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PTP Braille Music Typewriter

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PTP Braille Music Typewriter

PTP Braille Music Typewriter

PTP Braille Music Typewriter

PTP Braille Music Typewriter

PTP Braille Music Typewriter

Sewon Chang
Sewon Chang
Sewon Chang
Sewon Chang
1 Campaign |
Seoul, Korea, Republic of
$0 USD 0 backers
0% of $8,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal

Hi, I’m Sewon Chang, a high school student that hopes to find my own solution to preventing young blind musicians from giving up on their dreams of becoming professional musicians.

 

Because music involves both sound and touch, many blind students dream of pursuing a career in music, since these are two highly developed senses for them. For members of the blind community, music is a perfect way for them to connect and become engaged with the larger global community. However, opportunities for the visually challenged to learn and gain access to the necessary tools for creating and appreciating music is limited. One reason is the difficult process of producing Braille sheet music.

 

Printing Braille sheet music takes four steps – initial transcription is done by a sighted transcriber, verbal enunciation of the transcribed version is then handled by a blind transcriber while the original transcriber checks, a second check is then handled by the original sighted transcriber, and the final check is completed by another sighted transcriber just before printing. Not only is it time consuming, but it is also ineffective.

 

Sheet music for the sighted is manually transcribed into Braille, because to transcribe difficult music, musical subtleties and technical features have to be accounted for, which is currently only possible through manual transcription. Since difficult pieces are often not available in Braille music libraries, most blind musicians have to put in a specific request for each piece they would like to be transcribed. This personalized order delays the process even further. Ultimately, many who aspire to become professional musicians give up on their dreams. 

To tackle this problem, I tried to quicken the transcription process by minimizing time loss between transcription and printing by creating a single device for both functions. I added on Braille keys to a used typewriter so that it can emboss Braille music notes as my initial step. While making this prototype, I learned what I could do to further develop my typewriter, which was to completely reform the insides of the typewriter so that it would be a more fitting Braille typewriter. However, such reforms were costly, as around  $8000 was needed simply to redesign the circular tube with Braille dots engraved.

 

This initial prototype is customized for printing out Braille music for the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Through this prototype, I hope to not only demonstrate my idea of combining transcription and printing onto one device, but also to simply show a way of creating Braille music for beginner level songs. Blind musicians who don’t have a Braille music transcriber or organization that can provide them with music usually need their parents to make a rudimentary Braille embosser, so that automatically transcribed music can be typed and printed off. Instead of having to make large homemade embossers, this prototype may serve as an alternative to a Braille printer. Furthermore, at the beginner level, music printed off with this prototype may also help parents educate their visually impaired children with music Braille.

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