Braille Music Reader - Users' Manual

Summary

1.	What is Braille Music Reader
2.	Program installation
	2.1. Steps of the installation
3.	How to get started with Braille Music Reader
	3.1 A typical work cycle
	3.1.1. Launching the Braille Music Reader program
	3.1.2 Importing an original score from a .bmml source file
	3.1.3 Opening a proprietary .erb file resulted from previous sessions of work
	3.1.4 Playing the full score or a desired part of the piece via MIDI
	3.1.5 Skipping through the score along hierarchical element categories
	3.1.6 Finding parts and measures or specific locations in the score
	3.1.7 Hiding certain music symbols and entire parts from the score
	3.1.8  Hiding entire parts:
	3.1.9 Closing the program

1. What is Braille Music Reader

Braille Music Reader is a great new tool that allows visually impaired users to read, learn and listen to written music in a multimodal environment. This program is capable of handling Braille music scores as well as talking music documents.

Braille Music Reader can open files of the so-called BMML format. BMML stands for "Braille Music Markup Language" that is a standardized extension of the widely used Music XML format. BMML files contain Braille music scores with added extra features that can easily be exploited by using this program.

Braille Music Reader may turn in handy when familiarizing with a new music score or learning a new piece. You can listen to the piece or any of its parts via MIDI, plus, you are offered a set of easy-to-use tools allowing you to explore the piece more in detail. You can choose the degree of detail any time you wish. Empowered with sophisticated searching and iteration functions, Braille Music Reader makes music reading fast and efficient for the blind.

As you browse through the score, you can examine the actual Braille notation of the music symbols if a refreshable Braille display is connected to your PC. At the same time, you can hear all the individual musical elements played as you move the cursor over them, while you can also get spoken information specific to the currently visited music sign. You may mute the reflective MIDI playback, the spoken feedback or both for a while and they may be enabled again later.

Braille Music Reader also has a number of great functions for those who are just learning Braille music notation. The different kinds of Braille music elements may temporarily be hidden from the score view. This way a very complex notation can be simplified even to the very basics with no effort. This feature proves to be extremely useful when a musician needs to gain a general overview of a piece, and may also be quite practical for quick learning. The hidden elements may be reintroduced gradually, so that the reader is not overwhelmed with the full complexity of the music at once.

Plus, a brief description is attached to each music symbol telling the user about what its function is in that particular musical context. This is clearly an indispensable tool for the beginners, but even the more experienced musicians may encounter exotic signs for which they no longer need to look up the international manual. Now with Braille Music Reader, it is as easy as pressing F6 to display a brief description when the cursor is at the sign in question.

A blind-friendly program like Braille Music Reader intensively makes use of the conventional PC keyboard. Many of the music browsing functions are accessed via adjacent key pairs of the alphabetical keyboard. However, you can customize it to your personal taste by assigning any keystrokes or key combinations to the various program functions.

The MIDI playback and related services may also be customized to your needs. Any individual part of the musical score may be assigned with its specific instrument sound that helps identifying the voices or different instrumental parts comprising the piece and increase the listening experience of the MIDI playback at the same time. In addition, easy-to-differentiate sound effects (typically percussion hits) may be associated with the different logical elements and measurement units of the score. Thus, with the help of this customizable function, it becomes easier to follow when (and where) the notation of a new part, a new measure or a new chord etc. begins in the score when moving around with the cursor in the music.

The entire piece or any part of it either in full complexity or in a filtered form may be embossed with a Braille printer or exported to a formatted Braille text file with pagination conforming with the user's own page settings or simply with the program's defaults.

Any changes made using the program concerning the layout, look or sounding representation of the score are temporary and only affect how the musical material is treated within the program. These changes do not affect the original BMML source file and any of them may be undone at any time.

However, the personalized Braille and sounding environment including the score itself may be saved in the Braille Music Reader's proprietary ERB format and may be opened at a later time. This is especially useful when you want to work with the same score in multiple sessions. By saving the current state and opening it the next time you need it, you simply save yourself from performing the same formatting tasks on the original source material over and over again.

2. Program installation

For the most part, Braille Music Reader can be installed on your PC like any other Windows application. If you have optained the installation package in a self extracting .exe file (most likely downloaded from the Internet), you can simply start the unpacking and installing procedure by pressing ENTER on the name of the obtained .exe file. If this is the case, first the self extracting utility will be launched that might ask you to decide whether you would like to run the installation program directly from the containing archive or you prefer to allow the utility first to unpack the required files into a temporary folder before launching the installation program(s). The latter choice is highly recommended. Once you are done with this, skip to the section "Steps of the installation" and follow the instructions.

If you have the installation package in a non-automated .zip file, it is your task to unpack the archive. From the later editions of Windows XP onward, it is practically enough to press ENTER on the name of the .zip file and its content will be shown to you as folders and files of an extracted folder. Instead of ENTER, pressing the context menu key on the PC keyboard or the right mouse button on the filename will bring up the context menu related to this filetype.
From this menu, you can choose "Extract all", or "Unpack all". If you are using this function the first time, most likely an unpack vizard will be opened in which you can specify several unpack options according to your personal needs. If you are already an experienced unzipper, you might even set up this vizard not to appear when you click on a zip file. In that case, the unpack procedure will be done silently in the background using logically specified default unpack folders.

It may also be possible that you obtained the installation files in an unpacked form. Whether or not you have to unzip a containing archive, eventually you will find two essentially important files in your working folder which are:

BrailleMusicReaderJaws.exe

BrailleMusicReaderSetup.exe

In order to install Braille Music Reader, you need to run the latter file "BrailleMusicReaderSetup.exe" that will launch the other file itself at a later stage.

After successfully unpacking the zip file and running "BrailleMusicReaderSetup.exe", the standard "Windows Install Shield Vizard" will be launched. From this point on, the steps of the setup procedure are the same regardless of in what form you've got the installation package.

2.1. Steps of the installation:

Right after the installation process is started, the standard Windows Install Shield Vizard appears on the screen. First it asks you to choose the setup language that will be used during the installation procedure. For the sake of this users' manual, it is assumed that you will choose the English language for the installation.

In the setup language combo box, you can use the up and down arrow keys to highlight the language you want to use and press enter to choose the highlighted item.

As you press ENTER, the Install Shield's usual welcome screen will appear in the selected language. This screen tells you that you are about to install Braille Music Reader on your computer. Just press ENTER to select the "Next" button to proceed with the next screen.

On the next screen, you can specify the target folder on your hard disk in which, Braille Music Reader will be installed. For most users, the offered default folder will just be fine.

In the edit field, you can check the automatically offered folder path, and if you wish, you can modify it manually.
You can also tab to the "Browse" button, that you can select by pressing the spacebar. In the appearing tree view, you can highlight an existing folder in which Braille Music Reader could be installed. Pressing the "New folder" button allows you to add a new folder at the current level of the folder tree. After the new folder is created, you can even specify that as the target folder for the program installation. Pressing the "OK" button brings you back to the main vizard screen where the path of the newly specified folder will be shown in the edit field.
Pressing the "Next" button will bring you further in the installation vizard.

On the next screen, you can specify the Start menu folder in which Braille Music Reader's program icon(s) will be placed. For most users, the offered default folder path is agreeable so it is enough to press the "Next" button to proceed. However, if you want to specify a different start menu folder, you can do it pretty much in the same way as it is described for the previous screen.
Press the "Next" button to go to the next screen.

On the next screen, you will only find a checkbox already checked by default. If this checkbox is checked, a program icon will be created and added to your Windows desktop. Clicking on this icon provides a quick way to launch Braille Music Reader. Once this desktop icon has been created, you may assign an own hotkey combination to it whereby you can start the Reader any time with just a few key strokes.
It is enough to simply press the "Next" button in the installation vizard to get to the next screen.

On the next screen, you can find an edit field with the summary of the installation options. You can review your settings using the cursoring keys or the Jaws reading key combinations.
If all the settings are fine, you can press the "Install" button that will start the installation process.

As this process begins, you can follow its status looking at the progress bar. If you are using Jaws, the progression percents will be reported to you in regular intervals as the process is advancing to its completion.

Nearly at 100 percent, another Install Shield Vizard will be launched automatically. This will install an auxiliary program providing a direct connection between Braille Music Reader and Jaws.
Just press the "Next" button on the initial welcome screen.

On the next screen, you will be asked to tell the installer what jaws version you are using, more precisely: whith which installed jaws version you would like to use Braille Music Reader. If you have only one version of Jaws installed on your computer, then the installation program will most likely detect its version correctly. In this case, the correct jaws version will be highlighted in the tree view (for instance: Jaws 8.X).
If this is correct, you have nothing else to do but pressing the "Next" button to proceed with the installation.

However, if there are more than one jaws versions installed on your PC or your Jaws is installed to a folder other than its default, the "Jaws for Braille Music Reader" installation program may not detect your jaws version correctly.

If this is the case, use the arrow keys to highlight the correct Jaws version you have installed on your computer (E.g., Jaws 6.X).
If you are done, press the "Next" button.

However, after pressing "Next", it may happen that an error window appears on the screen with the following message:

"Jaws not found. Do you want to select it manually?"
[Yes]/[No]

This may mean one of several possible things. Either you really don't have any Jaws installed on your PC. In this case, you have two options:
1. Click "No" and quit the subinstallation for Jaws, but finish the main installation for the Braille Music Reader. In this case, your Reader will work properly but without direct speech support.
2. Install Jaws then try this subinstallation again.

This error message may also appear if you have more than one Jaws versions installed or your Jaws is installed in a folder other than its expected default location.
If this is the case, click the "Yes" button and use the appearing tree view to specify your existing Jaws folder manually.
Follow the example appearing along with the folder tree view to find the correct location.

For instance, Jaws 6.20 is installed in the following folder by default:

C:\Program Files\Freedom Scientific\JAWS\6.20

After locating the correct Jaws folder, press the "OK" button to proceed with the installation.

If all went OK till this point, the subinstallation procedure will be started and the percents of the progress bar will be reported to you until the bridge between Braille Music Reader and Jaws is installed.

At the end of the procedure, a final screen appears where you can simply press the "Finish" button.

After closing the subinstallation vizard, you will be back in the main Install Shield program, where a similar final screen will be shown on which you have nothing else to do but pressing the "Finish" button to successfully end the whole installation process.

Once you are done with  the installation, you can immediately launch Braille Music Reader and start to use it for your benefit.

3. How to get started with Braille Music Reader

Braille Music Reader is a Braille or Talking Music reading software. In many aspects, it works similarly to a word processor with two major differences:
1. Braille Music Reader handles music scores prepared for visually impaired users. This means that the currently opened music score will most likely be shown with Braille characters constituting music symbols. In addition to displaying the Braille score, Braille Music Reader provides a great wealth of useful functions and services aimed at facilitating the usage of these scores.

2. Braille Music Reader, as its name suggests, is a reading program rather than a Braille music editor. This means that you won't be able to create your own Braille scores using this program. Therefore you will need existing .bmml files that you can open and browse with Braille Music Reader. The program's "examples" subfolder contains a number of such files to start with. When you use the "Import" function discussed later, this folder will be shown by default with the available .bmml files listed for importing.

You can choose any of these files and begin experimenting with the program following your instincts.

However, you are recommended to follow the common steps of a typical work cycle as described in the next sections of this manual.

3.1 A typical work cycle

A typical work cycle consists of the most common tasks that many users will perform regularly during their every-day practice. Some of these operations are essential while others are optional i.e., not required for all scores or for all users.

The most common steps include:

- launching the Braille Music Reader program,
- importing an original score from a .bmml source file or opening a proprietary .erb file resulted from previous sessions of work with this program,
- playing the full score or a desired part of the piece via MIDI,
- cursoring through the Braille music signs,
- skipping through the score along hierarchical element categories,
- finding parts and measures or specific locations in the score,
- assigning instrument sounds to parts,
- adding personal annotations to the score,
- hiding certain music symbols from the score,
- adjusting the page layout and embossing the score by a Braille printer,
- saving the prepared material to Braille Music Reader's own .erb format for future work,
- eventually closing the program.

In most cases, not all of these steps are required to use the program effectively. Usually it is enough to import or open a file, listen to the loaded piece via MIDI and to check the Braille notation using some of the available cursoring commands.

3.1.1. Launching the Braille Music Reader program

You can launch the program in several different ways. Perhaps the easiest way with screen readers is to press the Windows key to open the start menu, choose "Programs" or "All programs" depending on your start menu settings, then cursoring to "Braille Music Reader" in the list, where you can press enter or right arrow, and hit enter again on the sole menu item named "Braille Music Reader". At this moment, the program will start up and its main application window will appear on the screen.

Another way, however, is to go to the Windows desktop by pressing Windows+D or Windows+m where you may press the letter "e" repeatedly if needed to find the "Braille Music Reader" program icon. Once you got there, you can simply press enter to start the program.

There are further ways to start the program including the use of the Run dialog from the start menu or assigning our own hotkey combination to the desktop icon, but the discussion of these methods are beyond the scope of this manual.

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3.1.2 Importing an original score from a .bmml source file

An existing .bmml file represents what is a black-print version of a score for a sighted musician. These files not only contain the Braille notation of the music work, but also a great wealth of associated useful information for instance the full sounding representation of the music that may easily be transferred to a MIDI device.

Any BMML files can be imported by going to the File menu, there choosing the "Import" menu item and by pressing enter on the appearing "BMML" file type. The same thing may be done much faster by pressing the predefined shortcut ctrl+i.

In both cases, as a result, a dialog box will open asking you to specify the file you would like to import into the reader. This case, let's choose clavi_15.bmml from the list and press enter to open it in the music browser.

If another file is open at the time of pressing ctrl+i, before showing the Import window, the program will first ask whether you want to save that music document or just throw away any changes you made since the file was last saved.

Once you got through these steps, the selected BMML document will be imported and put into the reader's main window with the cursor placed at the top of the file.

Note that you cannot modify any .bmml files with Braille Music Reader. Any changes in the layout, in the criteria of which kinds of music signs the program should hide from the view and all other properties are temporary and only affecting how the browsed data is shown or played for you. If you want to preserve these settings, you may save the score with its associated properties to the Braille Music Reader's native .erb format, that will be discussed later in this manual.

3.1.3 Opening a proprietary .erb file resulted from previous sessions of work

As opposed to importing a non-changing .bmml source file, you may open files of the reader's own .erb format. These files contain the score plus all settings and adjustments made affecting how the score looks and feels and plays in MIDI.

In other words, .bmml files may be seen as scores from an officially published album, while .erb files can in turn be their personalized forms containing custom settings and your own annotations if you've added any of them.

To open a .erb file, go to the File menu and choose "open". Alternatively, you may simply press ctrl+o. Both will show a usual open dialog where you can specify the file you would like to open. If another file is still in use while you choose the open function, first a question will appear about whether you would like to save your work before opening another file.

Once you got through these dialogs, the chosen .erb file with all the settings and added features will be opened for you in the reader's main window ready for use.

3.1.4 Playing the full score or a desired part of the piece via MIDI

For a blind user, the easiest way to get a general overview of a score is to listen to it. Braille Music Reader can play the imported or opened scores any time you want, even immediately after loading it. Simply go to the Play menu and choose the "Play full score" item. Alternatively, you can simply press ctrl+b to bring up the same MIDI player window.

In this window, the focus is immediately on the "Play" button, so it is practically enough to hit the enter key to start the playback from the beginning of the piece. Once the music has begun playing, the focus moves to the "Pause" button, so the next time you hit the enter key, the playback will be suspended temporarily and the "Play" button will be highlighted again. So if you wish to continue listening, just press enter again, and the playback will resume from the point in the piece where you have paused it.

During playback, only the "Pause", "Stop" and "Close" buttons are available. You can rotate among them with the tab key or Shift+tab combination.

Pressing the "Stop" button will cause the player to interrupt playing and at the same time, you will be brought back to the beginning of the piece. This time, the highlight is also moved to the "Play" button, so if you press enter, the piece will be played from the beginning again.

Pressing the "Close" button will immediately stop the playback and close the MIDI player window at the same time so you will find yourself in the main music browsing window where the Braille music signs comprising the score can be examined.

However, the MIDI player window offers more than just playing, pausing or stopping the playback. When the piece is not playing, more controls are available in the MIDI player window.

Start measure:
This is an edit spinbox where you may simply enter the number of the measure where you want to start the playback. Alternatively, you may use the up or down arrow keys to choose the starting measure from the available range of measures in the piece.

If you want to play the score from a point other than the beginning of the piece, you can choose the menu item "Play score from measure" in the "Play" menu. Alternatively, you can press the hotkey combination Shift+ctrl+B. Thereby the same MIDI player window will pop up with the "Start measure:" spin control set to the value corresponding to the measure number in which the cursor is currently situated, so when you press enter in the MIDI player window, the playback will start from that measure, rather than from the beginning of the score.

Tempo (quarter):
This is also an edit spinbox where you can specify the tempo of the playback in beats per minute (BPM) referring to quarter beats. The value may range from 15 through 240. When you save the currently used piece to an .erb file, the specified tempo setting among   other parameters will be stored along with the piece. The default tempo is 90 quarter beats per minute.

Use metronome:
This is a checkbox that is not checked by default. If checked, you will hear metronome beats along with the piece during playback. The metronome indicates the quarter beats with the first beat of the measure accented, so if you pay attention to it, you may always know where a new measure begins in the playback.

Play repeats:
This is another checkbox checked by default. If checked, the playback will observe all print style and braille kind of repeat signs so you have the opportunity to hear the piece as it is meant to be performed structurally. If you uncheck this checkbox, the player will not respect the repeat signs found in the score, so you will purely hear the measures as they follow each other in the score.

Instruments:
Pressing this button brings you to a new window where you can specify which musical parts of the score should be played during playback and you may also assign different instrument sounds to the parts consisting of the piece.

If you have imported the file clavi_15.bmml, then you have a piano score with two parts (right hand part and left hand part). The instruments window will reflect this fact by showing you two sections of settings, one for each part.

A "play/mute" checkbox is provided for both the right hand part and the left hand part respectively. By default, all parts are checked, so they will all be played during playback. If you uncheck the left hand part, its status will toggle to "mute" and after pressing the OK button (by hitting enter), you may play the piece with the left hand muted.

The other control associated with each individual musical part is the "Instrument" combobox that lets you assign an instrument sound to the part in question. By default, the acoustic grand piano is associated with each part. You can choose another instrument sound by using the up/down arrow keys whereby you can move through the list of available instrument sounds one by one. Page up/page down will move you over this list in larger steps. The HOME key moves you immediately to the top of the list, while the END key gets you to the bottom of the list. Alternatively, you may type the initial letter of the name of the instrument you would like to choose. Since a number of instrument names may begin with the same letter, you might need to press the same letter key repeatedly until you get to the item you want to choose.

The list consists of 129 items of which the first 128 correspond to the usual standard MIDI instrument sounds, while the very last item allows you to associate the part with drum sounds. This is especially useful for scores with one or more drum parts.

Once you have selected the desired instruments for the musical parts, press the OK button and as you get back to the MIDI player window, you can listen to the result by choosing the "Play" button.

If you save your work to a .erb file, these part related settings including instrument assignments will be stored along with the score, so you do not have to go through these steps again after opening the same .erb file at a later time.

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3.1.4 Cursoring through the Braille music signs

After you have imported or opened a score in Braille Music Reader's main window, you can use the well-known cursor keys to find your way in the score just like in a word processor. The real difference is that in this case, you are dealing with Braille music signs rather than with text characters. Braille music, however, consists of consecutive signs (Braille characters) that construct compound music symbols. Since Braille music notation is a linear system, showing a Braille score in a window with caret and cursoring capabilities and displaying a purely character based text material in a similar window show obvious resemblences.

Another difference is that since Braille Music Reader is not a Braille Music Editing software, you will only able to go through the musical text and examine it to the finest details as the score is stored in its original .bmml source file, but you won't be allowed to edit the music, i.e., you will not be able to modify the music signs, to erase or add new elements. Hiding certain music symbols and adding personal annotations is however allowed while using Braille Music Reader.

As you cursor through the score with the arrow and other commonly used cursor keys, you may enjoy Braille Music Reader's versatile multimodal support. If a refreshable Braille display is connected to your computer, you can follow the notation in Braille as the music passage currently containing the cursor is shown on the Braille line.

If you wish, extra support is added to the Braille representation in MIDI and with speech by the program. By default, the most common MIDI and speech support functions are enabled. You may disable any or all of them, or personalize these functions to suit your needs with even more additional information provided for each music symbol and for the MIDI playback options.

Directly after you open a score, the cursor is placed at the first Braille sign of the material. If you press the right arrow, the cursor will be moved to the next character. At this moment, you get a verbal feedback briefly describing the music sign on which the cursor has just landed. If this happens to be a music note, then the corresponding note will also be played via MIDI in the instrument sound set for this function (See later in this section). If the sign represents a musical rest, you will hear a distinct percussion hit instead of a note.

Pressing the left arrow key moves the cursor to the previous character. It also produces a feedback in speech and optionally in MIDI.

The level of detail for the speech support may be changed in the "Speech" menu's "Read symbols" submenu where you can find five possible speech levels. If you choose Mute, then no speech support will be given as you move the cursor in the Braille music text. Level 1, level 2 and level 3 are the different speech levels of increasing verbosity.

On level 1, you will only be told whether you placed the cursor on a note, a rest, a clef or a barline etc.

On level 2, you will be informed about what note in which octave and of what rhythmical value you are currently on, with which finger the note is to be played etc. Level 3 provides even more details about the music symbol currently cursored.

The fifth item in the read symbols submenu is "Braille". If you choose this, the Braille dot combination of the currently cursored sign will be spoken rather than its musical role. This is especially useful when you use the program with no Braille display connected to your computer, or when you have a doubt about whether the Braille display shows the character correctly.

You can quickly switch between these speech modes using single-finger key commands assigned to the five items of the "Read symbols" submenu. These quick key commands range on the number keys from 0 through 4 as follows:

0: Mute
1: Speech level 1
2: Speech level 2
3: Speech level 3
4: Braille

The Sound setup menu item in the Configuration menu allows you to influence the program's behavior when the cursoring keys and quick navigation functions are used. The first control in the sound setup window is the "Play sound" checkbox of the "Note" section. By default, this box is checked so when you move the cursor over a music note, a note of the corresponding pitch will be played via MIDI. If you uncheck this box, the note heads and intervals will not be echoed in MIDI as you move around in the piece. Of course, "Play full score" and similar functions will play the piece even with this checkbox unchecked.

You can choose an instrument sound in which the cursored music notes will be played by pushing the "Sound" button in the same section of the Sound Setup window. A more detailed description of the configuration menu will follow later in this manual.

If you use the up or down arrow key, the cursor will be moved to the previous or next line respectively and that entire line will be read out according to the verbosity level set in the "Read symbols" submenu of the "Speech" menu. If the cursor is moved to a note or interval in the previous/next line, a MIDI note of the corresponding pitch will be played as described before.

If you press the HOME key, the cursor will be placed at the beginning of the current line and the entire line will be read out using musical terms as if you were moving the cursor all along the line by repeatedly pressing the right arrow key.

If you press the END key, the cursor will be brought to the end of the line and only the Braille music sign or character found there will be read out rather than the entire line.

Pressing ctrl+HOME or ctrl+END brings you to the beginning or to the end of the music score respectively where the entire line containing the cursor will be read out.

The PAGEUP and PAGEDOWN keys move the cursor towards the beginning or the end of the score respectively in steps of several lines at a time.

As a next step of the typical work cycle, you are going to get familiar with some more advanced cursoring features that are much more related to the real nature of Braille music notation.

3.1.5 Skipping through the score along hierarchical element categories

Skipping through the score along hierarchical element categories

The most common way of  browsing through a document is to skip back and forth by pages and lines. A more effective way is for text documents is skipping by paragraphs, sentences and words. In music, the concept of paragraphs, sentences and words is replaced by parts, measures and elementary musical objects (according to a rather forced correspondence).

It is obviously more natural to explore a score along musical units such as notes, chords or measures, than it is along such publication dependent features like pages, sections or lines. Therefore, Braille Music Reader provides an extensive set of quick-navigation commands allowing you to move through the Braille score following the logic of the musical structure.

In the "Search" menu, the "Go to" submenu offers a wide variety of commands that bring the cursor either to the previous or to the next element of a certain category. Each such menu item is associated with a single-finger key command. The key commands of these "go to previous/next such element" command pairs form horizontal key pairs on the PC keyboard as follows:

Go to previous/next annotation: E/R
Go to previous/next object of any kind: D/F
Go to previous/next music object : J/K
Go to previous/next interval: N/M
Go to previous/next measure: U/I
Go to previous/next part: O/P

As you may have noticed, the left-side member of each key pairs always moves the cursor to the previous, while the right-side member of the key pair moves it to the next such element. Braille music symbols often consist of multiple Braille cells. These navigation commands always place the cursor at the first Braille character of such compound music symbols. On the other hand, the alphabetical characters (letters) of the heading text at the beginning of a score represent individual objects. Thus, pressing the D or F keys will move the cursor over these text characters just one by one, having largely the same effect as using the left/right arrow keys.

These quick-navigation commands provide a sort of three dimensional aspect of browsing through the music document. Most pairs of commands allow you to move horizontally (from note to note, from measure to measure, etc.) while the next/previous part function lets you move vertically among the simultaneous instrumental parts while keeping you in the same measure. In addition, you can also move along a quasi third dimension when checking the notes of a chord  by using the next/previous interval command.

Go to previous/next annotation {E/R}:

Using this pair of commands, you can skip the cursor among the textual annotations that you (or someone else) have added to the original score. Pressing E or R won't move the cursor if there are no annotations for the currently open score.

Go to previous/next object of any kind {D/F}:

Actually, you are able to go through the entire piece using this pair of commands. If you press letter F, the cursor will be moved to the first character of the next object in the score with no regard of whether that is a musical or a non-musical object. Pressing letter D brings you back to the beginning of the previous such object. If the new object visited with the cursor happens to be a music note or an interval, then a MIDI note of the corresponding pitch will be played. IF this object is a rest sign, a percussion hit (or any assigned MIDI sound) will be heard.

Such an object may be a note head, a fingering, an octave mark, a slur, a dot, a dynamic indication, a clef, a part prefix, an in-accord sign, a bar line, a time or key signature or just anything that constitutes a distinct entity in a Braille music score.

Go to previous/next music object  {J/K}:

Probably this is what most user will try right after playing the full score. Pressing the letter K will bring you to the next music note, interval or rest sign and that note or rest will immediately be played via MIDI. Letter J will in turn bring you to the previous such playable music object. If intervals belong to the next or previous note, the full chord will be played when the cursor is moved at the next or previous such playable item.

Go to previous/next interval {N/M}:

This function is increasedly useful for spelling out chord notes in any chords that are notated using Braille interval signs.

Using this pair of commands only makes sense if the cursor is inside the notation of a chord. The next/previous interval function will only work if the cursor is placed on a note or on an interval sign belonging to a note or on a surrounding sign belonging to to a chord note or interval (e.g., staccato, octave mark or fingering, etc.).

Pressing the letter M will move the cursor to the next inner tone of the current chord and the corresponding pitch will be played via MIDI. Letter N will bring you to the previous inner tone of the same chord. If you have reached the edge of the chord (i.e., the first or the last note of it), letter N or letter M respectively won't take you out of the chord, instead  the same chord tone will be played another time.

Thus, using this pair of commands on a sole note having no intervals makes little sense as the same single note will always be played over and over again as you press N or M, since the program has no other choice than to consider the sole note as a chord constructed of a single tone.

Go to previous/next measure {U/I}:

Following the logic of the command pairs discussed above, pressing the letter I will bring you to the beginning of the next measure in the same part while letter U will move the cursor to the beginning of the previous measure of the current part. If there is no next or previous measure contained in that part, the I or U command will not move the cursor anywhere.

Go to previous/next part {O/P}:

Using this pair of commands only makes sense in scores containing more than one instrumental part. Letter P will bring you to the same measure of the next instrumental, hand or vocal part of the score, while the letter O moves you to the same measure of the previous part. This function allows you to check what passages are played simultaneously in the score. In a piano score, the right hand and the left hand are notated in two separate parts. Braille music notation only allows you to read the notation of one part at a time. When you are examining the third measure of the right hand part, after pressing the letter P, you can check what is to be played in the left hand part at the same time. Then you can return to the right hand by pressing the letter O.

In addition to these quick-navigation commands and key pairs, you can play the entire measure containing the cursor by choosing the "Play measure" item from the "Play" menu, or alternatively by pressing the Shift+B key combination. This command will immediately play the whole measure of all parts as a snapshot of the current location in the score. Note that this function will only work if the cursor is situated in a measure.

3.1.6 Finding parts and measures or specific locations in the score

It often happens that you know exactly at which point you want to start reading or playing a score. In this case, you wouldn't like to walk through all the measures and parts that separate you from the point where you want to be.

Braille Music Reader allows you to directly jump to a desired measure of a certain part. Just go to the "Search" menu and select the "Go to measure" menu command, or alternatively, press F4. Both will open a dialog where you can specify the measure number and its containing part you want to go to. The first control in this dialog is an edit spinbox for the target measure number. You may use the up and down arrow keys to increase or decrease the shown value, or you may directly type the measure number on your keyboard.

The other control is a combobox listing the available parts comprising the piece. You may choose a part by using the up or down arrow keys or you may press the initial letter of an item to bring the highlight on it. In piano scores, there are only two parts, one for the right hand, and another for the left hand, so you can only choose from two options for part.

For instance, if you have clavi_15.bmml imported, you can directly go to measure 14 of the left hand part by pressing F4 that brings up the "Select measure" dialog. There you can adjust the measure number with the up and down arrow keys until you reach 14. Alternatively, you can also type this number "14" into this box instead of spinning through the range of measures. Make sure you don't have other remaining digits around the ones you have just entered.

After you specified the measure number, press tab and choose "Part 2" from the combo box.Part 2 corresponds to the left hand part. If you are done, press the enter key that will click the OK button and you will immediately find yourself in the score, on measure 14 in part 2. Braille Music Reader automatically places the cursor on the first playable object of the measure that might not be the first Braille object of the bar.

If you want to play this measure, just press Shift+b, that will play both the right hand and left hand passages simultaneously.

You can also use the "Play from measure" function after jumping to a certain measure. Just press Shift+ctrl+b to open the MIDI player window and hit enter to start playing the score from the current measure.

Note: When you choose the "Go to measure" function (e.g., by pressing F4), the measure and part fields are set to reflect the cursor's current position in the score. So if you have the cursor in measure 10 of the right hand part and press F4, the measure field will automatically be set to 10 and the part field will be set to part 1. This allows you to specify the target measure relative to the current position of the cursor.

In some other typical situations, you will need to find a particular passage in the score containing a certain sequence of Braille music signs rather than dealing with measure numbers. This might simply happen because you can recall how a particular passage is notated but you don't remember the related measure numbers.

Braille Music Reader allows you to find a concrete sequence of Braille music signs in the score. You can repeat finding the same sequence forward or backwards in the music text.

To start searching, go to the "Search" menu and choose "Find text..." menu command or just hit F3 anywhere in the main music browsing window to bring up the "Find text" dialog.

The focus is immediately on a special edit field in this find dialog. This is special because you can enter signs using Braille dot combinations. To achieve this, you will need to strike some keys simultaneously on your PC keyboard. For the scope of this edit field, your keyboard is turned into an emulated Braille typewriter. The most frequently used six keys "F D S   J K L" of the home row are assigned to dots 1 2 3   4 5 6 respectively.

If you want to find for example the first occurrence of a D quarter in the third octave, you will need to first press J K L at the same time. When you release all the three keys, a braille cell with dots 4-5-6 will appear in the search field. Then you can go on with pressing F K L simultaneously and as you release all of the keys, another Braille cell appears in the text field with dots 1-5-6. This corresponds to D quarter in the third octave notated in Braille.

If you press enter now, the cursor will be moved right behind the D-quarter note and the dot combinations of the found sequence will be read out by the speech synthesizer. Actually, this is the same note D in measure 14 of the left hand part that you have encountered a short time ago when trying out the "Go to measure" function.

Just press Shift+b to listen to the entire measure for affirmation.

If you press F3 another time, the "Find text" dialog will be shown again. You will find the previously entered Braille sequence in the search field. As you move the cursor in the text box, the dot combinations of the displayed Braille characters will be spoken. You may leave this search text intact and press enter to find the next occurrence of it in the score, or you might modify the search text and look for that new sequence in the piece.

However, there are simpler ways to find the next or previous occurrences of the last search text. The "Find next" and "Find previous" commands in the "Search" menu just do that for you.

You can press ctrl+f for "Find next" and Shift+ctrl+f for "Find previous". When you press ctrl+f or Shift+ctrl+f, no find dialog will be opened. Instead, the cursor will immediately be put behind the last character of the found sequence and the dot combinations of the highlighted characters will be spoken. If no more occurrence can be found in that direction, the cursor will be left where it has been when you pressed ctrl+f or Shift+ctrl+f and a Windows default "ding" sound will be played to notify you about this fact.

Putting it into practice: Assuming you still have your cursor at the note D in measure 14 found during the last search operation, just press ctrl+f to find its next occurrence. You will immediately hear "4 5 6, 1 5 6" spoken as the cursor lands behind the recently highlighted  next such note D in measure 26 of the left hand part.

If you want to hear the entire measure, press Shift+b to play both parts simultaneously. You can also look around with the cursor using the arrow keys.

To find your way back to the previously found note D, press Shift+ctrl+F that will immediately bring you back to measure 14. Playing the measure by Shift+b will certify you about this.

Note: Many computer keyboards used today (especially the laptops' inbuilt keyboards) are incapable of handling more than 2 or 3 simultaneously pressed and held keys. If this is your case, you won't be able to enter most of the Braille combinations into the search field. There are three ways to go around it.
1. Connect another external USB keyboard to your PC and hope that will do the job properly.
2. Enter the Braille characters using a kind of arpeggio, so that you make sure to never hold down more than two keys at the same time. Braille Music Reader will handle this "arpeggiated" Braille entry correctly no matter how fast or how slow you are.
3. Define other six keys for the Braille dots on the original keyboard that has failed to handle the default six home-row keys. Often it happens that the same keyboard fails to handle more than 3 simultaneous keys of a certain part of the keyboard but it can cope nicely with up to six other keys of the same keyboard. However, reassigning keys to Braille dots lies beyond the scope of this manual.

Finding out your current position in the score:

In certain situations, it may be necessary to find out your exact position in a score. This may be especially useful for your orientation in case of very long pieces or when the notation is unusually complicated. In the latter case, even finding the nearest bar line may turn out to be a hard job.

Braille Music Reader provides a smart solution for this problem. At the bottom of the main browsing window, the status line -based on the current cursor position- indicates the current character number counted from the beginning of the score, followed by the current measure number and eventually followed by the element category of the Braille music sign the cursor is placed on.

For instance, after the "Go to measure" operation discussed in the previous section with the file clavi_15.bmml imported, the cursor is placed on a note D quarter in measure 14 of the left hand part. If this is the case, the status line at the bottom of the main window will most likely show this:

658    measure: 14    note

Where "614" is the character index counted from the beginning of the score, "measure: 14" indicates the number of the measure containing the cursor, and "note" tells you that the current Braille sign (more closely, the currently cursored Braille character) is a music note. If you place the cursor at a character that is part of a compound Braille music sign, this indication on the status bar will refer to the Braille symbol containing the current character.

Note: You may make Jaws read the status bar by pressing Jaws key + PAGEDOWN, where "JAWS KEY" usually corresponds to the INSERT key. You may use this key combination to get the status bar spoken anywhere in the main browsing window.

However, there are other ways to find out your current position in the score. You may simply press F4 to bring up the "Go to measure" dialog, in which the Measure number and the current part is shown in the fields as initial values. Thus, it is enough to press tab to learn about the current part and then to press Shift+tab to hear the current measure number. If you actually don't want to go to another measure, just press ESCAPE that makes you to leave this dialog and will bring you back to the main browsing window.

You may also check the current measure number by pressing ctrl+b that opens the MIDI player dialog where the "Start measure" spinbox contains the current measure number as its initial value.

3.1.7 Hiding certain music symbols and entire parts from the score

For many visually impaired musicians and students, a great complicating factor of using Braille music is its linearity. This means that all music symbols (elements, auxiliary signs, etc.) are placed sequentially just like the letters and punctuation marks in an ordinary text. This is fine for the simpler pieces in which the experienced Braille music users can rapidly find their ways, gaining a general overview of the structure and content of the piece just with a sweep of their reading fingers.

But it is a hard job even for the most experienced braille music readers to quickly get any clue of a complicated piece. Until now, there has not been no way to skip the plethora of additional indications and modifiers that are of little use during the first encounter. Sighted musicians -when familiarizing with a new piece- can simply ignore the additional indications surrounding the essential music symbols. Due to its Linear nature, Braille music did not provide this luxury for the blind readers.

Braille Music Reader now provides a fairly convenient solution: You may specify what kind of elements you need and which are the indications and categories you would rather ignore and just in an instant, the program will hide anything you don't want to come accross and will show only the signs you really need for this time.

Of course, the hiding or showing of elements is just a set of temporary properties that may be reversed any time you like. Since the original .bmml file will never be changed by Braille Music Reader, these additional features may or may not be stored separately, e.g., in a native .erb file.

To hide a type of Braille music element throughout the score, go to the "Process" menu and choose the "Hide elements" menu item. A dialog will appear with a number of checkbox items. By default none of these items are checked causing all possible kinds of Braille music signs be shown in the opened score.

If you check any of these categories and click OK to close this dialog, symbols falling into the selected categories will immediately be hidden from the score.

For instance, if you check the first item "Alteration" in the hide elements dialog, all flat, sharp and natural signs will disappear from the score until you return to this dialog, uncheck the "Alteration" item and press OK again. Of course, this does not mean that the original music will be treated differently by the program. Namely, if you hide all the alterations and play the full score or any of the measures or notes, the MIDI playback will remain the same, i.e., the temporarily hidden alterations will be respected during playback.

When familiarizing with a new score, it is however more useful to hide clefs, dynamics, fingering, interval fingering, nuances, slurs, and texts optionally. Notes, rests and bar lines cannot be hidden, but this might not be a surprise to anyone.

After having a grip on the piece, the hidden element categories may gradually be restituted using the same checkbox items of the hide elements dialog. If you want to show all elements at once, just press the "Show all" button at the bottom of the dialog, or if you want to hide all the possible element categories, press the "Hide all" button in the same area of the dialog.

Note that when a certain kind of element is currently hidden, you won't be able to find it using the "Find text", "Find next" or "Find previous" functions until you let those signs be shown again. For instance, if you hide the octave marks, you will not be able to find the note D quarter in the third octave by the "Find text" function as demonstrated earlier in this manual. So if you type dots 4-5-6 then dots 1-5-6 in the search field and start searching, the operation will stop with a warning sound and you will be put back in the browsing window at the original cursor position, rather than finding yourself in measure 14 of the left hand part.

3.1.8  Hiding entire parts:

another menu item in the "Process" menu is "Hide parts". If you choose this, a dialog will open up with a list of all the instrumental or vocal parts making up the piece. By default, each part is unchecked (meaning that the part is shown in the score). If you check any of the listed parts, its status will change to "Hidden" and when you click OK, the notation of the hidden parts will disappear from the score.

If you go back to this dialog and uncheck any of the hidden parts, they will reappear in the score immediately.

When you hide one or more parts in a score, that will also influence the MIDI playback. The hidden parts will not be played either during "Play full score", "Play from measure", or when using "Play measure".

This feature may come in handy when learning a new piece note by note, bar by bar, and hand by hand.

The current form of the score with certain elements or parts hidden may be saved into a .erb file from which it may be reopened at a later time, or may be exported to a plain text file that can be used without the Braille Music Reader program, or may be embossed on a Braille printer.

Saving the prepared material to Braille Music Reader's own .erb format for future work

Since the original .bmml source file containing the Braille music score cannot be modified by Braille Music Reader, it makes no sense to provide a save function to this format. Instead, Braille Music Reader allows you to save the customized form of the score with all the current settings into an own .erb file that is the program's native file format. If you want to use this file again when you launch Braille Music Reader at a later time, you can simply open this .erb file using the Open command in the File menu or pressing ctrl+o instead of importing the original .bmml file. The difference is that when you open an .erb file, all your settings and format options will be set to the values that they had at the time when you saved the file. So by opening a previously saved .erb file practically reproduces your last working environment related to that score.

To save the current score with all settings and options just choose the "Save" command from the "File" menu, or alternatively press ctrl+s. If this is the first time you perform a save operation on this score in the current session, the "Save as" dialog will open asking you to specify the name and location of the file to be saved.

However, if you have already saved this score during this session with the Braille Music Reader program, pressing ctrl+s will not bring up any dialog, but the changes will silently be saved to the same .erb file you have previously specified.

If you want to save your working environment to another file, you may choose the "Save as" command from the "File" menu that will show the "Save as" dialog in any case to specify the file name and location.

If you want to have the current form of the score in a pure text file, use the "Export" submenu of the File menu and choose the "Text" menu item from this submenu to bring up the "Export file as" dialog. Alternatively, you may press ctrl+e to get this dialog shown.

Here you can specify the name and location of the target file to which the score with all format and hide options applied will be exported. When you click the "Save" button, another dialog appears asking you to choose a conversion table for the export operation from BMML to ASCII text. You can choose for example the eng.tbl file from the folder view to apply the USA braille conversion rules during the export process. After pressing the "Open" button, the export procedure is performed and you must find a text file containing the score in the specified folder with the given filename. You may read this text file with a Braille display, send it to a Braille printer or use it for various other purposes.

3.1.9 Closing the program

Once you are finished with reading, playing, learning, etc. the score(s) you have chosen to use with Braille Music Reader, you can close the program just like any other windows applications simply by choosing the "Exit" menu item from the "File" menu, or just pressing alt+F4. You may be prompted with a question whether you want to save changes made to the material or in the settings. If you answer yes, the well-known "save as" window will be shown where you can specify the file for saving. If you say "No", the changes will be lost but in case of a BMML based material, these changes will never affect the actual music, but they might only include certain settings and personal annotations.

The same "Save changes" question may appear when you decide to open or import a new file while a score is still open in the program.

Remember that pressing alt+F4 when in a child dialog of the main program such as the MIDI player or Hide elements window, will only close that child window but not the main Braille Music Reader application. In such a situation, you might need to press alt+F4 another time to quit the program.