# Playing This by Ear: Music Tech Accessibility Blog

Category: Jam Session

## Post 1 by Deadnight Warrior (Zone BBS Addict) on Wednesday, 19-Apr-2017 16:18:40

Last summer, I started Playing This by Ear, a blog for music and music tech accessibility. As I'm planning to ramp up new content, I figured I should finally post about it on here. I write about software and hardware from an accessibility standpoint, and have several series in the works on topics such as Reaper and braille music notation. So please check it out, and please pass it along to anyone else who might find this of interest! Blog and social media links can be found at playingthisbyear.com

## Post 2 by Remy (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Wednesday, 19-Apr-2017 19:36:37

Very interesting. I pretty much use Reaper exclusively (which is quite a bit accessible) along with Kontakt (which is certainly anything but). I'll take a look.

## Post 3 by sia fan bp (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Wednesday, 19-Apr-2017 20:18:56

Ooo, thanks!

## Post 4 by mat the musician (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Tuesday, 06-Jun-2017 21:42:33

There is an HSC (hot spot clicker) set for Kontakt, which makes patch loading/saving, accessible, but Kontakt can be better accessed with Komplete Kontrol, (Native Instruments' series of Midi Controllers) which have built in screen-reader functionality. Mind you, not all Native Instruments plug-ins work with Komplete Kontrol, (guitar, rig and Reaktor), but NI will hopefully make them accessible to the blind via Komplete Kontrol in the future. Komplete Kontrol allows you to control various aspects of Kontakt Libraries, (ones that are NKS (native Kontrol Standard) compatible but not all controls are mapped to the keyboard for all libraries. I've heard that they can be Midi-learned, but have not done that myself as I do not have a Komplete Kontrol keyboard yet. Samplitude has also recently been made very accessible on both Win 7 and Win 10 with Jaws 17. You can learn more at accessibilitytraining.co.uk/samplitude/samplitude.html I'll certainly check out the blog!

## Post 5 by Remy (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Wednesday, 07-Jun-2017 15:59:22

Thanks MadDog. I'll look into samplitude. Luckily I haven't yet had much occasion to go into the guts of Kontact, and thus have had enough sight to work it, but it's slow going to be sure. Most of the FX stuff I can do using Reaper though, so that's something.

## Post 6 by Deadnight Warrior (Zone BBS Addict) on Thursday, 08-Jun-2017 1:42:28

Somewhat off topic for this thread itself, but has anyone had any success with Native Access? Haven't been able to get too far into messing around with Kontakt due to no luck with registering products with it, and haven't gotten around to trying to get sighted help with at least creating an account with Native Access.

## Post 7 by Remy (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Thursday, 08-Jun-2017 20:04:32

I use native access quite a bit. I hear knotact or its alternative is somewhat
accessible, but I'm not the one to ask about that. I find Native Instruments a
bit clunky to work with honestly and vastly prefer Sonivox, but NI instruments
do sound pretty decent.

## Post 8 by mat the musician (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Saturday, 17-Jun-2017 9:17:28

Native Access can be used with Jaws' OCR, though some of the menus, (such as the menu for changing folder locations), isn't accessible. You can however, download and install products independently (though you will have to press Insert-space O and W a lot, practically after every double-click. You don't need to create an account with Native Access, you can create a Native Instruments account on their website, which is accessible with Jaws or other screen-readers. There's a button at the top of Native Access that says Add Serial Number, click on that and type in your serial number for Kontakt to register/authorize it. Though Native Access can be used independently by blind people with OCR, its faster in my opinion to get siighted help, since OCRing all the can get very tiring.

## Post 9 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Monday, 19-Jun-2017 12:15:41

If you're doing hardware, any way you could do a description of the Roland FP-30 digital piano? In a couple months I'm about to get one of those financed.
I know about the FP series -- from over 20 years ago -- and have been a long supporter of Roland products.
But it sure would be nice to get a description of the button placement. The PDF file is near useless for much of this.

## Post 10 by Remy (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Monday, 19-Jun-2017 18:35:17

Wow. That sounds like waaaay more hoops than I want to jump through. THink i'll just squint visually for now.:) JAWS OCR for me is ... helpful at times, but spotty more often than not.

## Post 11 by louiano (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Thursday, 11-Jan-2018 15:46:55

came really late to this but check out a site we are mantaining if you haven't. There are resources for kontakt there too. www.reaperaccessibility.com

## Post 12 by Deadnight Warrior (Zone BBS Addict) on Sunday, 21-Jan-2018 13:49:40

Yeah, saw that. Really helpful site. I've just started a dedicated accessible Reaper course on my blog, and have linked to your site as one of the suggested resources. Keep up the great work!

## Post 13 by sandi (Veteran Zoner) on Wednesday, 24-Jan-2018 9:10:22

i use Strum , for keytarists, it is a must have,