Senior players from the various sections of the orchestra talk about the experience of being a musician and a little about themselves. It’s both entertaining and educational, giving us a personal insight into the real people who make the orchestra work, and a look at the instruments. This app has been created by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra as a guide to the orchestra and its players. Of course, it’s really made up of a collection of instruments and their expert operators. The orchestra is the world’s most powerful, complex and expressive musical instrument, or at least that’s how it feels when you’re witnessing all its parts coming together in a great performance, as if it’s a living, autonomous organism.
#Discovr music code
Louis Braille, the inventor of the braille code of reading and writing.MSO Learn, Discovr Music, MadPad – App Reviews Louis Braille adapted his tactile reading system for music and mathematics by adding extra symbols. “He did it in a linear and a literary way, rather than using a graphic score as print music would,” Risdon explains (watch above). “Being French, Louis Braille would have thought in terms of ‘do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti”, she says – and in French ‘do’ is always the note C. It made phonetic sense to Louis Braille to assign D for ‘do’ and carry on up the scale using the next letters of the alphabet – so, E would be ‘re’, F would be ‘mi’, G would be ‘fa’ and so on. “Which confuses English students to no end, because the note B corresponds to the letter J (ti), so we have to stop thinking like that and treat it as a separate bit of coding,” Risdon says. She goes on to explain that the seven letters representing the do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti notes in braille only use the top four dots of the cell, leaving the bottom two indicate note length. Using only the top four dots automatically indicates quavers (eighth notes), while you use the bottom two dots to indicate minims (half notes) or crotchets (quarter notes).īSO Resound’s Kate Risdon (flute), introduces Braille music notation. It gets complicated, Risdon explains, where you run out of options and note lengths double up. Semiquavers are notated as semibreves, demisemiquavers are the same as minims and hemidemisemiquavers are the same as crotchets. The system works because the notation would include a time signature that can be used to indicate which length the notes are according to logic – for example, you couldn’t have sixteen semibreves in a four-four bar, so they must be semiquavers.Īside from rhythm, other performance indications are described in the score. There’s a system of octave signs that precede the cells denoting pitch, as well as indications of performance markings (speeds, dynamics, and other directions), and other descriptors found in scores. How do you read a braille score and play your instrument at the same time? “Incidentally,” Risdon adds, “the sharp, flat and natural signs are used exactly as they are in print music.” “Before you get any of your notes, you have a lot of other things,” Risdon explains in the video above.Īs well as the tempo indication, there are key signatures, bar numbers and section markings – which are of course invaluable for rehearsing in ensembles.
#Discovr music professional
Risdon is a member of BSO Resound, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s professional ensemble formed by disabled musicians, and she relies on braille music scores to learn new pieces. “It starts with reading and singing,’ Risdon explains.
She also uses a computer to enable her to listen, read and then play (watch above).
It requires reading the score first, listening to a recording of the piece and, once the tactile markings are committed to memory, picking up your instrument to play along. Repetition of this process – plenty of reading, listening and having a go – allows braille-reading musicians to learn their score. Watching Risdon’s demonstration in the video above really illustrates the steps it takes.
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