Lime Aloud Music System for the Blind

A Whole New Way for the Blind to Read and Write Music

Compatible with Windows 10 and earlier, 32-bit & 64-bit.

Lime Aloud marries access technology with the tried and true Lime notation editor software. For decades, musicians all over the world have prepared high quality editions of their musical ideas with Lime. Now blind music students, composers and arrangers can too!

Lime Aloud works together with the JAWS for Windows screen reader software. When you order Lime Aloud, you also receive two mainstream software titles: the Lime notation editor and the SharpEye Music Reader for music OCR.

You can create and print editions of your own musical ideas or use Lime and Lime Aloud to study pieces from others. New material can be created using the Lime editor, imported from NIFF files made with SharpEye or via Lime's MusicXML import function. MusicXML files can now be exported from a growing number of music notation programs including Finale and Sibelius.

Reading Lime Notation Files with Lime Aloud?

With Lime Aloud, you can navigate through a musical score using standard cursor keys. Your PC plays each note or chord and verbally describes related annotations such as accents, staccato marks, lyrics and ties via the JAWS screen reader software.

Use Lime Aloud to learn new pieces. Play selected sections of any Lime notation file at a practice tempo to facilitate memorization. You can ask Lime Aloud to play a single note, all notes in a particular part, or even all notes in all parts at any given point in the piece.

Lime Aloud can report the current part, voice and staff, current bar and beat, name of current part and more whenever you ask.

Creating and Printing Lime Notation Files with Lime Aloud?

Set your desired rhythmic value and then enter the desired pitch or pitches all from your PC keyboard. Optionally connect a musical keyboard to your system and play pieces in tempo to a metronomic pulse. (See Yamaha PSR-E433 61-key portable keyboard. Lime automatically converts what you play into the equivalent musical notation. Print the results for your teacher, student or colleague.

Lime Aloud System Requirements
Minimum system requirements for Lime with Lime Aloud are effectively the minimum requirements for running your version of Windows and of the JAWS for Windows screen reader. Additional memory and a faster system processor will improve performance but Lime and Lime Aloud will run on any Windows machine from Windows98 through Windows7. Support for Windows8 pending.

To use Lime with Lime Aloud you need the following:
A computer with a processor speed of at least 500 MHz running Windows 98 or later. Both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems are supported
JAWS for Windows Standard or Professional, version 7.1 or later
At least 128 MB of memory
6 MB of hard disk space for Lime Aloud's program files. More hard drive space will be needed for the music files that you create, however, Lime files are typically less than 100 KB each.
MIDI playback device such as the Microsoft Wavetable synthesizer included with most soundcards
Optional but recommended: Yamaha PSR-E433 61-key portable keyboard or comparable electronic musical keyboard with general MIDI sounds attached directly via USB or to a MIDI interface such as the MIDISPORT.