Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Discuss how to promote using FLOSS to make music.

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jeanette_c
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by jeanette_c »

Basslint wrote: Wed May 13, 2020 11:45 am ...
I help maintain a repository of FLOSS music software for openSUSE. I'd like to make a spin of it which only contains accessible music software,
This might be a very good starting point, especially if this includes accessible GUI tools. Hopefully well-established apps that are known to work.
and maybe establish a complete workflow. What do you think about this idea?
Not sure what you mean. Point out a collection of applications that work well together and allow complete music production?

Also, what would you recommend developers to focus on?
At the moment I know that - on Linux - there aren't many accessible GUI tools for music making. (To avoid flames: I don't say there are none!) But you could practically start anywhere. :) Personally I'd love a good modern MIDI sequencer with patterns, looping, tracks of different lengths (maybe). I think seq24 and its relatives have the right feature set.
Audio/MIDI sync is a particular challenge. A good, complete DAW with audio and MIDI built in would solve that. Many have already.

What is the hardest thing to do, except for scoring?
Practically speaking it might be managing plugins. They all have their own UIs, which DAWs, of course, present to the user. On the commandline the usual approach is to give access to control and audio ports. Not necessarily intuitive, but it works. LV2 plugins in particular come with good port/value descriptions. That is still not true for all formats and some plugins have features which cannot be controlled by an external port. File loading...

As for scoring, what do you think is lacking?
Forestalling any further questions here: I'm not writing scores myself. I know people in music teaching and in the classical performance circuit who have to deal with that. MuseScore has been used, because of its great standard conformance. Alas most other teachers, pupils and musicians tend to use commercial tools, which don't conform so well. In the end this might really come down to the old open software vs. "commercial standard". I'm not really the person to comment.
...
I don't _THINK_ that new applications are the way forward. There are wonderful established music tools from DAWs like Ardour and Qtractor to MIDI sequencers and synthesizers. The way forward should be to implement accessibility where possible. Generic GUI toolkits like QT, GTK and others come with accessibility frameworks these days, so fresh developments could start out with that in mind. Some more specific frameworks however neglected accessibility. I think that JUCE is still completely lacking in that regard. Not sure whether or not it is open source, but it is used a lot also in LV2 plugins.

So advocacy is needed on a few fronts to bring this forward. Unfortunately in open source development, particularly, there often aren't enough people to fix bugs, implement new general features, write manuals and implement accessibility. When time can be made or willing and competent assistance can be found, the FOSS world is very nice and helpful about it.

Sorry, this isn't very helpful. It doesn't point to one particular challenge to take up. Unless you just go and approach your favourite project/program and see what can be done. Or you pick up something that looks easy to make accessible.

Best wishes, Jeanette
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Basslint
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by Basslint »

@jeanette_c thanks for all your input!

One question, you talked about the difficulty of creating and exchanging score. I know two fairly mainstream formats, LilyPond and MusicXML. I understand MusicXML is not easy to read as a human (too verbose), though.

What do you think about using a more human-readable programming language like Python to generate LilyPond scores? A library that allows that is Abjad (http://abjad.mbrsi.org/). It's not really programming, it's more of a declarative thing like HTML or Csound, so it should be easy to pick up.
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jeanette_c
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by jeanette_c »

Basslint wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 12:38 pm ...
What do you think about using a more human-readable programming language like Python to generate LilyPond scores? A library that allows that is Abjad (http://abjad.mbrsi.org/). It's not really programming, it's more of a declarative thing like HTML or Csound, so it should be easy to pick up.
Personally, I would probably get along with it. But then again I don't write scores and I don't know about the finer points, like REALLY getting a readable clean layout without being able to check, setting lyrics to music for choir pieces, finer points of full notation, clefs, rubati, crescendi, different ways to hold and tie notes, marking fingering...
MuseScore as such does a fairly good job, even for blind people, or so I hear. But exchanging the musicXML is a problem, because commercial tools apparently don't follow the standards as they should and might add extra features on top. Though that is more the old discussion of FLOSS vs. proprietary.

As mentioned before though: I don't write scores. Never have done, have no inclination to do so. :) I could ask my friend about her experience, when I see her tomorrow.
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by jeanette_c »

Hey hey @Basslint , OKK so I talked to my friend a little about the difficulties of editing and creating notation. For most people things like Lilypond and the Python package you mentioned are not an option. It's too far from their everyday world. It means thinking scripting/programming. If you invest the effort to really learn such a system, tyou have immense control over the layout, but it will involve being extremenly clear of what you want to do.
Applications like MuseScore are preferrable, because 1. the input method is much easier and closer to what musicians are used to/have learnt 2. you could always listen to parts of your notation to be sure that all notes are correct.
The last time my friend used MuseScore was a few years ago and on Windows. At that time the program wasn't really accessible and she mainly used it to convert MusicXML to PDFs.
The main issue, even with accessible applications - and MuseScore might be one of them now - is to control the layout. My friend will test the latest MuseScore on her MacOS system.
If you are interested, I will let you know what comes of that, though it will take a few weeks, since my friend is very busy trying to organise her teaching schedule with the current difficulties and special needs.
Best wishes, Jeanette
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Basslint
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by Basslint »

jeanette_c wrote: Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:29 pm If you are interested, I will let you know what comes of that, though it will take a few weeks, since my friend is very busy trying to organise her teaching schedule with the current difficulties and special needs.
Best wishes, Jeanette
Thank you a lot for all this information, Jeanette. If you can get more info, at your friend's own pace and according to her schedule, it would be great!

I don't know if your friend is aware but there is a way to convert scores to and from braille, BMC http://bmc.blind.guru/
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jeanette_c
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by jeanette_c »

Yes, my friend knows about the conversion possibilities and has been using several services and applications to make use of that. This is helpful, especially if you have to work with readily available material.
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by Basslint »

@jeanette_c sorry to bother you, I have a question: are you in any way able to use PureData? If not, what do you think would be a comfortable way to use it?
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by jeanette_c »

Basslint wrote: Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:03 am ...
are you in any way able to use PureData? If not, what do you think would be a comfortable way to use it?
I think I cannot use it, but I will make sure. Regardless of that, I think a modular environment like that is probably best mastered by a kind of programming language like Csound, if you can't see. One challenge is the two dimensional nature of such systems, which are not easily explored with a braille display and possibly even less so with a speech output. At the very least a kind of structural representation would help. Structural in a sense of the GUI object organisation so a screen reader a faithfully translate it.

I have just installed PD on my system and will test it later today.

HTH, best wishes, Jeanette
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by jeanette_c »

Hey hey @Basslint , sorry for the delayed answer. I have tried PureData with Orca and it doesn't work. As far as I can make out the user interface is written in tcl/TK. I am not aware of any accessibility for that graphics toolkit, which doesn't mean there isn't any.
If you know of ways to start PD with other UIs, let me know and I'll give it another try.
Best wishes, Jeanette
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by Basslint »

jeanette_c wrote: Wed Sep 30, 2020 10:34 am Hey hey @Basslint , sorry for the delayed answer. I have tried PureData with Orca and it doesn't work. As far as I can make out the user interface is written in tcl/TK. I am not aware of any accessibility for that graphics toolkit, which doesn't mean there isn't any.
If you know of ways to start PD with other UIs, let me know and I'll give it another try.
Best wishes, Jeanette
I'll do some searching and let you know! As always, thank you for your input, I keep these things in mind and try to think some ways around them and spread some awareness if possible!
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by jeanette_c »

@Basslint AFAIK all these graphical modular environments don't work for blind people, never mind which software, never mind which OS. There is VCV rack, Reaktor, SuperCollider, though it can be programmed and run without the graphics. Off hand, I couldn't even think of a way to make them accessible as they are. The idea itself is so inherently graphical. To make such systems not only officially accessible to blind people but useful, I believe a different interface/mechanism would have to be implemented.
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danjcla
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by danjcla »

Hi, I'd love comments from people on this thread on my recent post RFC on architecture for MIDI piano practice tool for blind/low vision/elderly users.
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by Basslint »

danjcla wrote: Sat Dec 05, 2020 7:57 pm Hi, I'd love comments from people on this thread on my recent post RFC on architecture for MIDI piano practice tool for blind/low vision/elderly users.
Done! Love your idea, I think it is amazing :D

I am thinking about ways for blind people to use PureData. I am no expert but this is a long-term project which I feel is very important. It probably involves writing a text-based interface for PureData, although I am not sure if it should look like a programming language (like SuperCollider), a markup language (like CSound) or it should be a whole new thing.
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by baconature »

I am not blind, yet reading is very difficult. I know a problem that prevents sight impaired people using linux is the issues around text to speech readers. In Ubuntu at least (my only experience is with various flavors of Ubuntu) screen readers and their functionality comes then goes, leaving us without an effective way to gain information, when it exists. Since I began using linux I have used I think 3 different text to speech readers. With upgrades in these systems, it seems the ball gets dropped, where it comes text to speech. Since I upgraded from 18.04, to 20.04, I am without a fully functional screen reader, again! It is a major problem for me, but it seems that the designers forget about us when they are going through upgrades and the screen readers fall through the cracks.

Without an effective screen reader program the seeing impaired can't read things like the LinuxMusicians forum to get assistance.
Tom ~ Idaho USA

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My Music
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Re: Blindness and FLOSS music-making

Post by Kott »

JUCE started to implement accessibility support https://github.com/juce-framework/JUCE/ ... essibility
Windows and Mac only for now. I'm doubt that it will get Linux support for that feature soon, but... who knows.

https://github.com/juce-framework/JUCE/ ... ibility.md
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqrEv4ApH3U
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