Nickie Coby (puppybraille) wrote,
Nickie Coby
puppybraille

Musical musings and the rest of my day

Tonight Mom and Dad brought down my violin (in case I need it to help myself visualize the music I'm hearing), and a small booklet we used in elementary school. This booklet has the basic musical notation in it in Braille. Again, while I probably won't write in it, having the musical notation available to visualize things and use when working things through in my mind will be helpful. To my knowledge, the Braille music code isn't heavily used. It's pretty complicated to learn. Where people who can see are used to knowing what a quarter note, and just having to figure out what line or space on the staff it occupies, there are different symbols for each note and each value. So there's a symbol for a C whole note, C half note, C quarter note and so on. Lots and lots of stuff to remember. Most people tend to play by ear from what I've gathered. But seeing the Braille music code reminded me of my experiences using the code and learning it.

I had a wonderful teacher of the Blind/vision teacher if you want to be politically incorrect (vision teacher is an incorrect descriptor because they don't teach me how to see). Anyway, she and I used various tricks to remember code for music and math. At one time, I knew the entire Nemeth (math code). The one I started thinking about yesterday was what we used for rests.

Braille has what are called contractions (ways of shortening what you write to save space and make reading more efficient). I used the contractions in this case to help me remember the rests. Keep in mind, this was in third grade:
More (m) WHOLE milk
HALF of US (u) are here
I don't have VERY (v) many QUARTERS
and IT's (x) an EIGHTH NOTE

Now that that trip down memory lane is over, I'll talk about the rest of my day. I went to Brewberry's this morning and had coffee and muffins (yes, plural intended). That's where I wrote the book review too. On the way there, my hair froze (nature's way of hair spray?).

I spent the rest of the day messing around and doing reading for school. Mom and Dad took me to
Noodles
and then to a grocery store for stuff I needed. Now, I'm sitting here, happy I could finally put on Lidoderm. I'd like to go to Brewberry's, but I don't think I'll be able to walk that much tomorrow. I'll try not to borrow trouble though. After all, I do have oatmeal and a coffee pot and coffee and French vanilla creamer, so I can theoretically either make my own breakfast or get something from the Caf.
Hope everyone has a nice night!
Hugs!
Nickie
Tags: music and movies
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