Braille Scores

• Jul 16, 2020 - 20:09

Hello. Is there a version or project in progress for editing scores for Braille printing?

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• Jul 18, 2020 - 03:31

Hello! Had you asked this two days ago, I'd have told you this is something we'd like to do eventually, but there are no specific plans. Now, I can at least report the work has begun :-). The developers who implemented most of the original screen reader support for MuseScore recently started working on Braille export, and yesterday posted his initial results. It's way too early to say when this will bar enough along to be really usable or become part of an official MuseScore release, but it's definitely starting to look up!

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• Sep 18, 2020 - 17:08

@marc sabatella

Hi Marc, I'm presently trying to convert musicxml to braille using music21, but I'm not very successful with that, still too many issues which have not properly implemented in music21, I'm discussing with Micheal Cuthbert on that.
I saw a comment that you posted as a reply to my post in the music21 forum, that you have people working on a direct braille output from MuseScore.

If you are interested, I would offer my help in testing this piece of software, creating a test pack, and creating / checking the resulting braille code for that.

Regards,
Wim

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• Sep 18, 2020 - 17:45

While other avenues are being worked on, I want you to know that I work with Hu Haipeng at http://www.brailleorch.org/en/. He asks me and others to enter scores into various formats so he can convert them into Braille. He has told me that MuseScore has the best musicxml output and Leon Vinken does a fantastic job fixing problems he finds.

If you have a specific piece you need converted you can contact him or me and we'll get it done for you.

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• Sep 18, 2020 - 18:02

Thanks for your comments! Yes, indeed there is a trial implementation of Braille export from MuseScore. It was written by Andrei Tuicu, who is the person who first implemented screen reader and other accessibility support for MuseScore several years back. His code is based on the the "master" branch of the MuseScore source, which is to say, it's experimental pre-release code for what will eventually become MuseScore 4. So some things are pretty unfinished with respect to how that version MuseScore itself works, and in particular I'm not sure the accessibility is working properly overall. But it should work to load a score and export to Braille at least. You will find extremely limited text support right now. That would be one of the main things to address before we could even consider releasing it. But definitely, we're interested in feedback.

Here is the latest version of that code: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/6343. Now, that link is to a "pull request", which is something you would need to complile, and actually it seems it won't compile right now. But, there were snapshot builds ("artifacts") made along the way, and these should be installable normally:

Windows: https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/9snta9jh3ti8l7l4/artifacts/MuseSc…
macOS: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/suites/1073002207/artifacts/1467…
Linux: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/suites/1073002207/artifacts/1467…

As I mentioned in the music21 list, I am definitely interested in helping with that effort, but finding time is providing a challenge.

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• Oct 21, 2020 - 11:07

Dear Marc/others,

I have tested braille output of the beta-version of Musescore (with the above nightly build). Results are much better than those obtained with music21 and with the MusicNotator tool of Toby Rush. My blind violin friend is much impressed. Still, there are some comments on the braille translation.
The translated piece is Mozart Violin Sonate 28 obtained from the MuseScore library.

Comments:
1) The measure number printed on every line should be preceded by the number sign (dot3456)
2) If the first measure is a complete measure, the measure number is one. If the melody starts with an incomplete measure the measure number should be zero. The measure numbers then correspond to the normal printed score.
3) Words such as "dolce" and "sotto voce" are not printed in the braille translation. The text should be preceded by word sign (dot345). The first note following any use of word sign should be preceded by an octave sign, which will indicate the reestablishment of the music code.

Looking forward to a newer version of the MuseScore beta-tool, and eventually the "real" MuseScore 4.0 version.

Kind regards,
Wim

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