Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.
- Helmut Walcha

Memorizing all of Bach's music is so difficult that only a few musicians have ever done it. As for Helmut Walcha, it took about 15 years. What is extraordinary about Helmut, is that he did this as a blind person. His vision loss -caused by chronic keratitis- became total after he was sixteen years old. It was at the age of 25 that he undertook learning every piece of music that Bach ever wrote. This was no small task, because Bach created 165 organ works alone, not to mention a great deal of other compositions for additional instruments. This great accomplishment was possible because of Helmut's point of view, as he was quoted: "The disease which cut me off permanently from the visible world also opened up and smoothed for me the way to inner perception." Helmut's repertoire included other Baroque era composers as well, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, and Händel among them. Considering that he never learned any of this music until after he was blind, it may be that an explanation is necessary. Required to memorize everything, Helmut had the assistance of his mother Anna at first, and after that his wife Ursula, who played each passage one-by-one on piano, which allowed him to 'synthesize all of the voice parts in his head'. Helmut's musical career included performing recitals and concerts on organ and piano, giving lectures and recording Bach's music on organ for EMI and Archiv Produktion. He was awarded the Goethe medal by the Frankfurt am Main Institute.

Topic:
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY AND MUSICIANS
New gear may enable more visually impaired people to become musicians.

Blind performers, recording artists and musicians such as Stevie Wonder, Ronnie Milsap, Ray Charles, and Andrea Bocelli have already proved that it's possible to be visually impaired and successful too! But behind the scenes, the process has never been easy. Writing songs and composing orchestral scores would usually require assistance and co-operation from a sighted colleague or collaborator. Time and a great deal of patience were required to translate music into Braille.

Now all that is changing. A MIDI keyboard connected to a standard PC allows the recording of a musical idea with sequencing software. Then the music file can be transcribed with the Goodfeel Braille Music Translator. Made by Dancing Dots Software, Goodfeel automates the production of Braille music scores. This program allows visually impaired musicians to create Braille compositions and store them as standard PC music files. With a special Braille printer, the musician can print out notation for music in a completely tactile format. It's also possible to email the Braille file to other musicians who can then print it out or replay the music on their own systems.

One of the most popular applications that acts as a PC-based multitrack recording studio is called Cakewalk. This program records separate tracks for individual instrumental voices supplied from a MIDI connected synthesizer or sampler. Using a screen reader application such as JAWS (Job Accommodation with Speech) or Windows Eyes, a blind user can record, review, and edit his compositions in Cakewalk. An optional add-on for Cakewalk and JAWS (called CakeTalking - also made by Dancing Dots), allows users to learn how to navigate the Cakewalk user interface, by supplying comprehensive tutorials and lessons that reduce the learning curve to manageable proportions.

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