perhaps first
read "Music Matters" by Adam Ockelford who is the chief music officer with
the RNIB. I think it costs about 7.00 pounds and is available through the
RNIB (PR 10426). This book is a useful Braille music primer and also
outlines the major problems with teaching music to students with a visual
impairment.
Now a word of warning. Braille music places a high cognitive demand
upon the learner because of the quantity of information that needs to be
delivered. When a sighted music learner attempts a new piece, they are in a
position to 'scan' a page and ignore information that is redundant to their
task. With Braille music this poses a problem. All the information needs to
be present and this will mean wading through fingering, dynamics, slurs and
so on. On top of this, it is incredibly difficult for a learner to build a
meaningful mental image of the 'shape' of the piece from a structural point
of view. Some of these issues are discussed by Adam Ockelford in his book
but there is strong argument that suggests that Braille (inherantly serial
in presentation) simply cannot meet the demand that music notation (more
parallel through perception) places upon it. Also, a Braille music
translation of a piece of common music notation will not simply be a single
event to single symbol translation. There are many instances where what
would normally be perceived as a single musical event will end up being a
number of Braille cells. For example, an accented staccato crotchet d in a
new octave would take four cells.
There is one further problem with Braille music. Each braille music
note cell reserves the dots 1 2 4 & 5 (top four) to signify a musical pitch
or letter (the bottom two are used for duration). Music uses the letters a b
c d e f g but Braille music uses the Braille characters of i j d e f g h to
represent these same letters even though they can all be expressed using the
top four dots. For example the musical pitch C would be written using the
braille letter for D. So, if you have a pupil who is learning Braille and
who also wishes to learn Braille music then there is a great deal of scope
for confusion.
If you wish to purchase Braille music, the RNIB do produce such
scores although they do not offer a library service, however, they will be
able to suggest who does (I can't remember off hand).
My belief is that a blind music learner will benefit greatly through
increased aural ability (playing by ear in other words) coupled with a vocal
explanation of the layout of the piece as and when this becomes useful.
Please don't feel that I am trying to scare you away from Braille
music completely. It is definitely possible to learn to play music using it
but it just isn't easy. Good luck and please feel free to contact me for a
longer chat over this and/or my research if you wish.
Ben Challis
--
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* Ben Challis | Tel : +44 (0)1904 432765 *
* Dept. Computer Science | web : http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~bpc/ *
* York | fax : +44 (0)1904 432767 *
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