Helping Visually Impaired
Hello,
My name is Dr. David McKalip. I am a neurosurgeon and amateur musician in Cartersville, Georgia.
I have a patient, friend and former professional musician (Guitar) who had a stroke that left him with partial vision. (He was also my patient on whom I operated on and cared for to rescue him from the stroke).
We now play music together (Jazz and variants thereof). I am using MuseScore to create some lead sheets for my combo and think there is a way to help with this great tool.
I would love to see a feature that would allow the Chords to be spoken in time at or just before the change so he could more easily play music. (He could just blue tooth the playback to his ear piece and we could all play together more easily).
Is this feature available? If not, he and I would love to help you develop it. It would likely help many people.
David McKalip, M.D.,
Neurological Surgeon
Cartersville, GA
678-719-8340
brainandspinecare.us
dmckalip@protonmail.com
Comments
You can use Add->Text->Chord Symbol to add a chord symbol which plays the chord when the piece is played back. If you want to only hear the chord symbol, you can open the Mixer and click on the little "S" (for Solo) at the bottom of the "chord" instrument.
I hope this helps!
You wrote:
> I would love to see a feature that would allow the Chords to be spoken in time at or just before the change... <
The plan for the upcoming MuseScore Studio version 5.0 is to introduce audio staves, which will interweave real audio tracks with the playback generated from the score notation. In your case, an audio track of the spoken chord names could be integrated simultaneously with playback -- and would remain synchronized even when one changes the playback tempo of the score.
However, you also wrote:
> He could just blue tooth the playback to his ear piece and we could all play together more easily. <
If you are able to add an audio track of spoken chord changes to a lead sheet, how can you guarantee that you all will play at that same tempo in your guitarist's ear piece -- and in synch to when his chord changes are announced to him? Unless, of course, you all follow his tempo.
I played 5-string banjo at open-mic venues and would look for a guitar "chord-player" and sometimes a bass player. For tunes the others did not know, I was able to successfully shout out (allowing some lead time) the chord changes. We were all playing live, so it was easy to stay in synch with each other.
Being traditional bluegrass, it was just a matter of 3 or 4 rudimentary chords that had to be announced. So in this case, the guitar "chord player" kept the rhythm - relying on me to announce the chord changes (even for bars where I wasn't playing).