Braille: New Codes for Early Music Notations, Long Cells, and Exploratory Coding Analysis
Version 2 2019-03-01, 04:02
Version 1 2019-02-22, 03:48
thesis
posted on 2019-03-01, 04:02 authored by Barbara Claire WilliamsBraille is a wonderful system: it has empowered millions of blind people the world over, and will continue to do so. In order to expand the access which it can provide, more codes are needed for specialist areas, and for these, more tactile patterns are also needed.
Early music manuscripts have not previously been available to blind students and professionals, since the standard braille music code can only express the forms and conventions used in modern editions, not those of the originals. Exact codes for the notations of the original manuscripts are clearly necessary as a basis for any serious musicological research.
New codes are here presented for mensural notation, lute and plucked string tablature, and baroque figured bass. They are designed to be like a diplomatic transcript of the original: fully accurate to that point. Obviously they cannot be a replica physically, since tactile scripts work so differently from visually perceived symbologies. This presentation constitutes Part One. Some of these new codes utilise long cells, a matrix of 8 dots instead of 6: some study is included of this new departure.
Part Two examines the underlying structures of present braille codes, literary and musical. Louis Braille's work is the foundation of all: finding the coding strategies which make his work so effective to the reading fingers was the task here. In addition to general understanding, this was done with a view to providing a reliable basis for the development of new codes as they are needed.
Early music manuscripts have not previously been available to blind students and professionals, since the standard braille music code can only express the forms and conventions used in modern editions, not those of the originals. Exact codes for the notations of the original manuscripts are clearly necessary as a basis for any serious musicological research.
New codes are here presented for mensural notation, lute and plucked string tablature, and baroque figured bass. They are designed to be like a diplomatic transcript of the original: fully accurate to that point. Obviously they cannot be a replica physically, since tactile scripts work so differently from visually perceived symbologies. This presentation constitutes Part One. Some of these new codes utilise long cells, a matrix of 8 dots instead of 6: some study is included of this new departure.
Part Two examines the underlying structures of present braille codes, literary and musical. Louis Braille's work is the foundation of all: finding the coding strategies which make his work so effective to the reading fingers was the task here. In addition to general understanding, this was done with a view to providing a reliable basis for the development of new codes as they are needed.
