Sensing Music: Sibelius Opens Up a New World for Pianist Kevin Kern

Pianist and composer Kevin Kern has enjoyed many successes, including sold- out Asian tours and seven CD’s that have vaulted onto Billboard’s New Age chart. But the moment he calls a “dream come true” is when he gained access to Sibelius and finally put his ideas down on paper.

Kern, who is legally blind, assumed that he would never be able to efficiently and economically publish his music the way he conceived it.

“I never had the time or the visual power to notate my music, and my handwriting was so bad it would have reduced experienced sight readers to third graders,” he said.

Being blind never affected his musical abilities, of course. Kern had played the standard repertoire in jazz bands and was able to learn other people’s material in groups, but he crafted and performed his original music by and for himself, including string parts, for which he used a synthesizer.

“I once had a friend prepare parts for a piece, but it was so labor-intensive  and expensive that I was resigned to go through life never hearing my music played unless I could play it in my head,” he said.

The end of his reliance on intermediaries arrived in 2002, when he visited the Sibelius booth at the NAMM convention, the biannual trade show for music manufacturers.

Kern had been in contact with software developer and adaptor David Pinto since 1996 and was familiar with a program called JAWS (Job Access With Speech), which converts text on a computer screen into sound.

“I noticed that Sibelius is a lot more key-driven than mouse-driven compared to the competition,” said Kern. “I went to David and said, ‘You’ve got to see this,’ so he grabs a demo copy, put it on his laptop, and in 45 minutes, he had JAWS talking with Sibelius.”

“Lights were going off in both our heads,” he added, “and later, when we attended an impromptu conference of Sibelius users at NAMM, we made our case to the company that if you make something possible for the blind, there’s a very good chance that it will make other things easier for the sighted.”

Sibelius responded by allowing Pinto to make the product accessible enough for him to create a bridge between Sibelius and JAWS called 'Sibelius Speaking.' This product is available through Dancing Dots of Valley Forge, Penn. The setup allows Kern to skip through the program as quickly as any sighted person, and he is thrilled to be able to publish a songbook of the music on his first album, In the Enchanted Garden.

For his 2003 Asian tour, he brought parts along for violin, cello, clarinet, synthesizer, and a guitar. “To be on stage and hear your music go out to 2,000 people the way you planned it was humbling,” he said.

This spring, he will embark on another tour to Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Kern’s burning ambition is to score a film. “Now that I’m able to use Sibelius, I have a legitimate shot,” he said. “I’ve got the skill set and can write whatever anyone asks for. If a director said, ‘I want this feeling, the scene is two and a half minutes long and there’s a gunshot at the two-fifteen mark,’ that’s all the information anyone else would have.”

Ray Charles, perhaps the most famous visually-challenged Sibelius user, also sang the program’s praises.

“Sibelius is one of the most innovative pieces of software I have ever used,” said Charles before his death in 2004. “I like to create my charts in step-time, but you can also record in real time, or from your laptop's keyboard when you're on the road. That's the beauty of Sibelius -- it doesn't limit you. I used to have to dictate every note of my charts to my arrangers. Now, I can hand them a score."

Kern, who also uses Sibelius on the road and in the air, concurs:

“It’s just flat-out easier to use and more intuitive than other programs I’ve tried. You don’t have to go through layers and layers of menus to get what you want,” he said, “and there’s no need to do a million more formatting things after you’re done.”

It could be argued that Kern has a deeper understanding of the depth and power of Sibelius because he cannot use a mouse. As he inputs notes onto a staff, the clipped, robotic voice of JAWS marks his position with decimal divisions, allowing him to track his course through the score.

“I can put a slur in, insert tie notes - all of it,” he said. “Just about anything a sighted person can do with Sibelius, we can do with the combination of Sibelius, Sibelius Speaking and JAWS. I’m one of a growing number of totally blind or visually impaired users who have gravitated toward Sibelius as the best means for getting their music on the page, and in print, like never before.”

For more information, please visit www.kevinkern.com.