Abstract
Braille musicography is a notation for music based on Braille code. It is a very useful tool for blind musicians, but it is more difficult to read and write than conventional music notation [1, p. 41]. This is because the Braille system is linear while music notation is a bidimensional system. Also, Braille allows 64 combinations of raised dots while there are at least 292 music signs [2, p. 60], thus signs repeat and change their meaning according to the context. As a consequence, music transcription to Braille musicography cannot be fully automatic [3, p. 61, 85] and cannot be obtained easily by blind musicians. I propose a basic set of new signs based on combinations of 9 raised dots. These should be coherent to blind musicians. Tests of the new proposed code are being held with blind students of the Faculty of Music in UNAM, Mexico.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Donald Byrd [4, p. 13] “CMN (Conventional Music Notation) includes any arrangement of the symbols in general use by composers in the European art music tradition from about 1700–1935, used with meanings that were standard: if the notation was made between 1700 and 1935, at the time it was made; (2) if the notation was made before 1700, with the meanings of 1700; or (3) if the notation was made after 1935, with the meanings of 1935.” Tablatures and special signs for contemporary music are excluded from this definition.
- 2.
The information from this section is taken from the Braille Manual [7].
- 3.
Except for letter w which is considered a special character.
- 4.
Actually, many cases of blindness are due to diabetes or aging, and both of them cause a loss of sensibility in fingers so reading Braille becomes almost impossible. Another alternative in these cases is Moon System [9].
- 5.
All the information of Braille Music is taken from the manual [12].
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank UNAM and the Music Graduate Studies department for the opportunity and the help offered in the project, and the economic aid to attend the International Workshop on Language, Music and Computing held in Saint Petersburg.
This work would be useless without the help of the blind students of the Faculty and their piano teacher Ms. Adriana Sepulveda
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Campos-Arcaraz, MT. (2015). A Proposal for a New System of Reading and Writing Music for the Blind. In: Eismont, P., Konstantinova, N. (eds) Language, Music, and Computing. LMAC 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 561. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27498-0_10
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