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Archive: August 2014 (4 Posts)

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Just Call Him “Doc” : NLS Guitar Materials Featuring Doc Watson

Posted by: Amanda Smith

I grew up in the foothills of North Carolina in an area where music styles and lyrics known to the Southern Appalachians trickled down and nestled in my bones. In writing about the music culture of the Blue Ridge Mountains, what would a discussion of NC mountain music be without the mention of legendary guitar …

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“Take Five”…and Check Out Our Jazz Titles

Posted by: Katie Rodda

Although the majority of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) Music Section’s collection deals with classical music, we also have a wide array of materials dedicated to the great American art form–jazz. In this blog post, I will detail some of the special format materials in our collection that jazz …

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Digitizing Braille Music — How We Do It

Posted by: John Hanson

My last post presented a list of new digital braille titles that had recently been added to our collection. This post is to make clear that we have a program of digitizing our braille music collection, and to describe how we have been doing it. It might also be good to underscore why we have …

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In Performance: Musicians Take the Stage

Posted by: Mary Dell Jenkins

While most people associate Louis Braille with the system of reading and writing for the blind, many are not aware he was also an accomplished organist and musician.  There is good evidence he created the Braille code for music first and language second.  But whichever came first, the literary or the music code, we’re just grateful …