Blind kids with 'perfect pitch' find friendship and harmony through song

Braille music camp for blind and visually impaired children celebrates 40 years Fri 3 Jul 2026 at 7:03am On a surprisingly mild winter's morning, the lyrics of an old English nursery rhyme flood through the halls of a Southern Highlands private school, sung by a young choir. Rather than traditional sheet music, the group's impressive pitch and timing are directed using thick, white paper imprinted with braille. That is because each member of the National Braille Music Camp choir is either blind or visually impaired. "[The camp] is a week of playing music and singing with people who know how I live my life," 14-year-old Morgan Tyrrell said. The Tamworth local lives with Stage Four Coats Disease — a rare condition where the tiny blood vessels in the retina develop abnormally, leading to vision loss or blindness. Ms Tyrrell first attended the program, which is run at Frensham in Mittagong, south of Sydney, four years ago to deepen her knowledge of braille music. "It makes me happy as it is something I can do," she said. "I love all the socialising, inside jokes, friendship group moments you can make at this place." Handmade braille sheet music Developed in the 19th century, braille music is a specialised tactile notation system that allows blind and visually impaired musicians to read, write, and compose music. It uses the standard six-dot cell but assigns unique meanings to the dots to represent pitches, rhythms, and expressions. Braille music is one of the classes offered at the annual National Braille Music Camp, along with music technology and instrumental workshops. The program, supported by peak body Vision Australia, was established 40 years ago by Roma Dix and her blind husband Ian Cooper to improve the accessibility of braille music education. "Music is terribly important to the blind," the now 92-year-old Ms Dix said. "The brain has got one little lump of brain ready to receive visual stimuli and another bit ready to receive oral stimuli … when there's no visual stimuli, the oral bit takes over. "That's why you'll find a number of these children and the staff here have got perfect pitch." Ms Dix said putting on the community-funded program had been hard work at times. "We'd braille out the soprano parts, and then the alto, and then the tenors and the basses, and I'd copy them all off … and I'd staple them together and make books," she said. "I remember one day I made 500 sheets." Pathway to music careers Hundreds of primary and high school-aged students from across the country have attended the camp over the years, with some former students like Ben Clarke going on to music careers, including as a jazz pianist and teacher at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). "Music has been in my life since before I could talk, really … but when I came to camp in 1992 at 10 years old, I did not know braille music," Mr Clarke said. Based in Perth, Mr Clarke said both he and his peers experienced "a sudden, great love and passion" for braille music during the program. "It's a very safe space where people can come and maybe not feel so judged or ostracised or alienated because everybody around them gets them," former student turned camp instructor Seth Leggatt added. When Mr Cooper fell ill and died about 14-years-ago, Mr Clarke was selected to take over as the camp's musical director — a succession plan Ms Dix is also working through. "The music camp is far more important than me … so I've been saying, 'I'm doing this and that' so people know," Ms Dix said. "By the end of the camp, they are just the happiest group of kids, and they're singing all the time in the dining room, and they're making jokes about the staff. "It's just lovely to see them so happy and confident and mobile."