Richard N Tucker describes MIRACLE (the Music and Information Resources Assisted Computer Library Exchange) - a project to create a world wide virtual library of music braille.
The conversion of text to braille is, even with modern computers, much more expensive than the cost of the original text. Converting printed music into a form that can be read by visually impaired musicians can cost as much as ten times more than text conversion. It makes sense then to share that effort amongst the music braille producers around the world. The MIRACLE project [1] is building the basis on which to do just that.
Even before Louis Braille had perfected his system of representing letters by using six raised dots, there had been experiments to represent printed music in a form that can be read by blind musicians. These attempted to replicate the printed page in various raised forms, but it proved to be too difficult to read - and also took a lot of room on the page. After the best part of a century of experiments the linear succession of raised braille dots remains the only successful method of allowing visually impaired musicians to read scores. There is a recently developed method known as spoken music, which will be dealt with later in this paper.
Why should a blind musician want to read music? Can't they simply listen to a recording and play it? We all know that blind people develop other senses such as audio perception and memory; don't they? While most do have to rely on memory more than sighted people, the idea of super-senses is a bit of a myth. Could you listen to a complex piano piece and guarantee to hear all the notes in all the chords? In any case why should you have to learn someone else's interpretation rather than learn what the composer wrote? Blind musicians need to be able to read all the notes and their values, the expression marks and directions, just as we do as sighted readers. The major difference is that when we look at a piece of printed music we see all the elements simultaneously. The graphic spatial relationships of the elements on the page are part of the experience.
But braille can only present information in a series of cells with a combination of six dots in a linear stream. There have therefore to be rules about the order in which all the information is presented. Because combinations of cells are required to represent the information, further rules have to be agreed between the producing agencies of this world. There is an agreement formed within the World Blind Union and published as the "New International Handbook of Braille Music Notation" [2]. Sixteen countries put their names to this set of rules and it is in effect a world standard. However, because braille music transcribers are constantly coming against musical figures or types of music which have not been previously brailled there has also to be a mechanism whereby new proposals are circulated to the major producers. The proposals are checked against current practice and suggestions made for alternatives if the proposal is too close to another piece of coding. Because of the relatively small number of producing units, it is possible to secure agreements on new codings within a short period.
All of this is to demonstrate that there is an active world of braille music producers who have been co-operating with each other for a long time. In addition there a large number of smaller institutions, schools and music academies where music is brailled for individual users and small collections built up. There is no real oversight of the methods used by these smaller producers - some are known to be using presentation methods that were rejected more than 45 years ago.
So if there is an international system of coding music braille and taking into account that we can all read each other's music, then there are no problems in working together? Wrong! It ought to be possible to read music braille no matter where it has been produced. But that would be to underestimate Man's ingenuity and the genuine complexities of printed music. Because music braille notation was developed in different countries and because different types of music pose different problems, different methods of presenting the music on the page have been introduced.
Where there is only one melody line the representation can be reasonably linear. When one considers piano or organ music where at least two lines of music have to be read simultaneously, there are problems in presenting this as a single linear stream of information. Some present one bar of one hand and then one bar of the other; some present section by section (but then there are different ideas about the length of a section).
This is definitely not the place to go into the details of brailling. That can be better left to the specialists. It is only necessary to realise that a music braille version of a piece of music, using standard codes which can be read by any proficient reader, may in fact be difficult because the only edition available is in an unfamiliar layout format. Most people are, when the need arises, able to overcome the differences in layout. It is very difficult to standardise these formats. Different music demands different presentation. One reader is used to "section by section" another prefers "bar over bar". In principle a music piece is not normally brailled again because a reader prefers another format.
In 1989 the World Blind Union Music Braille Committee decided that it was time to up-date the existing manual and to take steps to bring the major libraries together. A conference held in 1990 lead to the formation of a small consortium; SVB (Amsterdam) [3], SBS (Zurich) [4], ONCE (Spain) [51]], and the RNIB (UK) [6]. Together these four music braille libraries decided to build a central catalogue representing their holdings.
As anyone who has been involved in constructing a Union Catalogue will know, there are lots of things that have to be agreed upon. Which rules, which formats, which authority files? It was a natural decision that none of the participating libraries would be expected to alter their own catalogue. A new central catalogue would be created which showed not only the items completed but also items in preparation (since it may take weeks or months to complete an item) and items for which a claim has been made. These last two items, unusual in library catalogues, are to reduce the risk of two libraries starting to produce the same item.
The libraries worked together over a period of nearly six years. During that time they agreed on detailed cataloguing rules, based on AACR2 and ISBD, using Smiraglia Rules [7] and the Groves New International Dictionary of Music and Musicians [8] as the authority file. Agreement was reached on both the ink-print entry and the braille description. Software was developed for the central catalogue and in some measure for automatically transferring entries from the partner libraries into the central catalogue. Automated thesauri were developed to cope with alternative titles and such fun things as the transliteration of foreign (e.g. Russian) names. One short paragraph is much easier than all the work that went into achieving all that. That is not to suggest that there were any specific difficulties. It just took a lot of work on the part of the four libraries, especially the staff of the SVB Music Department.
During the same period the SVB was busy with projects under the Libraries Programme. One day while working on the transfer of documents as part of the EXLIB project [9], the suggestion was thrown on the table that if we could access catalogues and document databases then it ought to be possible to do the same for printed music. Given that we thought that all sheet music was set in digital files, then it ought to be easy to develop a system. The reality was very different but the CANTATE project [10] did develop a system which allowed remote searching of distributed catalogues, viewing selected items picked up automatically from distributed databases and then permitting downloading into the users terminal. The system also coped with automatic payments and accounting.
With the publication of the New International Manual of Braille Music Notation and the completion of the CANTATE project, it was natural to look for ways in which the work of the International Braille Music Catalogue (as it was then called) and the CANTATE system could be brought together. Given that the four participating libraries had got so far it seemed that the incentive of a part funded project would pull the whole thing together.
The basic idea is simple. Blind musicians around the world need Braille music. Music is sufficiently international to cross borders. Braille music is very expensive to produce, therefore anything that will reduce the amount of duplication is to be desired. It makes sense then to set up a system in which all music braille libraries can know what the other libraries have in stock and are producing. They should then be able to get the braille from each other at rates that are substantially less than producing the piece all over again. Where pieces are held as digital files it should be possible to send these to each other over the Internet.
A consortium was formed by the four original libraries, together with Shylock Progetti of Venice who had developed the CANTATE software. Two associate partners joined these partners, the Danish Library for the Blind and Stamperia Braille of Florence. A project proposal was submitted to the Libraries Programme of the TAP Programme Phase 4 and was eventually accepted.
The project began in January 1999 and is planned to run for two years. With the encouragement of the European Commission, though without any further subsidy, corresponding members have been attracted to the project. Currently these are in Russia, Canada, the USA and South Africa. Though they are not expected to travel to the meetings they can influence the project by commenting on all drafts and sending in their contributions to discussions. However their greatest contribution is expected later in the project when the trials begin later in the year.
Now the partners are working on the new interfaces and the rebuilding of the catalogue and database. Some braille, which has existed for a long time only on paper, is being scanned and converted to digital braille files, making them available to a wider audience. The project is thus about one third of the way towards the MIRACLE system. This must be fully operational by the end of 1999 for testing.
While all this work has been going on there have been other developments which can be incorporated into the MIRACLE system. The SVB has developed a system whereby music is spoken onto tape under the same rules as the braille notation. A learner hears a short piece of the music, which is then read (in all its details) and played once more. A more advanced version of what is now called Spoken Music is now in its last stages of testing. Using the file which set the printed music (with some adaptation) and synthetic speech, a Spoken Music file can now be produced in any language for which there is synthetic speech software. Such software, producing a digital file which can easily be sent to other libraries is a major breakthrough for visually impaired musicians who cannot read braille notation and yet need to read written scores. Given the ageing population there are likely to be more people becoming visually impaired. There is no reason why those that read music should be cut off from it.
Using commercial software some of the libraries are producing large letter music. This is not simply enlarging the page to assist the partially sighted. That tends to produce a score that is difficult to manipulate. In the large letter version the software enlarges the music staff within the standard page size turning a piece with, say, six bars to a line into one with as few as one to a line. The copy can be tailored to the needs of individual clients.
Because of the specialised nature of the materials and the particular needs of the target audience, MIRACLE may not be of direct interest to other library users. On the other hand it offers an example of co-operation which will come as near to creating a worldwide virtual library, as one is likely to find for some time. Music, both the printed notes and the recorded sound, is becoming increasingly digital. In the commercial world transfer of music directly to end-users is advancing rapidly. The music library world is lagging a long way behind these developments and in some ways is in danger of being overtaken by commercial interests [11]. Out of need, the sector of libraries for the blind may be showing the rest one possible way forward through co-operation.
The astute reader may have noticed that in all this talk of transferring digital files, no mention has been made of copyright. It hasn't been ignored. The production of a braille music file requires the purchase of the original music. Then comes a laborious and skilled process, requiring good musical knowledge, to produce the braille. There are a couple of programmes that have made it possible to automate music braille from single line melodies. These are not yet successful with complex music. There is a new piece of Russian software almost ready for release, which will make the manual input faster easier and more accurate. Full automation is not yet here. The thought that someone might get hold of a music braille file and convert it back to an illegal copy of the printed music is ludicrous.
Both the WIPO and European Parliament copyright proposals make exceptions allowing the conversion to other formats for people with disabilities. In any case if a blind person is reading braille music there is usually at least one other person who has had to buy a printed copy, so the publishers win.
Richard N. Tucker
Project Co-ordinator
The FORCE Foundation
The Hague
URL: <http://www.f-force.nl/>
Email: dtucker@f-force.nl
Tel: +31 70 3097698
Richard Neil Tucker (b 1942) Graduated in English and Philosophy (Liverpool), postgraduate study in Radio Film and Television (Bristol) where he taught film and television (1967-70).
Senior Assistant Director, Scottish Film Council (1970-75). Senior Assistant Director , Scottish Council for Educational Technology (1975-84). Director Educational and Information Technology, The Netherlands Institute for Audio-visual Media (1984-89). Director, Interactive Learning Services (1990 - 92). Head of Projects Department, SVB (1992-98). Deputy Director, FORCE Foundation (1998 - )
Involved in library matters since 1970 as a member of the LA/NCET non-book media cataloguing rules committee. Lead several library projects in SCET and was responsible for the Resource Centres in Schools project in Scotland. Has written books and articles on Resource Centres, multi-media in education, interactive media. Conducted a number of projects and consultancies for UNESCO. Since 1990 has lead or been involved in several projects under the European Commission's Libraries Programme.
For citation purposes:
Richard Neil Tucker, "The MIRACLE and the blind musician",
Exploit Interactive, issue 3, October 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue3/miracle/>
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