Panel discussion: ‘In Tune with Success’ – educational and professional pathways open to VI musicians

Introduction

This episode of the Sound Without Sight podcast features a panel discussion, exploring the educational and professional pathways open to musicians, and tips for navigating these with a visual impairment. 

We welcome three very special guests onto the panel: 

• Bobby Goulder, who has built a career as a musician since graduating in 2015; 
• Sarah Bayley, who is a recent Music graduate, and Sound Without Sight intern, and a LOOK UK mentor. 
• and Fiona Waterspring, Student Support Services Advisor at Thomas Pocklington Trust.

This interview was recorded live, as part of the Sound Without Sight Monthly Meet-up Session for July 2024, featuring questions submitted by our community.

Hosted by Jay Pocknell, Project Manager at Sound Without Sight and Megan Adams, Student Mentor Project Officer at LOOK UK. ‘In Tune with Success’ was a collaborative event by Sound Without Sight and LOOK UK.

Listen to podcast

Summary

The discussion covers choosing music degrees, transitioning from A-levels, self-advocacy, Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) support, and technology use.

Bobby and Sarah share their experiences with DSA, emphasising the importance of self-advocacy and the need for universities to personalize support. Fiona provides information on DSA, highlighting its purpose and application process. The panel also discusses the use of technology in music education, with Sibelius and Logic being mentioned as useful software for notation and recording.

Bobby details various income streams for musicians, including teaching, performing, and composing. The panel stresses the importance of networking and being adaptable in the music industry. They also discuss the value of creating a portfolio and using platforms such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp to share music.

The discussion touches on social life at university, with panellists sharing strategies for making friends and navigating campus life. Fiona emphasises the importance of familiarising oneself with the campus and surrounding area.

The panel share advice for aspiring musicians, including focusing on positives, pursuing passions, preparing thoroughly for university, and practicing self-advocacy. 

Highlights and resources

Notes by Zenny Jabeera.

Links

• LOOK UK Mentoring Programme
• Education and Student Support – Thomas Pocklington Trust
• Disabled Students’ Allowance – Thomas Pocklington Trust
• The Professionals There to Support You at University – Thomas Pocklington Trust
• MuseScore accessibility
• Sound Without Sight Knowledge Hub
• Sound Without Sight Forum
• Powell Family Foundation

Studying music at university

• Sarah studied Professional Musicianship (now just the popular music performance course). This offered many modules that explore everything from business to music theory.
• Bobby studied music in Oxford, which was very academic, but covered many different aspects.
• Was a massive challenge to go from A-level to university. A-level was already set out and neatly packaged, whereas with Uni there was a lot more independent research to be done. Was beneficial in the end.
• You must advocate for yourself at university.

Asking for help

• Organise meetings with the university or college to establish needs.
• One-on-one support is hugely helpful.
• Be as clear as possible about what you need.
• DSA (Disabled Students Allowance) is funding to help pay for technology, software, assistance, etc. You’d have an assessment which can last up to a couple of hours discussing your disability and what you might need, and then they come back to you with a decision. Previously, it was harder to get iPads and other Apple devices but now it’s getting easier, and they add more things to their list of equipment available each year.
• Thomas Pocklington Trust can offer support in getting DSA.
• If you are looking to study music and are looking for specialist music support to inform you and advocate for what you may need, then RNIB’s Music Team can help. 
• SSPVI: Specialist Support Person for Visually Impaired.
• Good attitudes from educational professionals.
• Need to collaborate and work as a team. 

Things to consider

• Contemporary musicians may prefer to be more vocational rather than being academic and doing A-levels.
• You can still go to uni without high A-level grades.
• Your peers will help.
• Be more vocal about what you need.
• Try to get as involved as possible with student life, not just your course.
• Self-advocacy is important.
• Don’t necessarily need to go to Uni to get into industry.
• Having a music degree hasn’t been too useful when applying for jobs, usually clients look at other things you have done with regards to music such as practical experience. 

Music and Technology

• Accessible software options include Sibelius, Logic, Pro Tools. MuseScore has developed a lot in recent years with regards to accessibility, including some braille music support.
• Use your own equipment that has already been set up for your needs.
• Can also ask peers and friends to support you.
• Universities can also invest in resources and software should you need them. 

Pursuing a career as a musician

• Music can be unstable.
• Keep trying to tap into as many income streams as you can.
• Music teaching and tutoring is a great way to earn, as well as gigs and performances.
• Offering your services to parties and weddings.
• Busking in places such as London.
• Composing music for content creators such as YouTubers, and for films and TV.
• Be adaptable but see what works for you. 
• Managing and expanding network.
• Updating portfolio.
• Attend gigs and industry events.
• Keep a bank of what you feel is your best work.
• Keep creating music.
• Start making connections with peers whilst you’re at Uni. 

Educational Pathways

• Best way to keep as many interests as possible open without restricting yourself is by studying a general music degree rather than a specific performance degree 
• Try to go to a Uni that is vibrant and has a lot going on and try to get involved in as many things as you can. 

Tips for conducting research in music

• Get access to SSPVI (Specialist Support Person for Visual Impairment). 
• TPT can support with non-medical help, which is support from someone who understands your sight condition who can help with using online resources for research. 

VI-confident colleges and universities

• Depends on person, their condition, and what they need.
• Go to different events and open days of different places.
• RNC, New College Worcester are specialist colleges for people with visual impairment.
• However, any university or college is required to make reasonable adjustments.
• Can also join online forums and enquire about experience.

Recommendations for notating music

• Some software options include Sibelius, MuseScore, and Logic.
• Could also use traditional methods such as braille music.  

Social life at university

• Music is already quite a social atmosphere.
• Attend clubs and events, put yourself out there.
• Growing confidence, and learn how you prefer to socialise with others.
• Go to freshers week.
• At uni, people are older and more mature, so experience would be different than school or college.
• From a mobility point of view, it would be beneficial to familiarise yourself with Campus and the town or city where your college/University is located.
• DSA can help with mobility, as can local authorities.

General top tips

• Try to stay positive, and try to find solutions to problems
• Don’t be afraid to explain what you need
• Engage with those around you, and follow what you find interesting, really go for it
• Find out as much info as you can about your Uni or college, and it’s surroundings etc
• Practice self-advocacy as much as you can.

Full transcript

Please note this transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors. 

Hello and welcome to the Sound Without Sight podcast.

In this episode, we host a panel discussion, exploring the educational and professional pathways open to musicians and tips for navigating these with a visual impairment.

We welcome three very special guests onto the panel.

Bobby Goulder, who has built a career as a musician since graduating in 2015.

Sarah Bayley, who is a recent music graduate, Sound Without Sight intern and Look Uk mentor.

And Fiona Waterspring, student support services advisor at Thomas Pocklington Trust.

Joining me as co-host is Megan Adams, student mentor project officer at Look Uk.

This interview was recorded live as part of the Sound Without Sight monthly meetup session for July 2024, featuring questions submitted by our community.

We close the session with a top tip from each of our guests.

We hope you enjoy.

So without further ado, Megan, would you like to introduce the topic for today and our panelists?

Hi, everyone.

It’s so lovely to see so many names.

I am so excited to get involved in this discussion.

So today’s topic has come around through the uni mentoring program that Look provide, and quite a few of our mentees are young people who are really interested in pursuing music as a degree or a career.

And this is sort of our answer to people seeking information on that.

And what Look do is we provide peer support and mentoring, and we just love sharing lived experience to help as many people as possible.

And this is a brilliant case for that.

And we are joined by some graduates of music degrees and also a professional musician who are going to share their lived experience.

And the aim of this is to share information, point you towards advice and guidance, and point you also towards the services that Look, Thomas Pocklington Trust and Sound Without Sight provide.

And yes, we have some lovely panelists here.

And can you please introduce yourselves?

Fiona, can you go first, please?

Sure.

So good evening, everyone.

My name is Fiona Waterspring, and I’m joining you today from Thomas Pocklington Trust.

So just to explain who we are, in case anyone doesn’t know.

So we are a national charity that supports blind and partially sighted students, age 11 plus, but all the way through to university students, with everything and anything education related.

So I’m an advisor for the service.

Although I didn’t study music myself, I do have lived experience of sight loss, and I have been to university.

So I’m really excited to be here tonight and to hear all your questions and to hear the responses from our other panelists.

I will just share a quick link in the chat to our main service home page on our website.

So if you would like to find out more about what we do and how we can help you, all the information is there.

So thank you, Megan.

Thank you, Fiona.

Bobby, can you go next, please?

Of course.

Hello.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Bobby Goulder.

I am a professional musician, so I play the piano for a living, and I’m a vocalist and I do quite a lot of work in theater as a musical director or composer and other bits and pieces like arranging and orchestrating and recording stuff.

So yeah, a few different strands to my existence.

I studied music at university back in 2012 to 15.

And yes, I suppose other relevant info is that I have Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy, which is a retinal condition at the central vision.

So I’ve had that since I was about 10.

So it had quite a big effect on me while I was growing up and, yeah, exploring my musicianship.

Thank you, Bobby.

And Sarah, can you go next?

Yeah.

So hi, I’m Sarah.

I’m a music graduate.

I graduated in 2022.

I did a musicianship degree.

So it was a mix of like a bit of everything really, but I specialized in vocals.

I’m also a mentor for Look Uk, because while I was at uni, like it was really helpful to have a mentor, because I could ask them all the musical questions.

And, you know, that was kind of related to being VI as well.

And actually she had graduated from the same uni I went to.

So it was a perfect match.

And I could ask about those different things that my sighted peers couldn’t.

And I’m also an intern at Sound Without Sight.

So that’s why I’m here.

Lovely.

Thank you, Sarah.

And Sarah is also one of our amazing volunteer Look mentors.

And these are volunteers who give up their time to provide a mentoring partnership.

And that’s something that Look Uk runs.

And if anyone here is interested in having a university mentor, I will put the link in the chat.

And please get in touch.

We are always looking for more mentees.

And yes, just please get in touch.

So, we are going to start our panel discussion.

And we have some questions that have been prepared.

And like Jay said, we have some questions later on that you guys have sent in.

So the first question, Sarah, you’ve already touched on this, saying your degree was Musicianship.

Can you tell me a little bit about why you chose that subject?

For me personally, when I applied to uni, it was my second time trying uni because I wanted to train as a social worker and I was on a Health and Social Care Foundation degree.

And I was like, okay, this really isn’t me and I want to do music.

And I was just getting back into music because I struggled with the A levels and I realized I’m actually quite a contemporary person.

So I started looking around at different contemporary degrees and my friend sent me the link and I was like, oh, maybe I should go for it.

And I looked at that course because I could do a bit of everything.

I could look at business, my music theory, and there were so many different modules in each year to choose from, that it was quite a flexible degree.

And I knew I also wanted to look at creative expression and stuff like that.

And it just gave me the freedom to build my own degree based on the modules available in each year.

Lovely.

Thank you, Sarah.

And Bobby, what course did you study and why did you choose that?

Well, my course was just called music, which is very, very vague, I suppose.

But I applied to Oxford University and was very lucky to get a place there on the music degree.

It was quite an academic degree.

I was quite keen to do an academic music degree covering a few, a bit like Sarah says, covering quite a lot of bases.

Rather than doing a straight performance degree on one instrument for a few reasons.

I suppose one of the other things that turned me off doing a piano degree or, you know, studying one instrument was I wanted to be at university with like lots of other people studying different subjects and get a bit more of a broad experience like that.

And yeah, the idea of studying a range of things.

I’m very interested in, yeah, harmony, composition, orchestration, those sorts of other skills, and a general interest in music history and the development of how music worked and, yeah, how it’s gone through all its amazing developments throughout the decades and centuries.

So I was, yeah, interested in all of that.

I would probably say that it was quite a old-fashioned degree in the end, as maybe you could imagine at Oxford.

But it still gave me like, yeah, an amazing grounding and amazing ability to learn and develop.

So yeah, that’s in a nutshell my degree.

Thanks, Bobby.

And within that, how did you find the transition from A-level to study music at degree level?

How was that for you?

I mean, it was a massive challenge.

I’d say the biggest difference was having to take a lot more kind of personal responsibility for your own learning.

At A-level, I don’t know if everyone here is having similar experience, but I found that A-level was quite neatly packaged and you’ve got all the information at the start of the year.

These are the pieces we’re going to study.

These are the materials that we’re going to use to kind of enhance our knowledge of this music or this particular period or whatever.

Whereas at university, it was still compartmentalized into modules and sections, but you had to do a lot more of your own kind of research and find your own reading.

And there’s a hell of a lot more work, a lot more kind of research to be done.

You know, you would get like a single week to study like all of Wagner, which as people may know, it’s like it takes more than a week to just listen to Wagner’s music, let alone actually go into analyzing stuff and reading around it.

So that was a real challenge.

And then obviously from a VI perspective, getting to grips with a whole new way of working.

Like I couldn’t read normal printed text, so I had to have a lot of help with that and yeah, develop some shortcuts, let’s say.

So yeah, I guess that was probably the main difference being having to be a lot more independent.

But making that transition actually was like a massively, whilst it was hard to begin with, massively beneficial moving forward.

I think as well though, like A levels kind of felt like a memory game.

Like cram all this information into your head in case you need it for the exam.

Whereas like for my degree anyway, it was kind of like, pick something you want to do, then do it.

And like the exam brief was just so different.

I feel like it was a different way of learning that suited me like so much more than the A levels.

I reckon it was kind of similar to if you do a BTEC, that’s kind of what my degree felt like.

Only no one holds your hand when you come to write assignments.

It’s that you said you’ve got to do all that research yourself because everyone’s going to turn in a different assignment, right?

I’d agree that the big difference is taking responsibility for yourself and advocating for yourself as well.

No one’s going to come up to you and go, are you struggling?

You’ve got to reach out to people and make use of the services and then take it from there.

That’s a really brilliant point Sarah, thank you.

The self-advocacy element is something that comes up a lot in mentoring partnerships.

Sort of building on that about asking for help.

How did you guys find the DSA support you were provided with?

Bobby, do you want to go first?

What sort of support were you given from DSA?

So, well, yeah, I started at university, like I said, in 2012.

So that’s quite a while ago, and I’m hopeful and I’m pretty sure that things have moved on quite a lot since then, for the better.

I had a meeting.

Yeah, that’s good.

So I had a meeting a couple of weeks before I started with the kind of single person at the university that was responsible for all access requirements.

And I basically said to them, like, I think for now all I really need is an iPad, just so I can make notes and zoom in to stuff and read PDFs.

And they were like, oh, we don’t really do iPads.

But here’s a load of other stuff, which cost a lot more than an iPad would have cost.

And I didn’t use any of it.

They wanted to give me a lot of clunky desk items, like an extra printer or this arm thing that I could attach a screen to.

And yeah, it was a bit sort of embarrassing kind of being delivered all this stuff.

And I was like, I don’t actually think I need this.

Anyway, so that was slightly frustrating.

But I should say that, yeah, firstly, I’m sure things have got a lot better now.

And I know that there are better services to kind of personalize what people actually need better.

But also my college were really good.

They did sort of ask, we had a couple of meetings saying like, what’s going to help most?

And I actually had somebody come in once a week to like read my texts to me, not text messages, as in my like, yeah, my reading, my books and articles and stuff that I had to read for essays.

So I had a few hours a week with someone one on one who would read to me and I could, yeah, discuss stuff with them, which was amazing.

And I think that was, yeah, I think that was more or less it.

Yeah, like they were still very much getting used to the idea of like providing access for somebody.

So, yeah, I don’t want to give them too much discredit, but it felt like they were learning the ropes.

Like I was the first person there that was trying to do the music degree without, yeah, without seeing so well.

So we all learn together, let’s say.

Thanks, Bobby and Sarah, what about you?

Did you have a similar experience?

Yeah, DSA was quite difficult because I got DSA equipment from my last course, which then wasn’t appropriate for the course I then went on to do.

They were like, well, we’ve given you equipment and you’re going to exceed your allowance.

And I was like, right, okay.

Well, what do I do?

because I’m on a different course and these are the things that I want.

So I had a lot of arguments with them and my uni were really good because they were on my side and they were also good at filling in, in the meantime, while DSA were taking their time.

So yeah, I think like you, Bobby, my uni were very like, yeah, we’ve never had a fully blind person before.

You’re the expert on being blind and we’re the expert on this course.

So we’ve got to meet somewhere in the middle and you’ve just got to tell us what you want, because you can’t read your mind.

Yeah, it goes back to the self-advocacy thing, doesn’t it?

It does.

If you just say like, here’s what I need, then yeah, then that’s all they can really, that’s the best that they’re going to get, isn’t it?

It’s like, you’re the expert on yourself, like you say.

Yeah, like you both said, self-advocacy is a massive topic within all courses, it’s not just music and making sure that you know what you need and have the research behind you.

And that is why things like this is so helpful because you can find out what worked and didn’t work for other people.

Fiona, I saw there was a message in the chat about DSA.

Would you like to quickly say, talk about DSA?

Yeah, of course.

So I’ve put a little bit of information in the chat there, but I’ll talk briefly about what DSA is for anyone who’s not too sure.

So what we’ve been talking about is the short version of disabled students allowance.

So if you’re going to university or studying a degree, and if you have a disability, you can apply for disabled students allowance, which is a pot of funding that comes from the student loans company.

So it’s often in conjunction with the other student finance you have, so your tuition fee loan or your maintenance loan.

And it’s a non-repayable grant.

So it doesn’t matter what your household income is or anything like that.

But it’s a set amount of money that can be used to pay for technology you need to help you with your degree.

And also other kinds of support you might need, like note-taking support, help with accessing the library at university, or with a scribe or a reader and things like that.

So I’ve just put a link there to some information from our website that goes over all the support you can get through disabled students allowance.

I think for students studying anything either technical or something creative like music, it’s really important you look into how disabled students allowance can help you and what can be provided, especially if you’re doing this bit more specialist course where you might need to have certain software related to music that you also need to use, maybe your bank notification software with or your JAWS or something like that.

So it’s really important that students look into this money, it’s there to help you.

And just quickly, the way it works is that you’ll have an assessment once you’ve applied either on the phone or in person, and the assessor will go through all your needs relating to your disability, and you’ll discuss with them over about an hour to two hours in quite a lot of depth what you think you’ll need to help you, and then they’ll come back and let you know what’s available and how it’s all going to work and how your support will be put in place.

So it has changed a little bit over the years, particularly in terms of things like iPads, it used to be a bit more challenging to get Apple products through DSA, but that is starting to change now.

And also the technology available changes literally every year, there’s more and more advanced tech available each year.

So it’s something that we support students quite a lot with disabled students applications.

If anyone would like any support with this or to talk through it in more depth, we’re always happy to help.

So I should have said at the start that I also work at RNIB as one half of their music support officer role.

So if you feel like you would ever benefit from specialist music support.

So I remember when I went to uni, for example, I didn’t know what support I could ask for that was music related.

So just throw my hat in the ring really as an offer of support.

If you feel like that would be a useful conversation to have, then please do reach out.

Thanks Jay.

I know Bobby touched on it briefly, having library support in the form of a reader.

Sarah, did you have any human help that was particularly useful provided either by DSA or through the uni?

Yeah, I did.

I had an SSPVI, which is specialist support for the visually impaired, which makes the QTVI, but at uni, and for some reason they need a different title, I have no idea.

But I didn’t know that was still available until I reached out to Look and was like, I don’t have a QTVI anymore.

I’m like, no, you need this.

So again, I got that from my mentor.

I’m bigging up the program because I’m in it.

That’s great, though, because I didn’t know about Look or what was available.

It’s great that you have someone being like, oh, you should check this out.

It will really help.

Yeah.

And that was funded through DSA.

And she was like a lifeline because whenever I forward something and go, it’s an image.

So I don’t know what they’re trying to, because they were really good.

But it’s like, we’re trying to teach this concept and we don’t know how to make it accessible to you.

Here it is.

And I’m like, well, I don’t know what it is you’re trying to teach me.

I’ve not learned it yet.

Which, you know, so you get stuck in that cycle.

So she sorted all that out.

And like, yeah, they all worked as a team.

And the disabled support team at BIM is quite small.

There was only three of them, so I got to know them all quite well.

And they got to know me really well.

And yeah, just everyone worked together and all the staff across the board had the same attitude of whatever Sarah needs is what we’ll try to give.

So, but that was all kind of facilitated through that SSPVI role because I didn’t always have the answers.

Yeah.

One-

Yeah, that’s a really good point.

Sorry, I forgot to say something that was actually amazing about the support that I got which although I had that like initial frustrating meeting at the beginning where they gave me stuff that I didn’t need and didn’t want to give me stuff that I did need.

Throughout my time at university, they asked for my reading lists in advance and would scan in like all of the books and articles and stuff so that I had it in PDF form.

Obviously, some images weren’t very like screen reader friendly or super accessible, but like at least better than a printed book or article.

So that was an amazing help, which just sort of happened a few weeks in advance.

Occasionally had to sort of chase them up a bit, but like it was a really, really useful thing.

That’s a really good point.

Thank you.

Sarah, you are a braille reader, so how did that go for you getting music transcribed and books transcribed?

So at first, they would buy it in.

I think it was Golden Chord initially that did the transcribing for them.

And then I was a bit like, I can’t be spontaneous with what I want in braille, and everyone else can.

Like they can just whip out their pens and start writing music and whatever, and I can’t.

And my support officer, Dan, was just so determined that I had what I need.

He was just like, yeah, that sucks.

They ended up buying an embosser and Goodfeel and Ducksbury and all kinds of stuff, and they all went on training days.

And the determination within the team was, I’m still to this day, I’m still quite as standard.

And it was in my final year, but they finally got to a point where they were producing it for me in-house.

They couldn’t read it themselves, so it was definitely a collaborative effort between the five of us.

But yeah, it was amazing.

And I still don’t, correct me if I’m wrong, but I still don’t know any other mainstream institution that’s done that, yeah.

Thanks, Sarah.

That’s lovely to hear that the uni was so supportive.

And the next question is, is there anything that you wished you’d done differently, either at uni or in the run up to uni?

And Sarah, do you have anything that you’d wish you’d done differently?

I think it would come back to when I was choosing A levels.

And I think it’s because I had it in my head that A levels are what’s going to get me into uni.

I’m really, with a lot of music, uni’s as well, as long as it’s a level three qualification and you get the UCAS points or whatever, you’ll be able to find one that suits you.

And I wish I’d done that and just never bothered with A level really and just stuck to contemporary, not because of the A level course, but because of the music I like and the musician that I am.

And yeah, that’s kind of what I wish I did differently.

because then I don’t think I would have done health and social care.

I think I ran away from it because I lost a lot of confidence.

But I’m glad I’m back.

I suppose that would come into research and all the different types of courses that are out there and what would resonate best with you.

Yeah, and actually being confident to go to my teachers and be like, I actually don’t want to be doing A level.

So what else can I do?

And I only did that in my final year.

I guess that’s also taking a risk as well.

Yeah, it’s taking a risk and having confidence, which at that age, not a lot of people have.

So, yeah.

Thank you, Sarah.

And Bobby, do you have anything that you wish you’d done differently?

It’s a tough one.

I’m quite pleased with, I’m quite happy with the course that I chose and the university that I ended up going to, I think, and I was already fairly comfortable kind of explaining my condition and the effects of it, but I think you can never go too far with that.

So not just with kind of tutors and, you know, the staff, but also with your peers, because often it’s your peers that actually end up doing, like, just through goodwill and end up helping you the most sort of day to day.

So being a little bit more vocal and, yeah, it’s hard to develop that confidence, but, yeah, no one’s gonna think badly of you if you just explain.

And I think that’s possibly one thing I could have gone further with.

And maybe also in the first couple of years, you know, just getting stuck in with extracurricular stuff as well.

Like, there’s so much music available, so much, or even if it’s not music that you wanna do outside your course, but like, yeah, getting stuck into all walks of student life.

I think, yeah, would have enhanced my experience even more, probably.

But in terms of access, I think I muddled through OK.

Thank you.

And the last question is, are you still using your degree in your career now?

And Bobby, do you wanna go first?

Sure.

I’m gonna say a strong yes and a strong no at the same time.

Yes, I am using lots of the skills that I developed whilst at uni, but particularly the sort of practical things around composition and harmony, orchestration, notation, that sort of thing.

I think the composition module in my degree really helped me, think outside the box a little bit and develop a bit more my own style and voice.

Although I didn’t end up with loads of work that I submitted that I like now that much, it was still a great exercise in just challenging your ideas and developing your ideas.

Then I also learned just a load of great groundwork in how to analyze music, and then also the practical skills that I still use.

In fact, just now before the Zoom, I was working on an orchestration, which I was like, oh yeah, I remember learning this particular technique in those classes at uni.

So yeah, that stuff’s really helpful.

That said, in terms of getting jobs or it being useful, being able to say like, I have a music degree or it being good CV points, I hardly ever use that in conversation.

So if I’m being considered for a role as musical director on something, for example, I will always lead with like the professional experience I have or with the skills that I can bring.

Just saying I did a music degree or I went to Oxford, actually doesn’t really get you that far in terms of securing gigs or securing jobs.

So yeah, and there’s a load of the academic stuff, which I’ve sort of forgotten all about as well, some of the historical stuff.

But yeah, some skills I use all the time, but in terms of CV points or yeah, securing work, it’s often, yeah, not really involved in the conversation.

Thanks, Bobby.

And how about for you, Sarah?

So for me, yeah, I think I have a similar view in that, if you just tell people you got a music degree, it’s kind of like a, and what do you have to show for that kind of situation, which is, which is fine.

And I kind of think that the practical experience and living it and doing it is more important really than having a degree.

So when you, when you, if you decide to do a music degree, think about why you want to do it as a degree in the first place, because there’s so many ways into the music industry.

It’s not like being a doctor, like some people don’t go to uni and they do phenomenally well.

So it’s one of those.

Whereas I, I know that eventually I want to end up in research.

I really enjoy research.

It’s, I’m just so curious to learn different things.

So having that music degree kind of puts me in good stead for that.

And also if I decide somewhere down the line, I want to train as a music therapist, then it’s a, it’s a master’s qualification.

So I’ve got, I’ve got the music degree.

So I feel like everyone’s circumstances are unique, but there’s no pressure to, if you, if all you want in your life is to just, I really want to be a musical.

It doesn’t have to be through doing a music degree, is all I’m trying to say.

Like if you choose to do a degree, there’s, there’s other options to consider, like why you’re doing a degree.

Great, thank you.

Thank you both for sharing.

And I think I’m going to pass over to Jay now for the audience questions.

Thank you both again.

And thank you, Fiona.

Awesome.

Thank you, Megan.

So, yeah, I’m just going to lead us through some questions that we had submitted in advance.

So we’re going to start off with some questions about technology.

So I’ll go to Bobby first as a large print user.

Was there any particular technology you used for the different kind of aspects of a music degree?

So notation, composition and recording?

Yes.

So if we’re talking about music notation, then I’ve used Sibelius for a long time.

But even before I started at university, I was using it in the last few years at school.

So and that’s still what I use all the time to this day.

And for recording, I came to the production and recording side of things much later.

It was pretty much after uni, or maybe it started exploring a bit in my last year.

But I use Logic and still use Logic.

I actually find Logic quite hard visually to use, but the in-built accessibility functions within Mac are good enough that I can zoom all the way in and access it quite well.

I don’t use and haven’t really ever used any extra software like JAWS or full screen readers like that.

But yeah, I found Sibelius and Logic just about, yeah, functionally they do everything I needed to do.

Can be pretty difficult visually, but there are various settings you can adjust within them to make it easier for yourself.

So yeah, hopefully that answers.

Yeah, I might jump in there quickly as well, just with a bit of my own experience.

Mine was similar at uni.

I didn’t find myself using loads of specialist software.

It was more choosing options for mainstream software that had been designed quite inclusively.

So for recording, I was using Pro Tools and for notation, it was Sibelius.

I know these days MuseScore, they’ve done a lot of work on accessibility and have in my, or from what I understand, kind of overtaken Sibelius, certainly in terms of Braille and screen reader support.

But yeah, in my DSA application, although those are mainstream pieces of software, I still kind of advocated for myself to get copies of those to use on my own equipment.

So that, you know, rather than having to use the kind of the, the Macs or the laptops that the music department had, I had my own computer that was set up, you know, for my own access requirements and then had copies of that software on there.

So that might be a useful little hack for some people.

That’s a really good one.

Yeah.

because it’s not just accessible software.

It’s like you have to be able to use your, yeah, your computer, your like home device on these mainstream pieces of equipment, the software, sorry.

Exactly.

So, and Sarah, any technology that you used, whether it is for composition or notation or anything like that?

I used Logic when I was at uni.

But honestly, like recording and production and stuff, it’s not something I’m mega interested in.

So I was a big believer in, you know what?

I’m surrounded by loads of production students, they’ll do it for me.

So I used it as a networking opportunity.

I could do this myself, but you’re my friends.

So I was quite strategic.

My housemate ended up being a production student.

Good choice of housemate.

I know.

I really made use of, I can’t call them resources, can I?

The people around me though.

But yeah, when I had no choice, I did use Logic on my Mac, but it wasn’t funded by DSA or anything.

It was just, that’s what I had.

So that’s what I used.

Cool.

I imagine your uni as well would have invested in some kind of software to support the braille transcription.

I don’t expect you to know what that is, but it might be something for someone listening to consider.

There are options.

Yeah.

Actually, they’ve become a lot cheaper in recent years.

So I would say check out the resources on Sound Without Sight for the automated braille tools.

Likewise, with the large print stuff, we actually put out an article recently, which was all around producing your own large print music using software.

Again, there might be some good stuff in there for you to take or use as inspiration.

So just seeing, I think we’ve covered off most of the tech stuff.

We might come back at the end for some specifics, but just to move on for now to career stuff.

So these are going to mainly be for Bobby, I imagine.

So we’ve got a, it’s quite general, and also quite a specific question from Humberto, who is asking, how stable is a career as a professional musician?

And what do musicians do for income besides gigs and releasing recordings?

Yeah, amazing question.

I mean, music is famously quite an unstable profession.

But if you crack on and believe that you’ve got good skills to offer, then there is actually a lot of avenues for income, of which I’ve tried to tap into as many as I can.

My wife, just for sort of other reference, is an actor and has found that there’s, she keeps saying like, if we have kids, I’m going to make sure they’re musicians rather than actors, because there’s so many more opportunities to make money than acting.

Anyway, so yeah, I mean, so ways to make money.

To begin with, I did pretty much exclusively teaching.

So I loaded up on all of the kind of tutoring websites and yeah, did a lot of piano tutoring, music theory, A-level music, that sort of thing.

So loads of musos do teaching on the side.

And then there’s, yeah, sort of performing at events.

If you get on the books of a few agencies or just kind of reach out to all your networks or if someone’s getting married, say like, if you need a pianist or if you need a singer or whatever, and you gradually build up a network of performing at events.

So weddings are quite a good one or just pubs, bars.

There’s a kind of piano bar circuit in London, which sort of, yeah, in and around those sorts of gigs as well.

I also set up a function band when I was, yeah, a year or two out of uni, and that’s now doing a lot better.

And yeah, that’s quite a good source of income.

Working in the theatre, so there’s a whole circuit of musicians working on shows in the West End or just fringe shows.

Yeah, those are some of the performing ways.

And then you can, maybe it’s slightly harder to get going in this sort of thing, but you can make money composing music for YouTubers or for short films and then maybe if you want to go more into that, then orchestration and composing for some of the bigger films.

Yeah, so there’s a few avenues, but there’s quite a lot out there if you just keep plugging away.

Thank you very much.

I think that that’s really important to stress is that, I guess, almost like an expectation for the music industry that you will be a bit of a jack of all trades.

No one knows everything as soon as you get into the music industry to start with, and you do kind of just have to try a few things, kind of suck it in, see what works for you.

And I think, yeah, being adaptable and trying different things is always going to be a big thing.

It’s good that you mentioned the composition in the background as well.

So doing stuff for sync and library music, I know that’s a big way that people are living at the moment, but it’s difficult because you might not have an immediate income stream from that stuff.

You’re kind of writing music that then sits in a library and waits for someone to use it for something like an advert or something like that.

So it’s just something to bear in mind that there is often a bit of waiting on the back end to get paid for some of this stuff.

And I guess gigs are the more immediate cash in the pocket kind of thing.

Definitely, yeah.

OK, so another question from Natasha mcnaughton asking for any advice from that, you know, at the point of leaving uni and taking those very first steps into a career in the performing arts, is there anything that’s really essential to do at that point, do you think?

I would say that it’s about just, yeah, reaching out to your networks and making your name sort of heard to even if it’s just a few people around you who you think might be vaguely connected to someone who knows someone who might be in the music industry, do you know what I mean?

Just like getting your name there, letting people know that you do music, and you’ll find that stuff comes from unlikely sources.

If you kind of send your CV out to loads of people or, you know, post on Facebook, Instagram being like, hey, if anyone needs this, you know, months later, someone might call you being like, oh, you sent your CV for this thing.

And you said like, who’s this?

What?

Sorry, I don’t remember doing that.

You know, things come from unlikely sources if you just kind of spread the web.

So that’s worth remembering.

I don’t know if that’s…

No, I think that’s totally true.

And also, you know, do what you love.

I mean, there might be a period where you have to do some of that just for fun.

But I think having really good assets and examples of your work to put in a portfolio is always going to be important.

You might get some of that at uni, but also continuing music as a passion and a leisure thing.

But keeping tabs on your best work is a really important thing.

I think, yeah, being in the right place and putting yourself out there is important.

I think my main pathway into recording and producing professionally was just from being at gigs and being noticed by people in the industry.

I happened to go to some gigs, some different bands that I didn’t mean to do this, but the same producer was on those things, then he happened to call me up and he was like, I need an engineer.

I’ve seen you at the gigs that I’ve produced the music on, do you want to come and see the studio?

I think that kind of thing is important, just doing what you love and until stuff comes from that.

Hopefully, that answers your question.

You’ve actually just touched on something that I should have said in the question, is there anything you wish you’d done?

because that’s probably something that I regret is not having a bank of what I feel is my best work.

I was so preoccupied with getting work for other people and doing stuff for other people that emerge a few years later being like, well, I’ve done all this work and I’ve scraped a living, but is there anything here that I’m actually super proud of or that I can show people being like, this is my best thing.

So yeah, if you’re not up to something, then just create stuff based on what you love.

I’d say it’s good advice because then that’s never going to go away.

You’ve always got that to show.

Awesome.

And Sarah, did you have anything to add in terms of taking first steps into a music related career?

I think looking out for different opportunities that are available and start planting the seeds while you’re at uni.

Don’t forget everyone around probably hopes to do something in music.

So make those connections with your peers while you’re at uni because that can lead to opportunities.

But I think at first, it’s one of those things in it.

You take what you get until you’re confident and comfortable enough that you’ve got enough experience.

But I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s worth it though.

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

Now, I agree with that wholeheartedly.

So we’ve got a few questions now around educational pathways, how to set yourself up for a career in music.

One question from Daniel Johnson, who is basically asking, he loves all different kinds of music making, so composing, arranging, producing.

It feels like there are so many options in terms of what he could specialize in at university.

What pathways at uni and beyond would allow Daniel to keep as many interests open as possible without restricting himself?

You’re preaching to the choir here, Daniel.

I’ve had this issue probably all along.

Wanted to keep all the options open, but maybe not knowing exactly what the speciality is.

And so that was a big reason why I chose to do a general academic music degree, like I touched on earlier, rather than a specialist performance degree or a specialist composition degree or something.

And doing it at a university which is very active and very vibrant in terms of extracurricular musical life.

So like even if you chose not to do a music degree, plenty of, yeah, like Sarah touched on earlier, there’s plenty of really, really successful people out there who didn’t even study music.

I worked with a drummer who did engineering, for example.

If you go to uni where there’s loads of projects going on, like if someone’s doing a short film and you could be like, oh, I could do music for that, or like someone’s setting up a band and you could be like, oh, I could play bass for that.

You know, if you just sort of try and get involved in as many things as you can whilst at student level, then you’ve sort of got that groundwork of like knowing what you like doing and knowing what sorts of things that you might want to push further, figuring out what you’re best at.

Yeah.

I’d say just sort of take on everything and try it and see how you get on.

Would be my advice.

Sure.

Thank you.

So we’ve got a question now all around research, the kinds of stuff you do at university.

There’s a lot of research involved.

Elizabeth Eagle is asking whether you have any tips for conducting research in musicology specifically, or maybe more generally just doing research.

Things like navigating archives or research related in general.

You’ve got your SSPVI.

I would book in quite a few slots each week and I’d go, this is where I’m at and this is what we need to do.

We’re going to do some trolling through loads of different archives and stuff like that.

I mean, a good place to start, I think most people would agree, is like Google Scholar and then I’ll just send you down like a research rabbit hole.

I just took over with that question.

I don’t know where I’m going.

No, that’s totally fine.

Maybe Fiona, do you have any tips for or examples of how people have been supported to do research?

Yeah, that’s a good question.

I don’t specifically in music, but I know that particularly if you are needing to go into archives and things like that, through disabled students allowance or possibly directly through your university or the place you’re studying, you will be able to get that human support, we call it.

Sometimes it’s called non-medical help.

That support specifically for you from another individual who understands your sight condition, who can help you with the practical aspects of that.

We know that sometimes students can find it quite daunting if they need to undertake research in that way that might be practically quite difficult for them.

But there is that support available to do that.

Also in terms of using online resources for research, so all the searches that you will do for various papers and things.

Sometimes they can be a little bit difficult to navigate with some of the magnification software people use or screen readers.

But again, as Sarah mentioned, if you’re at university, you will have access to a special support person for vision impairment.

That’s an SSPVI, as Sarah said, who can help you with that.

So I think it’s all about really making use of all the people that are available for you at university to help and also getting scripts or the technology that can help you with accessing that research because it’s really important that students with vision impairment don’t miss out on any of those opportunities just because sometimes there are practical challenges.

Amazing.

Thank you very much.

That was really helpful.

So this might be for you as well, Fiona.

We’ve got a question from Yusuf, or from a couple of people actually, asking whether we’re aware of any schools or colleges in the UK that are especially good at supporting VI musicians, any that have high numbers of Braille music readers or assistive technology users in their music department.

Sure.

So that’s a really interesting question.

We get asked this a lot about all sorts of different courses, who do we recommend and things like that.

And we always have to be a little bit cautious, because sometimes we find that we can have two students at the same university or college, even sometimes doing the same subject, who have got really different experiences, because as we know, everyone with sight loss is different.

And so one person might find things quite straightforward and the support they get is good, whereas another person, because of their specific needs, it might not always be the same level, which I know sometimes that feels a little bit of a frustrating answer, because you want those names of who is really good and who’s maybe not so great.

But what I will say is this is why we say it’s really important to do what you guys are doing now and come to events like this and hear from people like Sarah or like Bobby, who’ve been through this process and hear about what their experience was like.

And not necessarily assume that yours will be the same, you know, for example, Oxford as it was for Bobby, but actually to ask people to kind of give you some recommendations and use that knowledge to then go into things like open days.

So go to the university or college you might want to study at, visit them, talk to as many people as you can, read all the information on their website, that kind of knowledge is power really.

So though we can’t guarantee the specific place is going to be perfect for you, there is that preparation you can do.

Also doing other research online.

So for example, we’ve got things like this, but we’ve also got a Facebook group for blind or partially sighted students.

So sometimes students will go on there and ask, has anyone studied at this university?

What was their experience like?

And other students will tell you who’ve been there and done it.

So yeah, I’m sorry that’s not, we haven’t got that pinpointed answer for you, but I hope that gives you some ideas of how you can find that information you need to make that choice.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it’s a question that I’ve heard a few times at RNIB as well.

And I often say that’s kind of not the way that I recommend thinking about it.

First and foremost, put your best foot forward and what you want to do, where offers that experience, because any university should accommodate your access requirements, should make adjustments.

So yeah, there’s that.

Having said that, there will be some universities that are more used to doing that than others.

So yeah, like Fiona was saying, go to open days and make your own judgment when you communicate with the department there, whether you feel like they’ll be open and give you an easy experience with getting what you need.

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, Jay, especially with what you say about all universities should accommodate students with a vision impairment, because as many of you will know, you’ve got the right to have reasonable adjustments if you’re studying in the UK through our Quality Act and the right to get the support you need really.

You shouldn’t ever assume that a university isn’t going to offer that support when there is that requirement that they will, but it’s all about doing that research and seeing what we think will work best.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much for that, Fiona.

I’m going to come back to one from Rosal Potts asking for specific recommendations for notating music, whether that’s technical or person support, actually getting your musical ideas down on a page.

Bobby, do you have any suggestions there?

Well, I can say that I’ve found Sibelius very useful, and I’ve made that work as a really good option for me.

But I should also say that I haven’t really tried any other options, so I don’t have a great comparison that I’m able to do.

But Sibelius, I found, is great.

You can zoom in to the page as much as you need.

You can zoom in on certain bars.

You can have the score in a panoramic view, so you don’t have to keep navigating around the pages, which is something that I found a bit hard.

There are various things that you can do in the house style, where you can make the bar numbers bigger, or make the title bigger, or colour code certain type of text, and that sort of thing, just to make it a bit easier to navigate.

There’s obviously the playback function, that as you write, you can kind of do everything with keyboard shortcuts as well.

So yeah, I found it really useful just sort of spending an hour or two setting up my own handy, nifty keyboard shortcuts, so that I don’t have to be faffing around in drop-down menus and stuff.

So that’s saved me a lot of time and headache, eye ache.

So yeah, and at some point, Jay, I will do that article on the musical notation and accessibility in Surveillance.

But that would be great.

Everyone can look forward to that because actually there aren’t like loads and loads of resources online for this kind of stuff yet.

And that’s one of the reasons behind Sound Without Sight really is to pull everyone together and try and generate that content.

Sarah, did you have anything to add there in terms of communicating and writing down your musical ideas?

I was old school and just used music braille because I liked having something physically to hold.

Like I use my ears so much that I feel like they get tired and sometimes they just don’t want to hear it.

So yeah, I had a Perkins and one of those, what were they called?

You know, those like little label-y things.

I used to pull one of them out sometimes and people are like, what are you doing?

I’m like, monitoring business.

And create little sticky labels and stick them on my clothes and on my bag.

And people are like, you know, you got stuff stuck to you?

And I’m like, yeah, because I did it.

Yeah, I got very creative with the things I did.

Amazing.

No, I’m glad to hear it.

And I think that that’s a skill, right?

You have to be creative.

So one of the things that came out of our last meetup actually was an example that Andre Louis gave of using logic to notate stuff.

So kind of not getting too bogged down in the, you know, the layout on a page, but using logic to record with the kind of auto quantization on.

So you just play in according to a click and it will kind of snap stuff.

And then I wondered whether there might be a role, whether it’s person support or whatever, someone who can just tidy that up in terms of presenting the notation in a useful way, whether there’s any precedent for that, I’m not sure.

But it might be that if you really struggle just to write notation, I know I really struggled to read staves.

And yeah, I was interested to hear more about that, just recording your stuff using MIDI in logic and then exporting a score from there.

Yeah, that’s definitely possible.

And I’ve seen composers do that as well, that they have a very clear kind of aural idea of what they want to sound like, and maybe not such a grasp of what it should look like as clear notation.

And the logic scores that they generate, they get all the notes right and all the rhythms right.

Sometimes it looks a bit funny from a sort of copyist point of view.

But there are services out there, doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific VI thing, but there are kind of music notation, music preparation services that specialize in kind of making your music score kind of look really, really presentable so that it’s kind of, it can be perfectly sight read at first go by a good sight reading player.

Cool.

Yeah.

So that’s great.

It sounds like there are some solutions there if you are just not confident with the visual layout, for example, of what you’re notating.

That concludes the questions that have been submitted ahead of the session.

We now open up for any further Q&A or reflections from attendees.

Our intern, Zenni, leads us through this section.

Yeah.

I’m just going to start off by saying that was a really, really insightful discussion.

I wish that there was something like that around when I just finished school and looking into university and music and stuff like that.

But yeah, I mean, what did you guys think?

Hi, it’s Daniel here.

I was just kind of likewise reflecting on it.

I just think it’s really nice to, I mean, in my case, finally be around people that really seem like they’re like-minded.

Absolutely.

I mean, I remember going to uni or even before that, feeling like I was the only VI person to be doing music stuff.

That’s kind of the ethos behind Sound Without Sight as well, is giving people a kind of focal point to try and collaborate a little bit and not feel quite so isolated.

So, no, very, very glad that you feel that.

I think starting uni for me just feels like yesterday.

I remember being in so much shock.

I was like, in freshers week.

I remember for me, I wanted to do music as an A-level subject, because I did it in GCSE.

But then the school that I was going to, to like do something for my education, were unable to facilitate for me to do music, which was quite sad.

But, you know, it is what it is.

And yeah, that’s why I would have kind of loved to have something like this, or like to have known of kind of somewhere I could turn to to kind of obviously now, I know that that’s not right and that, you know, like they should have told me that before and there’s stuff in place for that.

But, you know, at the time I didn’t.

So, but there’s so many different pathways into music.

And I think that this discussion is really showing that, you know, it’s not, you know, as much as education is great, it doesn’t have to be an academic pathway.

You know, there’s a few different routes into music, which is really lovely, which is really cool.

Yeah, plenty of routes into the professional scene without doing an academic degree in it.

Kind of an unrelated question.

I was wondering, having just sort of done my A-levels and BTECs and not really kind of released any work, I was wondering how can I actually go about getting a portfolio together.

So you mean in terms of getting your own music out into the world?

Yeah, absolutely.

So if you, I don’t know if you’re kind of used to recording your own stuff or yeah, putting demos together in something like Logic or…

I mean, to be honest, all of my work is kind of done digitally.

I use a couple of different DAWs and it’s all done through that.

Okay.

But you have some kind of, you have the means to record and produce.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, lots of people use things like SoundCloud or there’s, you can set up your own YouTube channel or just kind of post things on social media is how a lot of people are doing it these days.

Jay, you probably have a bit more insight into the sort of production releasing world.

Yeah.

I think a lot of it is just doing what you love, having fun, just make stuff, just keep making stuff.

If you enjoy making music, then I guess that shouldn’t feel like a chore too much, and you’ll keep doing it and you’ll naturally improve.

Daniel, I noticed when you signed up, you said that you’d recently created a beat that you wanted to share.

Oh, sweet.

If you would like to do that, I would suggest perhaps posting it to our forums.

Obviously, no pressure to do that, but it’s something that might be able to use this group to kind of give you feedback on.

Yeah, I’d be keen.

In terms of platforms, Jay, what was your…

I’ve just off the top of my head thought of SoundCloud and then the usual YouTube and social media, but is there anything else like Bandcamp maybe?

Yeah, I mean, Bandcamp is good if you’re looking to make a bit of money as an indie musician.

You’ll get by far the most revenue using Bandcamp because most of the money goes to you directly if people buy your stuff.

If it’s just getting demos together to share with people, people do still use SoundCloud or even Dropbox.

But SoundCloud is good in that you can take away people’s ability to download stuff if you don’t want people to.

But yeah, have fun making stuff and I guess around that, once you’ve got the content and the music, you can then maybe work with someone or do it yourself, create some artwork, start writing about yourself and what makes you, tell your story a little bit, what makes you an interesting and unique musician, because you need that unique selling point if you want to be a recording artist.

It’s starting your development as an artist is, I guess, in tandem with making music, this is something you’ve got to do.

Yeah, sure.

It’s really useful to just have one link that you can send people and go like, this is my stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How did you find social life in university?

Yeah, I think that’s actually quite a good question because I think a lot of people struggle socially at uni.

You know what, one of the wonderful things about music is that music is social, right?

People come together, they go to gigs, they go and end up on nights out after a gig.

It’s a very social atmosphere.

So, at first, I really struggled socially for a variety of different reasons.

And so, the way I kind of got around it was like I would, I went to a lot of extracurricular clubs and cornered people one to one.

And then I started making friends from there.

My best friend that I still talk to, like that’s how I made friends with her.

And actually, we made friends because I was in a really busy hall and I just shouted, I need a guide.

And she was like, I’ll guide you.

She only confessed the other week that she agreed to do that because she didn’t believe I was blind and she wanted to find out.

So, but yeah, I think some of it is kind of growing in confidence, but also learning how you socialize with others and drawing on that.

And, you know, you might prefer one-to-one interactions, you might prefer to be in a group.

There’s no right way to socialize.

It does take a lot of energy at first, but that’s not a VI thing, I don’t think.

I think that’s just that everyone’s new at uni, and that’s why freshers exist, so that people can get to know each other.

So go to your freshers week.

I’d endorse basically everything you just said there, Sarah.

That was actually the thing I was most nervous about and the thing I found hardest, especially for the first, yeah, the first weeks and months.

But it goes back to what I said earlier about like, you have to just be comfortable explaining your position to people, because if you say, like, you know, when I come into the, like where we have dinner or like come into a busy pub, like I’m not going to be able to see who’s there.

So like, you know, if you explain, people will make a bit of an effort, hopefully to be like, oh, hey, we’re over here.

So, yeah, that’s definitely that’s the best thing you can do.

You’ve got to just explain.

Yeah.

And I think the uni experience is a lot different because people are older, a little bit more mature.

So you’re more likely to, you know, even if you’ve had a hard time at school, like a lot of us have, like, uni is where that door starts to open.

And you’re like, oh, my God, people will be my friend.

And yeah, my social life at uni, if I lived that now, it’d be very interesting because, like, yeah, you’ve just got to do it and meet people.

Joining stuff is a really good point, Sarah.

Like, yeah, my best friends in first year were from, I joined an a cappella group and I didn’t have to worry about who was going to be there because I knew who was going to be there.

It was the same room twice a week, same guys and yeah, just sort of made friends with them and that develop confidence.

So just sort of, yeah, go on from there socially.

That was a really big topic for me as well.

It’s like, how am I going to fit in and how much do I want to identify with being partially sighted and all that kind of thing.

And it is a big topic.

And Fiona, I saw you just came off mute.

Yeah, I just thought I’d add a little bit there about the practicalities of getting yourself around campus and around the town or city that you’re going to be living in, especially for students who either are using a log cane or have a guide dog or just need a bit of extra help with mobility.

It’s really important to students that if you possibly can, you try and familiarize yourself with the surroundings you’re going to be in, be it the buildings that you’re going to be doing your course in, or the town that you’re going to be living in, or the routes from your accommodation to your university, because that can make it a lot easier for you socially when you have that confidence as much as you’re able to do that independently, or to also be able to confidently ask for help getting home after a night out and things like that, as well as of course using local buses and the trains and things like that.

It is really hard when you’re going to somewhere new, and you’re trying to worry about your course and getting your head around all that.

Then you’ve also got to think about your mobility and how you’re going to get from A to B.

But there is also a lot of support out there available.

That’s something which disabled students allowance can also help with is mobility support with learning routes to and from your accommodation to where you’re going to be studying, and around your campus, and there can sometimes be help from local authorities with other daily living stuff, with getting around the town center, getting to shops and things.

So it’s really important if you think you’re someone who needs that kind of support with your mobility to prepare for that and look into those options so that you can basically set yourself up to have the easiest time of socializing you can from that perspective.

That’s super, super useful, Fiona.

Thank you very much.

So I guess we’ve got a hand up from Molly Downs.

Yeah, I just wanted to say it’s kind of less of a question, it’s more of like just a comment really.

I just wanted to kind of say that I thought the whole interview would really like inspiring really to me, just to be able to hear everyone’s thoughts because when I first kind of realized that I had sight loss and stuff, I kind of thought, oh my god, I’m not going to really be able to do anything in the future.

And then kind of like gradually as the years have kind of progressed, I’ve realized that well, there is actually a lot of things that you can do regardless of like your sight and your vision, you know.

So I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming in all that lot and yeah, it was really inspiring.

Oh, that’s very, very nice to hear.

Thank you very much, Molly.

No, that’s great.

I mean, that’s why we’re here.

That’s why we’re doing this.

I don’t know whether Bobby and Sarah, you had a similar experience, but for me, it was very much feeling quite alone in music making when I was young.

So yeah, I wanted to try and show that you’re not.

And there are solutions, you know, you don’t have to feel like you reinvented the wheel or coming up with solutions for the first time, because some people will have found solutions before you.

Yeah, the best advice I ever got was just focus on what you can do.

There’s always going to be stuff, whether you’ve got sight loss or not, there’s always stuff that you find hard.

So just if you focus on what the things you can do, then yeah, you can’t go wrong.

Yeah, and just a quick plug as well for Sound Without Sight and our Knowledge Hub, if you feel like you’ve got a solution that we’ve not spoken about today, please do feel free to upload that so everyone can see that.

So we’ve got two hands up, we’ve got Megan first and then Jaylen after.

Yeah, I was just going to say in the chat, there’s a question from Kira saying, in college and university, do you have LSAs?

So when you say LSA, I’m guessing you mean learning support assistance.

Sometimes it might be that, sometimes it might be a classroom assistant or a teaching assistant, they’re all kind of the same thing with different words.

So that’s the kind of phrase that we’d use in school or college, and that would usually be like a member of staff who would be with you in your learning and help you with whatever you needed practically doing.

Like accessing your materials for learning or helping you get around the classroom and things.

Yeah, that’s true.

Yeah, so that would definitely be there in college.

Yeah.

But if you went to university, just the names of things change a little bit.

So you’d have someone who’s called either a scribe or a note taker or an access assist.

Oh, that’s helpful.

Something like that.

So yeah, that kind of support absolutely is there at university and college.

It’s just the names of things are a little bit confusing.

But if that’s anything you guys have more help with, we’re happy to help you.

Yeah, that’s good.

because in school I have, in my school, they’re really good.

They have like a resource where like all the kids, like there’s multiple VI kids at my school.

And we can all go in and like get modification as it was sent in advance, like either on a memory stick or as a hard copy or emailed.

And then like the teachers are really good at sending mod.

And then like sometimes in lessons we’ll have LSAs.

Like in most of our lessons, especially when we get to GCSE or when you’re new to the school, like they’ll come into like our lessons and like, they might take notes, but normally we take notes.

And then they’ll just like describe what’s happening on like the board or something.

Yeah, that’s all really, really useful support, isn’t it?

So you definitely that would continue in some way or another all the way through education.

I’m guessing they can like, if I go into like, because I’m actually really into composing music, I’ve actually recently done a school competition.

At some point I want to release on Spotify, so stay tuned for that at some point.

My pop star name is Blaze, just to put it out there.

But yeah, I do a lot of composing, so I also do it with one of my piano teachers.

So I just seem to be someone who can help them in logic, because that’s what my LSAs do as well.

Absolutely.

I’m sure.

They should be able to.

It’s good to have someone who actually knows the specific software that you want to use.

It’s one thing having someone read the board to you or everyday lessons and stuff, but typically that person probably wouldn’t be able to be like, yes, if you go into the edit window and scroll under transitions, you know.

If I said, can you quantize this and then make this do this with the tempo and this, they’d be like, I don’t know how to do that.

Pull up a multi-band compressive.

Do you mind creating a new vocal track and just putting it, no, I can’t hear it, I don’t know how to do that.

I’m going to have to collect the teacher.

So we’re wondering if there’s any suitable higher education or university college that focus on music performance that can offer support for blind and neurodiverse individual.

I mean, again, I think I would, I’d like to reframe that if we can to, I guess, first and foremost, looking at the course content and then, and then what adjustments individual universities might be able to make.

Having said that, I know the Royal National College for the Blind, for example, do run an audio production and music course that might be one to look into.

Can you say again, Royal?

A Royal National College for the Blind, RNC in Hereford.

There’s also New College.

New College Worcester.

Okay.

Definitely have a look.

They would be the two specialist routes that come to mind.

There are also other colleges that I was looking into going into that seem like they could support blind and visually impaired people, but they’re not like they are more mainstream.

There’s the Academy for Contemporary Music.

It’s ACM.

That’s quite a contemporary music college.

It’s similar to them now, isn’t it?

Yeah.

I mean, Jim, if your son sounds like he’s a bit of a piano whiz at quite a young age, there’s also, I mean, you would have heard of these, I’m sure, but the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music, those three are very…

Yeah, I know, but these are very highly competitive.

It’s really hard to get in anyway.

So it’s always worth a go.

Yeah, definitely, yes.

I will say with those conservatoires, they’re good.

They also often have a junior program that they might, you might have success kind of testing the water on the junior programs.

It might also be worth looking for inclusive ensembles throughout the UK.

For example, there’s the National Open Youth Orchestra and all their connected ensembles that are specifically kind of aimed at inclusion for everyone.

And there might be routes through going for those opportunities and those ensembles that advertise themselves as inclusive.

They might be plugged in to conservatoires potentially.

Conservatoires often also have scholarships for underrepresented communities.

So I wouldn’t be put off by the perception that conservatoires are very competitive.

Got it.

Thank you so much.

Just worth looking into what kind of access they’re able to give.

It should be good, but yeah, it’s just worth having the conversations before.

And Jaylen, your hand is back up and we’ll make this the last question.

Okay.

I was going to ask, do you get funding for people with VI?

So for example, to provide different devices for us?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we’ve put together some information regarding music funding.

A lot of it depends on your age and what kind of thing you want to do.

So for people under the age of 18, the Amber Trust are normally the organization that we would signpost to.

They can support tuition and a few other strands of work as well.

Once you get over the age of 18, then there’s RNIB.

They currently have the Elizabeth Eagle Bot Memorial Fund, which are small grants targeted at musicians who are looking to become professional, which sort of support them in their development.

But as far as I know, they’re for 18 plus.

There may well be other grants and foundations who can support.

Maybe they don’t advertise specifically as VI music, but definitely worth exploring what grants are available generally for young people.

And also looking at places like Youth Music, they have quite general inclusive opportunities.

Some of those include funding and some don’t, but definitely worth.

So if I were to go to a college for music and for people with VI, what colleges would you suggest?

Again, I would say look at the courses and look at the colleges that you would like to go to.

There will be some like New College Worcester and the Royal National College that will be naturally set up to support, but also don’t write off mainstream routes either, because every educational institution has a responsibility to support whoever wants to study there.

Thank you.

Someone in the chat said you can look into the Pearl Family Foundation.

Yeah, that was me.

I know they provide grants for assistive equipment, but you could look into whether that would also cover assistive tech that would help you with your music.

OK.

Thank you.

So I’m going to draw the kind of panel part of the interview together now and thank all our panelists very much for their time.

I was wondering if you could each leave us with one top tip to take away and we’ll go to Bobby first.

I would say try and stay positive about your situation and come to everything with an attitude of like, how can I do this rather than sort of saying like, oh, I can’t do that because of this.

So finding solutions rather than problems and yeah, explain explaining yourself in a positive way can be a really, really compelling thing rather than viewing it as a kind of barrier or something that someone has to kind of work extra hard in order to accommodate.

Yeah, sometimes it can actually be a good thing and people can be excited to work with someone that has a different approach.

Yeah, there’s probably a few different nuggets of information in there, but yeah, just stay positive and don’t be afraid to explain yourself.

Thanks so much.

And Sarah?

Engage and follow the things that you find interesting.

Find something that you are really passionate about and just go with it and follow it.

You only get what you put in, so just really go for it.

Thanks so much.

And Fiona?

I think my main piece of advice would be that you kind of can’t prepare too much for university really in every sense of the word.

So find out as much information you can about the course you think you want to study, the town it might be in, what kind of support is going to be available to you and how you’re going to access that.

And although that can all seem really daunting, information and knowledge is power.

And my guide dog is making a very loud noise in the background, so I hope you heard that.

But yeah, just go into university feeling excited, ready for new experiences and knowing that there is support out there for any challenges that you might come across.

Thanks so much.

And Megan, thank you for co-hosting with me.

Thank you.

It’s been so lovely.

And I just want to say that I think my tip is to practice self-advocacy as much as possible before uni, just so you’ve got that basis and practice what you want to say, so you feel confident when you get there.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Sound Without Sight podcast.

Sound Without Sight is a community driven online knowledge hub, collating information and resources to support blind and partially sighted musicians and audio engineers to break down access barriers.

If you’re a visually impaired musician or audio engineer, why not share some solutions you’ve found on our knowledge hub?

You can learn more and get involved at soundwithoutsight.org.