Music
Native Instruments’ new keyboard range is a game-changer for those who rely on touch and sound to find their way around a tune.
The long history of blind or visually impaired musicians is proof that lack of sight needn’t be a barrier to pursuing a career in music. In fact, there’s scientific proof that the blind or visually impaired experience a heightened sense of hearing and touch – qualities that can certainly work in the budding musician’s favour. But while the digital revolution has ushered in new techniques of music-making, some of the old-fashioned tactile qualities of electronic equipment have been lost – banks of buttons, knobs and sliders replaced by sleek, downsized dynamic controllers, or touch-screen software. Not good news for visually impaired music makers who rely on feel to understand their kit.
The situation is improving however, thanks to pioneering kit such as Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol – a range of keyboards with touch-sensitive rotary encoders and auditory feedback functionality built in as standard. It’s been hailed by leading visually-impaired musicians variously as “game-changing”, “revolutionary” and “like a blind has been lifted in a dark room”.
Encouragingly, it’s not the only advancement in music technology that is helping talented visually-impaired musicians to better overcome the obstacles that can frustrate them. From improved accessibility in top-end digital audio workstations such as Pro Tools to the development of futuristic artificial vision devices, and the powerful accessibility functions we now take for granted in Apple products, visually-impaired pros in the music industry report that tech is finally starting to catch up with the incredible levels of dexterity, invention and energy they summon every day in order to do what they do.
Nate Barnes is a Connecticut-based professional drummer, keyboardist, producer and sound designer, who hasn’t let being registered blind since the age of 10 prevent him from going on to play with everyone from George Clinton to Judy Collins and Stevie Wonder. “In the rush to make everything smaller and more powerful we got left behind for a while,” he says. “But now that’s changing."
Staying in the moment
Speak to many visually-impaired musicians or DJs and you learn they know their equipment by touch, by sound and by experience. When they feel the flow, they can play and perform just as deftly, powerfully and passionately as any sighted person can. It’s instinctual, intuitive, emotional – a meeting of muscle memory and sheer self-expression. But should there be a certain parameter that needs changing on their gear, the design of which takes for granted a user’s capacity to find their way around principally by eye – and this applies particularly to the often-intricate realm of music production – then their flow can suddenly be stemmed.
“It doesn’t matter which instrument you’re creating with,” says Barnes, “it’s very important to stay in the moment. The moment is very fragile.” In the infuriatingly fiddly navigation of a menu, or the trial-and-error adjustment of a certain effect or filter, a potentially brilliant idea or performance can fade away into the ether.
That’s one of the areas where Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol is having a transformational effect. Quite simply, it talks to you. From the power on-switch to the vast selection of individual sounds, effects, options and tools, traverse through the various functions of the keyboard and a voice enunciates in plain language at all times exactly where you are and the different places you can go. “If you touch a button, it tells you exactly what it is,” says Barnes, who with some of his old equipment had grown accustomed to such unscientific techniques as counting the clicks of dials to tell where he was. “You don’t have to keep track of your menus,” he continues. “It allows me to be more independent without having to rely on my engineers. I can tweak my sounds now, by knowing exactly what the button is and what it does.”
Voiceover technology isn’t something new – there has been software available in the past designed to help visually-impaired musicians. “But the problem was that the sounds weren’t up to par and the feel of it wasn’t really up to par,” Barnes explains. “It was very mechanical.” With Komplete Kontrol – which it’s important to note isn’t designed specifically for visually-impaired musicians, but for all musicians, including the visually-impaired – Barnes can now create top-end industry standard pieces every time, without breaking that all-important moment. “With Native Instruments it’s leveling the playing field,” he says.
Night vision
Leeds' Laura Jones was just 25 and making her breakout as an acclaimed house and techno DJ/producer when she was diagnosed in 2008 with a rare condition called Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy, where the central part of the retina slowly deteriorates. She has dug deep to continue to build a flourishing career in spite of her condition, launching her own label Sensoramic and performing at parties all over the world in the process. Yet significant changes and sacrifices in her life have been many. She can no longer drive, and she can’t read books, watch films or TV, or see pretty much anything in detail in the same way as she was once was able to – including the titles of vinyl records when she’s DJing in dimly lit clubs.
"I buy stacks of vinyl yet I’m not able to properly see to play them,” she says. “I’m not a set planner, I very much work off the vibe of the crowd in the moment. I just can’t read the text quickly enough to be able to respond as quickly as I’d like to. To compensate I have an intern who’s helping to digitize my record collection, so that I’m able to play the music on a CDJ.”
I buy stacks of vinyl yet I’m not able to properly see to play them
So far as Jones is aware, until now there has been a conspicuous lack of dedicated aids tailored to those in the music industry with visual impairments. “So it’s refreshing to hear that Native Instruments are pioneering their Komplete Kontrol range,” she says, “it really is about time things started moving forward in this way.”
Jones is able to describe first-hand experience of another innovative piece of kit that could in time prove invaluable to visually-impaired musicians, after she was invited a few years ago by its Israeli designers to help test an emerging new product called OrCam – portable, artificial vision devices that allow visually-impaired people to understand text and identify objects through audio feedback. She’s hopeful that, with further development, it will have vast potential both in her everyday life, and also in certain, very specific situations as a musician.
“The trial of OrCam was incredibly positive and it’s great to see these types of technologies are making their way on to the map,” says Jones. “It’s a really intelligent piece of kit that doesn’t require you to wear any crazy lab-looking specs that make you look out of place, you can simply attach the small camera to the glasses you already wear and it will read the names of people back to you or the food in your cupboard. Or, yes, hopefully one day vinyl in a dark DJ booth.”
Accessibility for all
“I’m an advocate of non-bespoke technology as much as possible, so my rig is a standard Macbook Air, an iPhone and Komplete Kontrol MK2,” says Andre Louis, a London-based pro composer, session keyboardist and self-proclaimed “tech geek” who has been registered blind since the age of four. “The Mac and iPhone have VoiceOver built-in,” he continues, “so I could use any Mac, any iPhone and any Komplete keyboard if a few prerequisites were in-place beforehand.”
Thanks to VoiceOver – which can be turned on simply by asking Siri – Louis’ iPhone and Mac have become invaluable in every area of his work. “To be honest, these days it’s fairly easy to do what I need to do with just those two items. From banking to email, from texting to composing music, computers and phones are the best tools for the job.”
Louis was introduced to the Native Instruments ecosystem by its designer Tim Adnitt back in 2016, when he became one of the first visually-impaired players to help test Komplete Kontrol. He has been an evangelist ever since. “I was blown away by its ease-of-use, its accessibility and how it was able to bring hands-on control to otherwise inaccessible, graphical plugins and elements that I would have never been able to use without the keyboard to aid me. I jumped, feet-first on the bandwagon and most people that know me, know that’s not what I’m known for.”
In the rush to make everything smaller and more powerful we got left behind for a while
In a wider sense, Louis is pleased to know that there are companies beginning to understand that accessibility “isn’t just for Christmas”. As he puts it: “You build accessibility into your products, you benefit more than just a minority of persons. Let’s take Komplete as an example. By building in speech when browsing instruments, you don’t just benefit the visually-impaired, but people with chronic dyslexia, people that are far from their monitor but still want to be able to preview, load and play sounds and even more that I haven’t covered.”
There’s an important point Louis wants to make though – and this is a sentiment echoed by all of the musicians interviewed for this article. Technology for the visually-impaired helps speed up his workflow and make him more productive. But don’t assume for a second that he wouldn’t still be playing – and playing as well as ever – had none of it been invented. His journey in the dark has made him stronger as a musician and he doesn’t dwell on any of it.
“I don’t regret the learning curve I went through to get to where I am today,” asserts Louis. “Not having everything handed to you from the get-go makes you appreciate what you did have – and try not to take it for granted.”
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