Friends in Art welcomes you to The Art Parlor where visually-impaired artists of all types will discuss their work. Pull up a chair, bring your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually-impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world.
art-parlor
Claim This Podcastby Friends in Art
5.0(2 reviews)
46 episodes
Updated Bi-weekly
Accepts GuestsHas Sponsors
11
Podcast Authority
BetaPoorBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality10
Social0
YouTube0
Engagement27
Podcast Overview
Friends in Art welcomes you to The Art Parlor where visually-impaired artists of all types will discuss their work. Pull up a chair, bring your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually-impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
11/11/2020
Unlock The Full Podcast Authority Score Report
See how your podcast performs across key metrics
11
Podcast Authority
BetaPoorBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality10
Social0
YouTube0
Engagement27
6
Excellent Areas
0
Good Performance
13
Growth Opportunities
excellent
Episode Length
44 minutes
Performing excellently!
poor
Publishing Consistency
Every 41 days
Recommendations available
Unlock the full report to see detailed tips
+16 More Metrics
Unlock comprehensive insights including:
- • YouTube presence analysis
- • Social media reach metrics
- • RSS compliance scoring
- • Podcast 2.0 features
- • Technical standards
What's Included in Your Full Report
Detailed Analytics
- Complete breakdown of all 19 authority metrics
- Personalized recommendations for each metric
- Industry benchmarks and comparisons
- Technical RSS feed analysis and compliance scoring
Growth Strategies
- Step-by-step action plans for improvement
- Quick wins to boost your score immediately
- Pro tips from successful podcasters
Get your free podcast insights report
See how your show performs across every key metric
Instant delivery
No spam
Attract Better Guests
High authority scores make your podcast more attractive to industry leaders and influencers who want to appear on credible shows.
Secure Sponsorships
Sponsors look for podcasts with proven authority and engagement. Your score demonstrates your podcast's value to potential partners.
Grow Your Audience
Understanding your strengths and weaknesses helps you make data-driven decisions to expand your listener base effectively.
1 verified contact email on file for art-parlor
Pitch yourself as a guest, propose sponsorships, or reach out directly to the host.
Recent Episodes
June 13, 2026
The Art Parlor for June, 2026 Presents: Jessica Tomlinson!
<h2>Episode Notes</h2> <p>This month, it was our pleasure to speak with Jessica Tomlinson!</p> <p>Jessica is an eclectic composer, synthesist, keyboard player, and recording engineer based in the Tampa Bay area who happens to be legally blind. When she isn't playing pop rock with the band Rainbow Portal, she's crafting boundary-pushing experimental compositions in her home studio. She serves on the Audio Engineering Society’s Accessibility committee and the MIDI Association Special Interest Group focusing on accessibility. Jessica is also an active member of SoundGirls and the Earth Modular Society. She gives back to the community through Girls Rock Camp St. Pete and teaches blind senior citizens to use assistive technology. She also creates visual art with a powerful magnifier.</p> <hr> <p>I hope you enjoy the show as much as we did creating it! For more information about Friends in Art, please visit their website: <<a href="https://www.friendsinart.org/>" rel="nofollow">https://www.friendsinart.org/></a>. </p> <h2>AI-Generated Transcript</h2> <p>Opinions expressed on ACB media are those of the respective program contributors and cannot be assumed to serve as endorsements of products or views by friends in art, the American Council of the Blind, their elected officials, or staff.</p> <p>Friends in Art welcomes you to the Art Parlor, where visually impaired artists of all types will discuss their work.</p> <p>Pull up a chair, bring along your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world.</p> <p>And now...</p> <p>Hi everyone, this is Annie Chiappetta, President of Friends in Art, and this is the Art Parlor.</p> <p>And tonight we have a very special guest, Jessica Tomlinson.</p> <p>And we're going to talk about pretty much all different kinds of stuff relating to creativity and music and being an artist, that kind of stuff.</p> <p>Jessica, welcome.</p> <p>How are you today?</p> <p>I am very good, excited to talk creativity with you as I enjoy learning about lots of different media. as you will hear, I do enjoy dabbling in many different things and I enjoy hearing about other people's creative practice as well.</p> <p>Excellent.</p> <p>Excellent.</p> <p>So how did you first decide you wanted to be a part of the performing arts?</p> <p>Was it something that you like to do as a kid?</p> <p>Was it, you know, when you were in high school?</p> <p>How did that develop for you?</p> <p>So I have always been very fascinated by and very attuned to sound because with people's five senses the brain tends to pick one or two to prioritize.</p> <p>Technical geeks will think of this as being like a computer's IRQs, meaning is the keyboard or the mouse, the primary input device.</p> <p>So most people, their primary input sense is sight, but I was born with underdeveloped optic nerves or optic nerve hypoplasia.</p> <p>So sound has always been my primary sense that I focus on.</p> <p>And then the sense of touch is kind of secondary and then maybe seeing is a kind of third because I do have some low vision.</p> <p>So I would make up words for sounds like if someone were to scrape a chair across the floor, I would say that's like calling it huge or radio static sounded a lot like frizz, frizz, frizz.</p> <p>So I saw musicians kind of from afar, but I didn't have any role models when I was very young, so I didn't really think of it as something I could do.</p> <p>However, when I became a teenager and started going to local concerts, I saw the front of House mixing console, which is the large board at the position where the engineer is able to balance the levels from all the different instruments.</p> <p>And when I saw and heard and was told that that was an actual job that some people do, I was completely hooked.</p> <p>I was single-minded throughout my teenage years that I was going to have a career in that field.</p> <p>And I went to a trade school.</p> <p>I went to full sale university back then it was called full sale real world education in Orlando.</p> <p>And I did I graduated from the recording arts program.</p> <p>And I found it very fascinating.</p> <p>I learned a lot of incredible things.</p> <p>I picked up a lot of general standard knowledge about recording equipment and how it's connected in something we call signal flow for how signal goes from the microphone to the preamp through the mixing console to the outboard gear.</p> <p>And finally, at that time, we were mostly using tape machines.</p> <p>Now we have programs on the computers called digital audio workstations that double as the tape recorder, the multi-track, the mixing console, and even the outboard effects gear too.</p> <p>So all that is in the computer.</p> <p>How many of those digital audio workstations are you trained in or that you know of?</p> <p>that you have knowledge of.</p> <p>I've used different ones over the years.</p> <p>I cannot say that I am expert in a lot of the ones that I used earlier.</p> <p>My very first one was called Cool Edit Pro from Adobe, now Adobe Audition.</p> <p>I used digital performer for a little while there.</p> <p>At Full Sail I was taught about Pro Tools and Logic.</p> <p>Then I used a Cubase for a while there.</p> <p>And now my DAW of choice is Reaper.</p> <p>And I feel much more comfortable with Reaper today.</p> <p>I can do, I consider more with it than I have been able to with any DAW in the past.</p> <p>And why is that?</p> <p>Because number one, it has such a flexible workflow, which I do understand can contribute to a steep learning curve if someone is just getting started. you are able to set it up and customize it the way you want it to work.</p> <p>And the OSARA, OS-A-R-A extension, I don't exactly know what the acronym stands for, but it provides for very deep functionality using a screen reader.</p> <p>So I am able to close my eyes and use my QWERTY keyboard, and I also now use a a control surface, which is a little mini mixing board with faders on it, except no audio goes through it.</p> <p>It's just a giant mouse.</p> <p>It's a tactile surface to control the reaper environment with and do a lot of things, not only editing spoken content, but also mixing music and recording music, which is my passion.</p> <p>And I can record MIDI into it as well and use a lot of virtual instruments, playing a piano like keyboard.</p> <p>Right.</p> <p>Are you on the MIDI?</p> <p>Are you on the MIDI list?</p> <p>I am not.</p> <p>I am on the Reapers Without Peepers list when I get time to pop over there.</p> <p>I know that there is a MIDI list.</p> <p>I'm not sure if it's still, you know, it's, but I don't know how to subscribe to it, but I will find out for you and send it to you.</p> <p>I'll do some searching.</p> <p>There is a mega stash of accessible resources that the Reaper community publishes.</p> <p>So I will check in there to see if I can find it as well.</p> <p>Also just a note, I don't know too much what it's gonna be like yet, but I have been able to attend a few meetings of the MIDI Association Special Interest Group on accessibility and they are currently developing MIDI 2.0.</p> <p>Interesting.</p> <p>They are trying to incorporate text-based screen reader prompts through that and some other cool nifty stuff yet to be seen down the road.</p> <p>So we have something to look forward to.</p> <p>That is really cool because I know a couple of people that love MIDI and are very dedicated to it.</p> <p>I'm not sure if it's still on the Friends and Art website, but we may have a link to the MIDI list on the website, but I haven't...</p> <p>I'm not sure.</p> <p>I still have to check because I don't use MIDI.</p> <p>So what would you say to somebody who maybe wants to start out as an audio engineer, do something for their personal enjoyment?</p> <p>How would they start?</p> <p>What kind of, where would they go?</p> <p>I mean, not, yeah.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>That really depends on what they would like to do because there are many subfields.</p> <p>There are many little niches within the field of audio or maybe it's niches.</p> <p>I don't know.</p> <p>There is live sound.</p> <p>Yeah, there's live sound.</p> <p>So there is ways to support musicians that are on stage.</p> <p>There is home studio recording and mixing, which is what a lot of people do because we can set up our environments and not have people moving our stuff all the time and really get familiar with one set of gear and push it to its potential.</p> <p>There's also post-production where you support film and TV shows.</p> <p>There's sound design for sound effects for those shows.</p> <p>There's dialogue editing.</p> <p>There's actually audio description editing as well.</p> <p>If you look into the audio description projects.</p> <p>So there are lots and lots of ways to get involved with sound.</p> <p>I would say the first thing would be if you know anybody who also has an interest in the field to ask them to find out, first of all, what part of the industry are they involved in, what has worked for them, what tools they use, and then just because the tools work for somebody else doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna work for you.</p> <p>So one of the reasons why we have so many different types of gear and DAWs and things is because everybody works and processes differently.</p> <p>So the path that many people are probably gonna wanna take is like a home studio situation so that they can record and mix either their own music or have some collaborations with friends.</p> <p>So you need a couple of things and you don't need to acquire these all at once.</p> <p>You need either a computer or a tablet.</p> <p>There are some that work on iOS, but I'm not as familiar with them.</p> <p>I know GarageBand is a really good one that some people start with on iOS and Mac, but either a computer or a tablet, a good set of headphones or speakers so that you can hear clearly what you're doing, preferably in a good listening environment that doesn't have a bunch of echo.</p> <p>But that's a whole other discussion.</p> <p>So my room here, you can hear that echo.</p> <p>So that echo is going to affect and color what you're hearing.</p> <p>So you're hearing way too much of one frequency.</p> <p>You'll cut it in the mix and then somebody else will be listening in another environment and they will be like, hey, wait a minute, that sounds like there's a hole in that.</p> <p>So I think the key is good monitoring, which means listening on either headphones or speakers.</p> <p>But even if you, whatever you have, whatever you start with, when you make a mix, when you make a musical track or a spoken content, take that track and go listen to it on as many different sound systems as you can.</p> <p>So play it in your friend's car.</p> <p>Notice I didn't say it in your car.</p> <p>Unless you have one and you have some on the drives.</p> <p>Play it on your phone.</p> <p>Play it on if you still have a Walkman.</p> <p>Play it on that.</p> <p>Play it on your home stereo system. play it on your tinny clock radio to just get a really good sense for how it's going to sound in all those different environments.</p> <p>So that's important for what reason?</p> <p>That is important so that you can maybe not necessarily optimize it extremely for one environment over the others, but you can get a good overall balance to make your mix sound good on a lot of those different systems.</p> <p>Gotcha.</p> <p>Okay.</p> <p>And another cool thing is you have to, a lot of people, most people mix in stereo.</p> <p>It's important to check your mix in mono.</p> <p>Yeah, I already know.</p> <p>Yes, I know that.</p> <p>I found that by accident.</p> <p>No one told me that.</p> <p>I'm like, why is this happening?</p> <p>Because I have a very simple, I have a two-channel device and, you know, I've got a nice headset with a mic and I'm like, oh, I have to go do that now?</p> <p>Right.</p> <p>So in Reaper, the key command for switching your master track to mono is shift plus F9.</p> <p>Just so that you can hear if there's any wonkiness.</p> <p>But back to the list of things that one could start out with.</p> <p>And again, not all at the same time.</p> <p>Don't feel like you have to do this all overnight.</p> <p>Computer, which is the brain, DAW, which is the software, monitoring, which is headphones or speakers, you're probably going to need some kind of audio interface, which is a box that manages the input and output of sound to and from your computer.</p> <p>I have a Mo2M2, which has two XLRs on the front and then a couple different outputs on the back.</p> <p>And that also does my MIDI in and out as well, although a lot of MIDI controllers have USB these days so you can plug the MIDI through USB directly into your computer.</p> <p>But for audio, for microphones, an audio interface is definitely the way to go.</p> <p>And there's a lot of different ones on the market.</p> <p>And then just explore different microphones.</p> <p>Because microphone- What do you use?</p> <p>I use a couple of different Chippodipo dynamic microphones.</p> <p>OK.</p> <p>And I also have a blue, a baby blue, um, road NT one condenser mic that I use when I really want to record something quiet and soft and subtle.</p> <p>Oh, okay.</p> <p>When you first start out, like, like you said, you know, don't get these things all at one time.</p> <p>I assume that, you know, the price ranges and the availability of things.</p> <p>My Ruby cost me a pretty penny, but, um, yes, I have one of those two.</p> <p>All right.</p> <p>So what's your advice about starting slow and inexpensively?</p> <p>So check out trial versions of software to determine what you like and what works best with the way you process information and the way you work.</p> <p>So I have heard that the accessibility in Ableton has come a really long way in recent years.</p> <p>Also Reaper is amazing, but I'm very biased.</p> <p>Logic, I've heard people that use Logic and that's pretty good.</p> <p>GarageBand is also a great way to get started and just learn some concepts because all of these DAW programs do similar things, but they have slightly different ways of getting it to do the same thing.</p> <p>Like they all have multiple tracks.</p> <p>They all have ways to either put audio or MIDI on a track.</p> <p>They all have various ways to mix your various tracks and put effects on them.</p> <p>So it's just about trying different environments to see maybe what's gonna work best for the way you work.</p> <p>And also think about what kind of content or what kind of music do you wanna create?</p> <p>If you wanna be somebody who makes beats, who makes hip hop, then definitely maybe virtual instruments like a lot of drum samples are gonna be what you're gonna wanna focus on more than say various different microphones.</p> <p>I mean, I still recommend everybody have one good microphone at some point, but you might not need to start with that.</p> <p>If you have a software program, a DAW, that you find that works for you, maybe a good set of headphones, and look for some free virtual instrument plugins that you can play either with a MIDI keyboard, a MIDI drum pad, if that's more your style.</p> <p>Even your QWERTY keyboard can serve as a MIDI keyboard in a pinch.</p> <p>It's not velocity sensitive, meaning you don't get loud and soft based on your touch, but you can get notes to sound so that you can hear kind of what you're doing.</p> <p>Right, the basic rhythms and those kinds of things.</p> <p>Right.</p> <p>Yeah. - Okay.</p> <p>So, SurgeXT, if you like synthesizers, which I absolutely do, I have absolutely fallen down the rabbit hole of being in love with synthesis and learning about all those things.</p> <p>SurgeXT is fantastic as a synth, but there are lots of other free plugins that you can explore, not only free, but we also have to keep in mind what's gonna be accessible too, which is kind of a bummer because I think that more of the industry needs to focus on making their products usable by all their consumers.</p> <p>And we're just trying to spread awareness about accessibility a lot.</p> <p>Yes, it's getting better.</p> <p>It's slow though.</p> <p>It's slow.</p> <p>But I think as the general software, I guess programming and I guess the basics become easier, then I think the accessibility is becoming easier as well.</p> <p>I remember when I would ask for something, some kind of coding or something to make something accessible in the workplace and I'd get moans and groans and oh, it's too much and takes so long and blah, blah, blah.</p> <p>And now it's like, okay, well, we'll work on it.</p> <p>We'll get it to you in a little while.</p> <p>So I think the attitudes are changing, but it's slow.</p> <p>Yes, that's very good.</p> <p>It needs to be quicker.</p> <p>And I also wanna put a plug in, there isn't an open registration yet, but the Audio Engineering Society is going to be holding a small virtual conference on accessibility, July 9th and 10th, and they're going to have lots of different presenters in many of those different areas of the sound industry that I was talking about.</p> <p>They're going to have some people from live.</p> <p>They're going to have some artists.</p> <p>They're going to have some people that create software and just lots of people presenting, telling the general industry why accessibility is important and to listen and how to implement it.</p> <p>That's excellent.</p> <p>See, that's what's changing.</p> <p>Yes, absolutely.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Yeah, excellent.</p> <p>I think we'll, I could talk about this all night, but we need to change the subject a little.</p> <p>So how did you get involved with ACB?</p> <p>So I was involved with ACB because I received a scholarship five or six years ago at the state level when I was going back to school to be a VRT, which is a Vision Rehab Therapist.</p> <p>So audio and music and accessibility has always been a passion of mine, but 20 years ago when I graduated from full sale, we were still in a industry model that revolved around large record labels, large studios, large consoles and large egos.</p> <p>And I kind of had to pivot because I couldn't find a doorway into the industry at that time.</p> <p>So my day job is now teaching blind senior citizens how to use their computers and smartphones.</p> <p>And I still use a lot of my geeky techy problem solving skills with them to help them develop the best solutions for them.</p> <p>But in recent years, the past five or six years, I've definitely started diving back into the audio side of things with organizations like Sound Girls and the AES Accessibility Committee.</p> <p>And like I said before, I'm big into synthesis, so I've done some online streams for Earth Modular Society.</p> <p>And I do have to say, I'm very, very happy and excited to say that I was recently accepted as a pro member to ramped recording artists and music professionals with disabilities.</p> <p>And if any of you out there are making and releasing music or are a professional that works with the music industry in some way, that avenue is also very much open to you as well.</p> <p>If you're familiar with the artist Lachi, I'm so proud of her.</p> <p>I have a single out called Fidget and it's all about celebrating neurodiversity and I'm so happy.</p> <p>That's excellent.</p> <p>And what about Sound Girls?</p> <p>So Sound Girls was a organization that I found while surfing the internet and they were very open and welcoming.</p> <p>They, again, combine women and gender expansive folks and there's some men involved too.</p> <p>You don't have to be a woman to be involved.</p> <p>And they're from every sector of the sound industry, live, post-production, recorded music, corporate audio, which means doing sound to support corporate conventions or political figures or public speakers or that sort of thing.</p> <p>So that's another avenue as well in the sound industry.</p> <p>So they had a virtual conference last December and I went and the networking happened so organically and everybody was just thrilled to be there and speak to the other participants and share what they're up to.</p> <p>There were a number of structured panels and presentations that we could go in and then there were just some drop in casual like unstructured mentoring sessions where people could ask questions.</p> <p>So I found it very rewarding, very delightful.</p> <p>That's wonderful.</p> <p>Did that happen in Tampa?</p> <p>Or did you travel for that?</p> <p>It was virtual.</p> <p>It was on Zoom.</p> <p>It was all virtual.</p> <p>Oh my goodness.</p> <p>So that way people from all over the country and even some people from other countries could attend.</p> <p>That sounds awesome.</p> <p>That's wonderful.</p> <p>It was great.</p> <p>And I made some friends that way.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Networking will never die.</p> <p>That's what I can tell people. matter, even if it becomes a whole virtual experience, we need each other.</p> <p>We must connect because we can't do everything just on our own.</p> <p>The expansiveness of the world and wanting to network and reach out is ever-present, and I will push for that.</p> <p>That is so true.</p> <p>All the time.</p> <p>We are an...</p> <p>You know?</p> <p>Yes, we are an interdependent species.</p> <p>Yes, we are.</p> <p>Yes, we are.</p> <p>So you mentioned your visual status.</p> <p>So do you see color?</p> <p>I do.</p> <p>Thanks, Doc.</p> <p>I see some colors.</p> <p>So color contrast is big in our community.</p> <p>That means the more that two colors are very distinct and different from each other.</p> <p>So for instance, blue and orange or say purple and yellow are opposites on the color wheel.</p> <p>So those colors are very, very distinct and stand out very well.</p> <p>And the brighter and bolder they are, the more likely I am to tell them apart from other colors.</p> <p>However, blue and purple I often mix up, especially if they're kind of light and pastel or yellow and orange and very light lime green I might mix up.</p> <p>So because of that, I, well, first of all, I like to do visual art with a CCTV, which some people also know as a desktop video magnifier.</p> <p>Right.</p> <p>And I work with colored pencils a lot, but I have my pencil box arranged so that the blues are never right next to the purples.</p> <p>And the yellows are never right next to the oranges because that would cause me to mix them up.</p> <p>Like I can read the labels on the pencils, but I put them, I put the yellows next to the blues.</p> <p>I put the purples next to the greens.</p> <p>And then I put the- So the complementary colors.</p> <p>Yes.</p> <p>Yes, okay.</p> <p>That's a really good idea.</p> <p>And that, you know, they just go well together in the first place.</p> <p>So do you actually, do you actually do sketches are drawing drawings or how do you start a project?</p> <p>So sometimes I've always liked to doodle.</p> <p>I would always finish my work in school early and I would be bored.</p> <p>So I would take out my flare pen.</p> <p>I've used flare pens, which are felt tip pens.</p> <p>They're not as wide as Sharpies, but yet they're not as fine as ball points.</p> <p>They're in between and I like them because I can write pretty well in small spaces, but they're also great for drawing.</p> <p>So I would doodle and doodle and doodle.</p> <p>I would draw, I'm not great at drawing people realistic, but I would like to think I'm sort of okay at drawing cartoon characters, like Disney characters or Muffin characters or things like that or fun things, birthday cakes and balloons and party hats and just stuff like that.</p> <p>Oh, wonderful.</p> <p>But the downside is I can't erase if I use a felt tip pen and I've just drawn and I haven't been able to erase.</p> <p>So when I would draw outlines with my felt tip pen, I would start on scrap paper first and I would do it a couple of times on scrap paper and that would be like my practice rounds.</p> <p>And then when I get to the real thing on good paper, I'm like, okay, this is really for real, let's do it.</p> <p>But now I've discovered that I don't have to necessarily draw all the time with my felt tip pen.</p> <p>I can also draw with the colored pencil.</p> <p>So let's say if I'm drawing Cookie Monster, he's blue, I would draw with the blue colored pencil.</p> <p>So that way if I make a mistake, I would err on the side of smaller so that if he needs to be bigger, I'll just put more blue on the outside and nobody will ever know.</p> <p>Oh, wow.</p> <p>If that makes sense.</p> <p>Yeah, it does make sense because I, you know, that's kind of how I come about my own work, you know, just in general.</p> <p>I do a lot of paper, mixed media, art, and it's always easier to work on smaller pieces than it is to work on a big piece.</p> <p>Because if you make a mistake on a large piece, it's a big mistake, right?</p> <p>Just in terms of physical space.</p> <p>But if you make a mistake on a small piece, you're like, "Oh, it's a little mistake.</p> <p>I can cover it over or I could do something different."</p> <p>So I get what you're saying for sure.</p> <p>Yes.</p> <p>Yeah, that's right.</p> <p>So I do a lot of volunteering for a girls rock camp here in St.</p> <p>Pete where I live and sometimes I'll draw whimsical posters and stuff for them.</p> <p>Oh, cool.</p> <p>So the recent one that I drew is a witch riding on a microphone stand instead of a broom and And she's holding the microphone and there's a speech bubble and she's saying, "Hex, hex, one, two, three."</p> <p>That's very, very cool.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Instead of "check one, two, three."</p> <p>Yeah, "check one, two, three, hex, hex, one, two, three."</p> <p>Oh, nice.</p> <p>So have you always lived in Florida?</p> <p>I have.</p> <p>So I'm one of these rare people where I've lived in the Tampa Bay area all my life.</p> <p>I have traveled other places.</p> <p>I've been to a few ACB conventions.</p> <p>I've been to a few relatives, home cities.</p> <p>I've been to a few other functions in other places, but I always seem to come back here.</p> <p>I don't like cold.</p> <p>I don't like snow.</p> <p>I like the beach and the sun and the water.</p> <p>And yes, it gets miserable and brutal in the summer.</p> <p>And we're starting to come to our miserable, brutal heat season just now.</p> <p>Okay.</p> <p>But it's worth it for like mid October through April, through the end of April.</p> <p>It's really nice.</p> <p>It was actually just really nice a few weeks ago.</p> <p>Yeah, I used to visit Tampa.</p> <p>My in-laws had a condo and I really enjoyed my time there.</p> <p>So did they.</p> <p>They would escape all of the New York weather.</p> <p>Yes.</p> <p>And then we would use that as home base for our vacations with the kids, you know, and then we would drive to Disney and then come back.</p> <p>Yeah, so it was a lot of fun.</p> <p>I like Florida.</p> <p>Yeah, my relatives there and stuff.</p> <p>So yeah.</p> <p>Yeah, that's great.</p> <p>One other thing if I could, one other thing I want to say about drawing, I I'm not the best at it, but I recently learned I can use Procreate on the iPad.</p> <p>I was going to ask you that, like, do you, oh, so.</p> <p>So with that, you can pretty much pick any style of line of any weight that you want.</p> <p>So I can pick a line that's heavy, like my flare pen.</p> <p>And I can erase.</p> <p>If I do something I don't like it, I can tap with two fingers and that's like an undo and you can erase the last stroke he made.</p> <p>So it's really cool.</p> <p>And I can zoom it in as large as I want to.</p> <p>So it's like using paper on my CCTV.</p> <p>Oh, that's really.</p> <p>Do you know if there are any instruction classes about doing that at any level, like, you know, like adult ed or because that would be really.</p> <p>I think that a lot of people with low vision would, it would have really helped them get their, uh, confidence, you know.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>I don't know if they're necessarily classes.</p> <p>I do know that voiceover has come a long way with speaking, what's on the toolbars recently.</p> <p>Um, and even in some of the color palettes, they're starting to name the colors because that's one thing I wrote to them and asked them to do.</p> <p>Um, a while ago, like a year or more ago, I said, Hey, I have low vision and I use voiceover for most things, but I want to be able to Draw and use this app and you know, do art as well.</p> <p>And I'm having a hard time telling your color palettes apart because, you know, they're not arranged like my pencil boxes.</p> <p>So would you consider putting labels on these and eventually one day they did and now at least some of them have names.</p> <p>So when you tap them, they say the name.</p> <p>I'm going to have to check this out because I have an iPad and I've always been hesitant to try anything because I've been disappointed so many times.</p> <p>You download an app and then you find out it's not accessible.</p> <p>Right.</p> <p>And then...</p> <p>It is a bit of a dance though because I have to turn voiceover off in order to draw and interact with the canvas because it doesn't have direct touch the way GarageBand has.</p> <p>But then I need to turn voiceover on in order to interact with the toolbars to be sure what I'm touching up there.</p> <p>I got you.</p> <p>So it's a little bit of a balancing act, a little bit of a dance.</p> <p>But if you have your triple press of your side button shortcut set up for voiceover, it could potentially work.</p> <p>Okay.</p> <p>All right.</p> <p>Well, I'll see if I could try it out and let you know.</p> <p>But my daughter is sighted.</p> <p>Maybe we can tutel around together and see what we can do.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>That would be great. that kind of thing.</p> <p>I like that stuff.</p> <p>It's just like, oh, it's no big deal.</p> <p>We'll just try it out and we'll see what we get.</p> <p>That's always a fun thing to do.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>So I forgot to ask you, you're a Windows user, right?</p> <p>That's correct.</p> <p>So the old joke goes that Mac users can say, I don't do Windows.</p> <p>You know, like I don't do beds.</p> <p>I don't do Windows.</p> <p>Yeah, I don't do Windows.</p> <p>I know.</p> <p>Yeah, but I do.</p> <p>I've done Windows all my life.</p> <p>Hmm.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Me too.</p> <p>But yet we have we have, you know, we do touch on Apple accessibility with our iPads and our phones.</p> <p>Definitely.</p> <p>I always do really good.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>I hope they continue to be for sure.</p> <p>Yes.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Thinking back to like any kind of challenges you think you've had over the years with any of your goals or professional goals or personal goals.</p> <p>Is there anything you'd like to share that maybe you think would help other people listening tonight or whenever this comes out?</p> <p>Well, certainly with releasing my own music, there's a lot of moving parts when you want to release something.</p> <p>Now, when I say release, I just mean make it available so that people can stream it, maybe people can buy it.</p> <p>Release means something different now than it used to mean.</p> <p>So when you do a music release, there's the writing or the composing of the music that happens first.</p> <p>Right.</p> <p>Then there's the recording of the music, then there's the mixing, then there's the mastering.</p> <p>Mastering is making the final mix sound its best on whatever medium it's going to play on.</p> <p>So for instance, if you're gonna put out a vinyl record and you master for vinyl, you are optimizing your final mix for a record and a record player.</p> <p>But mastering you can think of like how when somebody paints with pastel, like pastel crayons or something, they spray this clear coat on it when it's finished called Fixative.</p> <p>My mom was a visual artist and she used to do pastels and then when she was done, she would take her painting outside and spray it with this clear stick to itness substance that would keep the pastel from like flaking off and getting all over everywhere.</p> <p>So that's what mastering does for audio, I think.</p> <p>And then the next step is the putting it onto the distributor who's going to put it into the music streaming stores like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, so that everybody and all your friends can hear you.</p> <p>And some people choose to also put it other places like I am on band camp for example, which is a place where your fans can go and directly buy your music.</p> <p>Some people also put it on like other, you know, bits of social media.</p> <p>So another part of the process is the marketing of the release.</p> <p>The, oh, and I forgot the cover art.</p> <p>The cover art is a, you know, another step of the release.</p> <p>So marketing involves telling all your friends and everybody you know and everybody you've ever networked with basically that, "Hey people, I did something new.</p> <p>Come look, come listen.</p> <p>I've got music that I have out.</p> <p>Come play my music.</p> <p>Come listen to it.</p> <p>Come buy it on Bandcamp."</p> <p>But that only goes so far in your own personal network.</p> <p>Then you have to research and actively look for music blogs, music podcasts, online or terrestrial radio shows that are within your genre or your music style that focus on the style that you are making who might write about or talk about or play your music.</p> <p>Because that's how you expose yourself to a wider audience.</p> <p>And then there is also if you're a musician who plays live, there's also the going out and playing shows to let people see you and hear you in person.</p> <p>So all of those steps, I guess, are a wide, extremely roundabout way to say that some challenges have involved creating cover art and photographs and visual content to go on social media.</p> <p>That's been a common refrain that I've heard from a lot of blind and visually impaired artists. is also the challenge of navigating all these blasted websites that may have varying degrees of accessibility.</p> <p>So, not really sure which ones are the best for screen reader users because I do use a screen magnification as well as a screen reader.</p> <p>I use NVDA plus the Windows magnifier, but just the visual concentration with the magnifier to like 4x or something of okay, what corner of the website did they put the login button?</p> <p>What page do I have to go to to see my release stats or get the shareable link I can post?</p> <p>Or there's some other things you can do too.</p> <p>I mean this can get really involved.</p> <p>You can register if you original compositions, you can register with a performance rights organization such as BMI or ASCAP.</p> <p>And then not only that, you have to register with the mechanical licensing company and then you need publishing.</p> <p>What is a mechanical license company?</p> <p>So that is the organization that collects your royalties.</p> <p>Mind you, when we're talking about royalties, unfortunately we're talking about... tiny fractions of a penny for every play.</p> <p>Sounds like that with writers.</p> <p>So like every time somebody listens to my book over download for a library, I get 34 cents.</p> <p>Yes, well this is like maybe a half a cent or a tenth of a cent for every stream on like a Spotify or something.</p> <p>But it's mostly about just learning the process so that as you gain momentum, it won't be brand new.</p> <p>And mainly, as you gain momentum, you won't have some shyster coming to you, claiming to do it for you, when really he's keeping it all for himself.</p> <p>It's important to know about how the process works.</p> <p>But anyway, the mechanical licensing company is what collects on behalf of songwriters and composers when the song or composition is played on streaming or radio or radio.</p> <p>Oh, okay, gotcha.</p> <p>All right.</p> <p>So I'm just as complicated as the book writing business.</p> <p>Absolutely, so I would also recommend reading up on music business, music rights, just so that you're aware of, you know, what the different kinds of rights are so that you know what you have, you know what you are possibly entitled to claim as your own when you write and create music.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>What about, do you ever, you ever refer to anybody for like, have you ever had to like, go through contracts, read contracts, find print, those kinds of things.</p> <p>I know when we're writers, we have to do that all the time.</p> <p>So I really haven't.</p> <p>I'm not quite that advanced as an artist yet.</p> <p>Now, I know that it will happen if I do collaborations with people.</p> <p>If I do hire people or am hired by people.</p> <p>So I do know that that's a thing that's in my future.</p> <p>The contracts that I have read are for when I've done accessibility testing for companies in their software, they'll often have non-disclosure agreements.</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>Or if I'm in a research study, there is a consent to participate contract.</p> <p>And so those are important to know about as well.</p> <p>So if I've been testing someone's product, am I allowed to say that I've been doing that?</p> <p>Am I allowed to name it?</p> <p>Or, you know, when would I be allowed to talk about it, if ever?</p> <p>Yes.</p> <p>All that stuff is excellent practice for where you're going.</p> <p>And I know it was for me when I first started out.</p> <p>And now it just gets...</p> <p>In a way, it's easier to know what to expect, but also, you know, now we have a whole new type of, like, people who want to scam you and stuff that we didn't have before, who'd be very, very careful about who you say yes to. and it's unfair.</p> <p>Yeah, that's right.</p> <p>So cautious.</p> <p>People will offer you, yeah, people will offer you the world on a silver platter and it's important to just ask questions.</p> <p>Yes, yes.</p> <p>You know, be critical because it's your work that you're being critical and protective over and don't ever think that you're being too protective or too critical because the one time you don't ask the question or you just say no thank you, could be a big mistake.</p> <p>Right.</p> <p>In our writers community, we're having, a lot of us are independently published and I get, I don't know, three or four emails a week saying somebody, "I love your writing and we want to represent you."</p> <p>Blah, blah, blah, blah.</p> <p>I'm like, "Oh, go away."</p> <p>It's just not true.</p> <p>I mean, I know, you know, it's just not true.</p> <p>So, right, all kinds of scamming going on.</p> <p>I guess we're getting up to, you know, closing out and, you know, is there anything else you'd like to say regarding where you'd like to go in the future, where you see yourself maybe the next five years or so.</p> <p>And we're going to also probably have some clips of your EP on.</p> <p>So you want to talk about that?</p> <p>Yes.</p> <p>Give it a little push.</p> <p>So it is called Rise to the Occasion, Fall into Bliss.</p> <p>And I got that name because synthesizers have a component called an envelope that has a rise and fall parameter.</p> <p>And that's what determines the time that it takes for a sound to come out of silence and return back into silence.</p> <p>So it's sort of a pun on synthesizer envelopes.</p> <p>It's an electronic ambient meditative.</p> <p>It's a good thing to put on when you are frazzled and you want to relax or if you want to meditate or you want to fall asleep.</p> <p>It is available on Bandcamp that is really the best for artists.</p> <p>You can listen for free, I think a couple times, but even if you don't want to purchase it from Bandcamp, if you go in and click follow, then that will make the algorithm kind of think I'm popular or something.</p> <p>And that way you'll get on my mailing list so that when I have something new coming out, you will be the first to know about it.</p> <p>But I do realize, I have heard from some people that Bandcamp can be hard to use with a screen reader alone.</p> <p>So just to make it easier for people and also so that more people can find me, the EP along with my other work is also available on the major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple, Amazon, whatever music service you have, you can tell your favorite digital voice assistant of choice to play Jessica Tomlinson or to play Rise to the Occasion, Fall into Bliss.</p> <p>All right.</p> <p>Well, thank you.</p> <p>You're welcome.</p> <p>Thank you for that.</p> <p>Before we move on, this is Jason and I'm here to provide you with some demo tracks that Jessica provided and we're going to start off with Thawing Dreams.</p> <p>And this next one is called Mama Creeps.</p> <p>Thank you Jessica for your talent and music.</p> <p>Now let's finish up with Art Parler.</p> <p>Yeah so anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up?</p> <p>Yes, I look forward to maybe being able to collaborate with other musicians.</p> <p>I definitely want to be doing more live performances in the next coming few years.</p> <p>I have some smallish instruments that hopefully I can travel with and do similar kind of ambient meditative music with a yoga teacher or a sound bath to be able to provide a nice soft backdrop.</p> <p>I also like to sing and play the piano.</p> <p>I do cover songs and I do enjoy mixing for other people as well.</p> <p>All right.</p> <p>So would you, if somebody wanted you to mix for them, what would be the typical way to start a conversation on that?</p> <p>You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Jessica Tomlinson, I think on Instagram, I'm v_vi_artist or my email address is JT soundtech S-O-U-N-D-T-E-C-H at <a href="http://Verizon.net" rel="nofollow">Verizon.net</a>.</p> <p>Okay, excellent.</p> <p>All right, well, thank you so much for coming tonight and sharing your life and all of your talents.</p> <p>And I really appreciate that bit on the iPad.</p> <p>I'm going to check it out.</p> <p>Yeah, thank you.</p> <p>Oh, and I would also like to be able to add synth lines to other people's tracks.</p> <p>That would be a very cool thing as well.</p> <p>Oh, interesting.</p> <p>All right.</p> <p>So there we go.</p> <p>Have a good evening and thank you so much for joining us.</p> <p>And I'll let you know when it drops onto ACB Media.</p> <p>Okay, thank you so much for having me.</p> <p>I really appreciate the thoughtful interview.</p> <p>Sure.</p> <p>Be well.</p> <p>Take care.</p> <p>Bye.</p> <p>Art Parlor is brought to you by Friends in Art and ACB Media.</p> <p>It airs several times a week on ACB Media One.</p> <p>To listen and for a full schedule, go to <a href="http://acbmedia.org/one" rel="nofollow">acbmedia.org/one</a>.</p> <p>Art Parlor is also available as a podcast.</p> <p>Just search for Art Parlor in your favorite podcast app.</p> <p>We'd love to hear from you.</p> <p>You can email us at artparlor@friendsinart.org.</p> <p>And please feel free to check out our website, <a href="http://www.friendsinart.org" rel="nofollow">www.friendsinart.org</a>.</p> <p>Thank you so much for listening and for your support.</p> <p>We'll be back next month.</p>
April 2, 2026
The Art Parlor for April, 2026 Presents: NVision Guitars!
<h2>Episode Notes</h2> <p>Welcome to The Art Parlor for April, brought to you by <a href="https://www.friendsinart.org/" rel="nofollow">Friends in Art</a>! It's been a spell and we are very glad to be back!</p> <p>Join us for an inspiring conversation with the creators of NVision Guitars, a mother-and-son team building custom adaptive guitars for musicians with disabilities. From tactile designs for blind players to ergonomic solutions for mobility challenges, their work is opening doors to music for everyone. Hear their story, their passion, and how they’re redefining accessibility in the arts.</p> <h2>AI-Generated Transcript</h2> <p>Jason Opinions expressed on ACB Media are those of the respective program contributors and cannot be assumed to serve as endorsements of products or views by Friends in Art, the American Council of the Blind, their elected officials, or staff. Friends in Art welcomes you to the Art Parlor, where visually impaired artists of all types will discuss their work. Pull up a chair, bring along your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world. And now, here's your host, Anne Chiappetta.</p> <p>Ann Welcome everyone to the Friends and Art, Art Parlor podcast. I'm Ann Chiappetta, your president, and I'm joined tonight by some special guests. But before I get to them, I also want to let you know that Meghan Downing, one of our board members, is here to help us welcome our guests from Envision Guitars. So we have Renee and Tristan. And I just want to welcome you guys. I know we had you featured on our blog at <a href="http://www.friendsinart.org/news" rel="nofollow">www.friendsinart.org/news</a>. If anybody wants to go there and check you guys out for your interview. So welcome, welcome, welcome.</p> <p>Renee Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to be here.</p> <p>Ann Sure. So you're from Iowa, right?</p> <p>Tristan Yep, we're from Ankeny, Iowa. So just a suburb outside of Des Moines.</p> <p>Ann So my new guide dog's name is Iowa, by the way. So really?</p> <p>Tristan Really? How did you know?</p> <p>Ann He was born in the I litter. And that's the name that they picked. So. Oh, okay. Yeah. I just thought that was a little, a cute little thing to let you guys know. Before we get into like the questions, could you give us a little bit of your history, how you started your business and maybe some of the reasons why? Sure, yeah, absolutely.</p> <p>Renee Well, Tristan started playing guitar when he was about 10 years old. And he's always had a love for guitar and played it and kind of messed around with building guitars all through high school. And anyway, about a year and a half, two years ago, I was having some health issues and Tristan was taking me back and forth to Mayo. And we just really got into some deep talks about life and the purpose of life. And I had recently retired from the military. So I had been running a Christmas decorating business that I had to actually quit due to the health issues. And so we were just talking over just what the future holds for both of us actually. And I said, you know, what would make you the happiest? What do you think would you would find most purpose in? And he said, I would find most purpose in building guitars. And that was just kind of out of the blue because I never knew that he actually just wanted to build guitars for a living. And I said, Well, you know, what's stopping you from doing that? And he said, I don't know. And I said, Well, what would that look like? And so we brainstormed on up to Mayo and we talked about how my dad, who was a quadriplegic, had went to Easter Seals and gotten training on leather making and he had gotten some tools from them and he had found his purpose through that. And then Tristan had shared with me that when he was younger, he used to play the guitar with his eyes closed because he was afraid that someday he may not be able to see and he was afraid that he may not be able to play the guitar. And so he'd been doing that for some time. And just on that same vein, we brainstormed the idea of what if we made guitars for people who can't just pull a guitar off of the shelf of a box store and play it. So what if we made guitars for people who have challenges, maybe some low vision or maybe they're blind or maybe they're in a wheelchair and they have spatial considerations or Parkinson's. You know, there's a variety of different challenges face where they can't just take a guitar, like I said, off of the shelf. And you know, as we dug into it, we realized there's actually nothing like that. There's nothing like that out there. There's guitars that look like tech toys, and there's guitars that maybe they have, you know, some tactile markers on them with glue or some homemade type of fashioned material to allow people to kind of use it, but nothing's actually made for people with these challenges. And we thought, well, why won't we, you know, we could do that. And so we have developed various adaptations for our guitars and we built a business around it. And that's what we do. So Tristan is the luthier and I do the management, the sales, the marketing. He of course helps me with a lot of that as well. But he's our guitar maker and our technical expert. And I try to help anywhere that I can to free up his time so that he can do what he does best.</p> <p>Ann Wow. So Tristan, how did you learn your craft?</p> <p>Tristan It wasn't necessarily like a linear learning system, I would say. A lot of times with a kind of niche craft like that, you have to really stretch out your arms to whoever you can get information from that will really benefit your ability. So whether that's from reaching out to local Luthiers and local shops, to ask them how can we get better at our craft, what are we missing, what are the things that we're nailing, countless hours of watching YouTube videos and different tutorials, and then a lot and a lot of practice in the garage and trials and errors and learning from those errors. So it's a very compound kind of learning for it. you have to pull from just multiple different sources.</p> <p>Ann Do you feel that some of this is like natural for you in eight? And then some of it is, you know, you've got to learn how to hone your craft. Do you feel like you were, you were kind of like, you had it in you, you just had to get it, get it to the point where you, you know, get it out there.</p> <p>Tristan And definitely, yeah, I think that I think that it's one of those things that when you have a passion for something, you're going to find a way to make it so you know how to do it. But so I don't think that it necessarily takes like someone that has these innate abilities compared to another. It's who's willing to put in the hard work and who's actually passionate about what they're doing. So it's, you can apply it to anything that anyone's passionate about. It's just the ability to keep moving forward with it and keep persisting even while you're waiting.</p> <p>Ann Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I have a curious little weird question. Are you the one that drinks the monsters while you're working? because there's a picture in the background. The monster drinks are there.</p> <p>Tristan I've been trying to cut down on that a little bit. But yeah.</p> <p>Renee To be fair, even though they're completely not what I would recommend, Tristan was working a full-time job up until not too long ago. So he was working the full-time job while doing a vision.</p> <p>Jason Oh, wow.</p> <p>Renee He was sleeping literally about four hours a night. Yeah, I was sleeping like four to five hours a night for a good year. Yeah, but we finally were blessed with the opportunity to go full time. And so he's been getting more sleep. So OK.</p> <p>Ann That's pretty good. I was. Well, yeah. Sometimes I didn't expect that to be described on the photo when I put him put it through my describer and I was like, oh, it was really cute. Anyway, Megan, do you have any questions?</p> <p>Meghan Yeah. Hi, guys. I'm Megan. It's nice to be on this call with you. I love so far what I'm hearing and learning about what you guys are doing. I guess I want to give a little bit of background on kind of where I fit into this a little bit, but I'm blind. I started losing my vision when I was nine to a progressive eye condition. I'm 24 now, so it's been a little bit over half my life now since I've lost my vision. I started playing fiddle when I was like four, and then music was always something like I could do Well, my vision was decreasing as I got older. And so I just love your mission of like figuring out ways for people with any ability to be able to play music, because I think music is one of those things where it's accessible to like everyone, whether it's listening or playing. And this process of losing my vision and music helping me through that led me to I went to Berkeley College of Music, And I actually play guitar. I went to Berkeley for guitar.</p> <p>Renee That's awesome.</p> <p>Meghan Yes, big fans of Berkeley. Yeah, I was really blessed to be able to-- I was like my dream school. And I started playing guitar when I was younger as well. It was probably my second or third instrument I started playing and fell in love with guitar. And so I kind of put the fiddle aside. And guitar is my main passion. So when Annie told me you guys were coming on and I learned about what you guys were doing, I was like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. because I actually, I studied, I'm a music therapist.</p> <p>Jason And so I work with folks all that like literally</p> <p>Meghan every single day that could use products like what you guys are doing. I worked in like neuro rehabilitation with stroke patients and I still work with people who are brain injured. And it's funny that you said something about, you know, I just got a grant from the Christopher Reeves Foundation to do a project with people with paralysis. And I know that you mentioned your dad was a quadriplegic and I'm working a lot with those folks right now or I'm about to start. So I'm like really interested in what you guys are doing and I would love to know like if you found a way to adapt for people with extreme paralysis and like what your process is for, for kind of like hearing about people's abilities and how you like can adjust with those disabilities and how like the process goes of making those guitars.</p> <p>Tristan Okay. Yeah, so as far as full paralysis, that's not something that we have gone to quite yet. As far as spatial accommodation, the way that we try to account for that is we take measurements of the different parts of the space that the guitar will really be making contact with the individual. So we'll take use of different contour gauges to get a general sense of what space is available to put for the curvature of the guitar and then applying it in there so that way it fits that individual within their space.</p> <p>Renee That's really cool. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry. We offer four different adaptable customizations. So can you explain those?</p> <p>Tristan Yeah. I mean, so we do have a few different adaptions that we're trying to really implement into our instruments to help with just different things that could really make you not be able to enjoy guitar as much as just a kind of store guitar, I guess you could say. So as far as spatial accommodation, it was the contour gauges. The other thing that we take into account is weight reduction, so chambering out the body so that way there's not as much stress on the body when playing. Another thing that we really have been diving into is the tactile markers on our guitar for low vision and blindness. What we've been really focusing on is putting fret markers on the back of the neck that we'll make it so you can really just navigate where your hand is playing on the fretboard. just as you would usually use fret markers, but these would be more tactile for the back of your thumb to kind of guide your hand. Then along with that, we add different components to the guitar itself for better navigation. So our different knobs will use two different textured knobs for the volume compared to the tone. So that way as you're navigating which knob you're wanting to activate, it's just a little bit quicker from the feel of it.</p> <p>Meghan Oh, that's huge. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. Because that's something I really struggle with, getting a new guitar or playing someone else's guitar or even my own guitars that I've had forever. I forget, you know, like which one's the tone or which one's the volume. And yeah, that's super, that's amazing to hear what you guys are doing with that, especially with low vision.</p> <p>Tristan Yep. Our goal is just to make it so it's a navigatable guitar. And so that way you can really just get the same feeling whether you're getting the vision of the fretboard itself or not.</p> <p>Meghan And do you notice that like when you make these adaptations, especially with like the size or the weight reduction, do you notice like, how are you kind of combating the loss of maybe like tone or volume of the, the like resonance of the guitar? Yeah. Yeah.</p> <p>Tristan So right now our guitars are exclusively electric guitars. We will be getting into acoustics and nylons down the road. It's just with a time constraint of having a full time job at the time and then also building the guitars, I wasn't able to get into acoustics and nylons where that weight reduction would affect more of that tone. - Yeah. - Since a lot of them are running through your pickups. Don't get me wrong, there probably is some tonal drop off from the chambering, but since a lot of it is from the hardware and from the really the electronics that you put within the guitar that has I would say kind of more of an influence on what sound you're going to get out of it.</p> <p>Meghan Oh yeah that totally that totally makes sense. Wow and and then are you for like future in the expansion of what you guys are doing like obviously you kind of just mentioned how you're doing full time work with Envision now, but how what do you see what are your goals for the future of</p> <p>Tristan where you guys are headed? Yeah, um, so our goal is to it's really what we're doing now and it's uh to keep creating guitars for anybody and everybody that wants to be able to play them. So whether it's the player that is has a 13 guitar collection that wants something just really special to them or if it's someone who needs this tool so that way they can pursue their passion that they've been going for. Really, what we would mark as successful is just the people that we get to connect with and the difference that we get to make.</p> <p>Meghan And are you guys getting funding from grants right now? Are you able to apply for those? Where are you getting the resources that you need to be able to function right now?</p> <p>Tristan I would say it's a very mixed bag. So yes, we do the guitars as our main exclusive thing, but we do have some supporting pieces of our business that we call our different arms just to make it so we are able to focus on the guitars. So whether that's selling handmade picks, different, we also hit a lot of different vendor shows for some of our other handmade art and stuff like that.</p> <p>Renee Right now we don't have any grants or any, there's no funding coming in besides what we sell. And what I've been doing to kind of get this up and going is I've been hand carving picks made out of the wood from the scraps of his guitars. I know it sounds very tedious and it is, but that's what moms do. So I hand etched them and they do very well at the craft shows. And it kind of opened the doors for some of the guitar stores. Like I would go in and offer up these picks and then we were able to get our guitars into stores. Right now, believe it or not, we are really donating a lot of our products. 10% of our sales go to donations to nonprofits in our area. Um, so I wouldn't say it's extremely lucrative for us, but that's okay because that's not really our purpose. And we, we have a different purpose in mind and we have a different outlook, I think. And so we're just moving straight ahead with that and we'll get there when we do. So if that makes sense, I hope that makes sense.</p> <p>Meghan Oh yeah. Yeah, that totally makes sense.</p> <p>Ann Yeah. So this is Annie. I was reading about your picks. Can you tell us a little more about how that began? Like you talked about making them out of nuts. - Oh yeah, yeah, I did that too.</p> <p>Renee Yep. So I make the picks out of wood and nuts. So the wood ones, of course, like I said, came from the offshoots of his guitar. So we've got Ebony, you know, some of the harder woods. - Right. - You can such. And then also I've been making them out of Tagua nuts and they're really, really cool. They're a nut from South Africa and they are very, very similar to animal ivory in terms of strength and-- - Wow. - And so obviously we can't use animal ivory nor should we, but if you were to compare it, it's similar in, it's cellulose, right? So it's very hard and it's not something you're gonna break. It's organic vegan, all the good stuff. And it just kind of forms to your thumb and finger when you're using it. And then at times there's certain ones that I cut the center out of so that you can have a better grip should you have issues with grip. But those are really hot seller to be honest with you. We sell out of those pretty quick. And so the nut is sliced and then I just sand it down using five different kinds of sandpaper. And then we sell those as well. And that's something that we're doing now and we may continue to do that but really we want to focus only on guitars but for right now, That's one of the things that we do to get us where we're going. Right. Right. Because we've only been doing this for one year as a business. And so we're building up to where we want to go. Yeah. And it's just a big way of helping.</p> <p>Ann Yeah. It's like you do what you can, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I had a question about like how much can you, in terms of weight for one of guitars, how much can you take out without compromising the guitars, you know, working and performing and...</p> <p>Tristan Yeah, definitely. So right now, we're finishing our chamber guitars at about around seven pounds. Eventually we're going to start making headless guitars as well, which will really bring down the weight. But right now, they sit around seven pounds if not a little bit lighter, which is usually about a pound or two lighter than your standard guitar that you would get from a store?</p> <p>Ann Wow. Wow. That's very interesting because that's one of the things that I don't think people understand about electric guitars, that they're heavy. They're heavy. You pick one up and they're, you know, you've got to be able to like build up your muscles and you know, your body and so how, you know, I was very interested in that. If you adapted one of these guitars for someone who is in a wheelchair, is there anything else that you use with the guitar, like a mat that goes across their lap or something that grips or anything like that to help keep it balanced from sliding or if they can't do a strap?</p> <p>Tristan Yeah. So we haven't done anything like that quite yet. The way that we really go about accommodating for those spatial accommodations is by using our contour gauges. So we'll take a contour measurement of both of their legs as well as the surrounding area and then a one across their sternum as well to know where the actual wood of the body will be sitting across you to make sure it is conformed to your figure.</p> <p>Ann Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.</p> <p>Renee Yeah. Sorry. I'm sorry. - Oh, go ahead. - It's very, very ergonomically fit to any individual's body. You can--</p> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>It's got three different playing positions. So you have a upright playing position, a cross lap playing position, and then you can also put it across your other leg. So it is versatile in the way that you can have it within a seated space. And then along with getting the measurements of the individual, that really just helps accommodate for what we're shooting for.</li> </ul> <p>Ann Oh, wow. Have you ever considered making a video that explains, you know, like, you know, the different positions and then demo them? Have you ever considered that?</p> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>We are working on that. We're trying to get more and more content out about how we adapt the guitars. Right now it is kind of a two-armed business in a way with them, 'cause we have our player guitars that we do put out in the stores, but then we have our augmented guitars as well that we have these adaptions to. So it's really just us having more time to keep pushing out the information that we're working on.</li> </ul> <p>Renee</p> <ul> <li>One of the things that one of our clients that was blind really appreciated that we came up with was, we had a client in New Jersey and we have three models. We have the Regatta, we have the Galley, and then we have the Symbiote. And so what we did in order for them to be able to understand the contours of each guitar was we built miniature versions of those guitars and we sent them the templates in the mail and they had holes in them to designate which guitars they were. So they were able to feel all the different contours and how those guitars were built and then communicate back to us, you know, which ones would be best for them and then they could just toss those instead of, you know, like mailing anything back to us or what have you because They were made out of basswood and they were very cheap templates. And then that was just a good way for them to be able to communicate to us. So in our we send these packages with the templates and the gauges so people can easily take you know, measurements of their body and send us back the contours and throw away the templates. And we're trying to make it as easy as possible, but also making it so that people can really get exactly what they want. Because I mean, everybody's needs are going to be different. Everybody's situation is different. And so that that was just something that they really, they really liked about it.</li> </ul> <p>Ann That's a really good idea.</p> <p>Renee Yeah, that's a great idea. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, it really worked out well. So that's, that's excellent.</p> <p>Ann How many guitars do you have out in the hands of other people right now?</p> <p>Renee We have about nine.</p> <p>Meghan Oh, cool. And that's including like guitars sold for like able-bodied folks and also adapted guitars.</p> <p>Tristan Correct. Yep. That would be the ones that we donated as well as the ones that we made for just other clients.</p> <p>Renee We're working on five more right now. But again, we have only been in business for one year because we opened last March and he was working full time until a month ago. So we have been struggling to find the time, but we have been working 24/7 to develop these designs because every single model was developed, like we designed and developed them all. And so once we get these next five out, we'll be up to 14, but we know that they're going to continue to grow. And the word has to get out, that's the thing, is the word has to get out that these are even available because nowhere else are these available. They have not been available. And just show that they're out there, then we can start making them. And so we're not afraid of the fact that we've only made nine, because we just have to make sure that people know that to get the message out, basically is what we need to do.</p> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, well, you gotta start somewhere, right? - You do. (laughing)</li> </ul> <p>Meghan</p> <ul> <li>So I was just thinking, I have so many, I'm like, this is so exciting. It's music to my ears to hear what you guys are doing, 'cause I'm gonna spread the word about you guys and hopefully get more information because I think so many people, when they have a disability, they just like, initially are like, "Oh, I can't do that because of this." But I think as more people become aware of, everything can be adapted. And I love that you guys are starting off. And the fact that you did nine in a year is amazing.</li> </ul> <p>Renee</p> <ul> <li>Oh, thank you very much. Tristan just developed a guitar for Parkinson's. And-- - Wow.</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>I wouldn't, yeah, it's, we're taking all the considerations that would really affect your ability to play and trying to instill those into the instrument.</li> </ul> <p>Renee</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, and so he'll be presenting that at a conference on April 22nd. And so we're really excited about that one too. So that's kind of exciting for us. So that's kind of a new development that we've got going on.</li> </ul> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>Could you talk a little bit more about the adaptations in terms of Parkinson's symptoms and how they would help somebody to play?</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, so when doing research, the things that we really tried to hone in on were the slowness of movement. I believe it's called a Brady, I'm not gonna try to remember the word, I'm gonna totally butcher it. (laughing) It's a slowness of movement as well as the squeeze and the hands and then along with that you have--</li> </ul> <p>Meghan</p> <ul> <li>The tremors.</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>The tremors and the strength of holding the instrument. - Right, yeah. - So some of the accommodations that we're gonna start to implement into this guitar to present would be things like having a shorter scale length. So that way you have larger frets that are not, that way your hand isn't as needed to move around to make the same kind of music, having a multi-scale fretboard, so that way the frets move ergonomically with how your hand would normally go across the fretboard.</li> </ul> <p>Meghan</p> <ul> <li>Wow.</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>Lighter weight, so changing up the body as well to make it, so it's just a, you can play it longer for a longer duration of time without it really starting to affect your ability to play. But the thing that we're getting really excited to present about is some of the just kind of modifications that you can do to your own instruments as well as just different techniques that you can do to really help implement just timed playing and everything like that. So one thing we're excited to kind of just really talk about and promote is timed practice with people who are starting to get symptoms of Parkinson's just 'cause you can start with a metronome at a lower BPM and it's not like you're shredding or anything but you're playing a interval note and it's in control And then as you bring up that metronome, you can really just start getting more and more control over that movement, at least over a fixed period of time. So that's something that we kind of wanted to talk about and just kind of spread the word about just 'cause even if you're not getting a guitar from us, but you wanna just be able to play your guitar, it's good information to have.</li> </ul> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>Yeah.</li> </ul> <p>Meghan</p> <ul> <li>Now there's a lot of research with Parkinson's and like music and music therapy. And it's like, it makes a huge difference in people's lives with Parkinson's.</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>A lot of studies have really just, really narrowed down the point of, it just benefits the quality of life. And we feel like when you're pursuing a passion, that really is benefiting your life in that way. So that's what we're doing next.</li> </ul> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>Yeah. I think that's wonderful. Before I retired, I worked a lot with veterans and I had quite a few veterans with Parkinson's symptoms. And one of the things that they felt that they could continue to do, even though they had their music and they just connected with that kind of stuff. And they continued, one of them was a drummer and he found ways to keep up his response times and stuff like that. And I think if he hadn't been a drummer, maybe he would have slid into a symptomology even more. So there's definitely that physical component that keeps the mind active and engaged so you don't have that freeze time and that delay of response. And I think definitely there's this, I don't know, maybe I know how the mind works. We really don't know a lot about how the mind works, But I think there's this component of desire and wanting to do something, in that your creative brain that can really, can really help delay the on those symptoms. So you guys are on the right track with all of that for sure. And the only other, the only thing that I, there was when I lived in Westchester County, New York, there was the Westchester Music Conservatory. They did a healing music program for PTSD. It could have been PTSD from war trauma or from other types of stuff, any type of abuse or whatever. And that was the only program that I knew of like in New York state. I mean, and it was really popular. And we would send some of our veterans and stuff to them they did guitar and violin and keyboards for people. Yeah. But they didn't have adaptive equipment. They would be teaching people on regular stuff. So yeah, this is definitely something that's much, much needed. Have you ever approached the VA at all or the Veterans Administration or any types of veteran treatment centers with what you want to do that might be?</li> </ul> <p>Renee I know that there, I'm in a couple of veterans groups that we follow on social media and such like that. The local VA has a few guitar groups where they get together and they jam and stuff like that. We want to do that. We just need to get our feet on the ground and going. And that is one of the places that we want to get involved in in our overall marketing strategy. But we have not yet fully. that I know there's some great opportunities to work with veterans and we will do that. We just need to, we need time is what we need. So we're just working on that right now.</p> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, 'cause we went out officially full time about two weeks ago. (laughing) Now that we got the full time status, we're gonna be making a lot more moves a lot quicker. - Yeah. Tristan, what are you doing beforehand?</li> </ul> <p>Meghan Like full time work before working?</p> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, I used to be a manager for a family entertainment establishment.</li> </ul> <p>Meghan</p> <ul> <li>Wow.</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>So it was about 50 hours a week on top of the</li> </ul> <p>Renee</p> <ul> <li>Oh my God.</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>100 hours that we were thinking about in vision. - Wow.</li> </ul> <p>Renee</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, he would get home at 2.30 in the morning and then I'd call at eight and he didn't get to sleep till sometimes four. And like, okay, you ready? And you know, and so, yeah, it was a lot for him. And finally we were just like, we can't do this. we have to follow our passion. And we're just gonna take the risk and see where it leads us and this is what we're gonna do. So it's what we're doing.</li> </ul> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>So what do you guys do when you're not doing this?</li> </ul> <p>Jason</p> <ul> <li>Nothing. (laughing)</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>I was gonna say, we still try to maintain just the important values of life on top of it just to make sure that we ourselves are healthy individuals. So that way, just 'cause you can't, I feel like you can't do anything for anyone else unless you yourself are taken care of. So part of our work day is also making sure we get our regular workout routines in routine,</li> </ul> <p>Jason making sure we're serving our community in some way</p> <p>Tristan and then keeping our faith with us, with everything that we do, because without that, it really doesn't matter. - Yeah. So that's kind of when we're not doing that, we just focus on the parts of life that actually do matter. you know, that along with family time and all that fun jazz.</p> <p>Renee</p> <ul> <li>Tristan and I get a lot of family time. (both laughing)</li> </ul> <p>Ann I love that. - Yeah. So what else do you think that Friends in Art can do to help you out? I mean, we have, I mean, we'd love to do what we can for you, like just, you know, helping you promote stuff. I would really like to see us to, you know, be able to, I don't know how we could help you, but maybe we can work, we can do some brainstorming and.</p> <p>Meghan I can think of like a hundred ways that I could. Yeah. So, okay, you guys have time or you're looking for more folks or anything like that, especially I got the privilege to work at Perkins School for the Blind for like eight months in Boston, and they have a big music therapy department. And so if you are looking for more folks that are fully blind or low vision, they have a lot of students that would benefit from you guys. So I'm happy to connect you with any of my people. But yeah, I agree with Annie if there's any way that friends in art can help you, let us know.</p> <p>Tristan Yeah, no, we would love that. For us, it's the more people we can connect with the better because the work is there. We just need to be where the work is at and with individuals that need our services. So the more people that we can connect with and the more that we can really do our art for other people, that's what really benefits us the most. So we always can find the time to meet with you, meet with other people because unless we do, we're not going to be able to help the people we're trying to help.</p> <p>Ann Yeah. I don't know if you know about the major conventions that come up for the ACB and also the National Federation of the Blind. They're in July. We've already gone past our programming stages for them, but for next year, that's a place you probably want to be. You probably want to be, see if you could be a vendor in the exhibit hall. They can do, God times, they do an in-person one and then they do a virtual recording, like a short piece as well. But that's something that you should look into. and then there's also the American Foundation of the Blind, they have a convention and a conference. So there's all kinds of resources there for you to prep for the conference season. That might be a good idea for you to get the word out for your marketing and stuff.</p> <p>Renee That would be wonderful. We are set up and ready to do any of that, and we would love to be involved in it.</p> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>Cool, okay, yeah, I mean, I know as, I'm a writer and sometimes the marketing is the hardest part of all of this and it's a full-time job in itself, so I hear you. - Yeah. - Sometimes you wanna say, "I want somebody else to do this."</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>That's why I'm glad there's two of us.</li> </ul> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you guys share the stress, right? And share the load and share the successes and yeah, wonderful stuff. I wanted to ask you if you, could you tell us your website and your other social media stuff for people who are listening and wanna look you up?</li> </ul> <p>Tristan</p> <ul> <li>Definitely, yeah. So for our social medias, for our Facebook, it's just capital N, capital V for InVision Guitars, LLC. as far as our Instagram, it's all lowercase, Envision_Guitars. And then we are still working on getting our square website up and going. We've done some tinkering around with it, but we should be publishing it here soon. And then we also have our YouTube, which is EnvisionGuitars LLC, in which we just kind of post the different build processes. And it's a, yep, just @envisionguitars.</li> </ul> <p>Ann</p> <ul> <li>Okay, cool.</li> </ul> <p>Meghan All right, Megan, you have any other questions? No, I mean, I think a lot of the questions that I asked, we kind of both thought about them, which is awesome. No further questions on my end. I just am so impressed by you guys. I found, I just found your Instagram gave you. Oh, yay. Yeah.</p> <p>Renee That's awesome. Well, thank you guys for having us on and we really appreciate it. And if, you know, if anything comes up, we would love to be a part of anything that, you know relates to this and and we appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah.</p> <p>Ann Thank you all for coming and good luck to you all. Thank you.</p> <p>Renee Wonderful stuff. Best of luck. All right. So much Megan. Take care guys. All right. Thank you.</p> <p>Jason Art Parlor is brought to you by Friends in Art and ACB Media. It airs several times a week on ACB Media One. To listen and for a full schedule, go to <a href="http://acbmedia.org/one" rel="nofollow">acbmedia.org/one</a>. Art Parlor is also available as a podcast. Just search for Art Parlor in your favorite podcast app. We'd love to hear from you. You can email us at artparlor@friendsinart.org and please feel free to check out our website <a href="http://www.friendsinart.org" rel="nofollow">www.friendsinart.org</a>. Thank you so much for listening and for your support. We'll be back next month.</p>
October 8, 2025
From the 2025 ACB Conference & Convention - Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment
<p>Welcome to this month's edition of The Art Parlor! This session was recorded at the 2025 ACB Conference and Confvention on June 28.</p> <p>Poetry is meant to be read aloud. In this session, poems written by Langston Hughes, Mya Angelou, Denise Levertov, Alan Ginsberg, and other powerful talents were performed and discussed.</p> <p>Facilitated by: Annie Chiappetta.</p> <p>We thank you for your support and hope you enjoy the show!</p>
46 total episodes available
Deep-dive analytics for art-parlor
Frequently asked questions
Have a different question and can't find the answer you're looking for? Reach out to our support team by sending us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
- What is art-parlor?
- How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates bi-weekly.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 9 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Information about guest appearances is not available.
Legal Disclaimer
Pod Engine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected with any of the podcasts displayed on this platform. We operate independently as a podcast discovery and analytics service.
All podcast artwork, thumbnails, and content displayed on this page are the property of their respective owners and are protected by applicable copyright laws. This includes, but is not limited to, podcast cover art, episode artwork, show descriptions, episode titles, transcripts, audio snippets, and any other content originating from the podcast creators or their licensors.
We display this content under fair use principles and/or implied license for the purpose of podcast discovery, information, and commentary. We make no claim of ownership over any podcast content, artwork, or related materials shown on this platform. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
While we strive to ensure all content usage is properly authorized, if you are a rights holder and believe your content is being used inappropriately or without proper authorization, please contact us immediately at hey@podengine.ai for prompt review and appropriate action, which may include content removal or proper attribution.
By accessing and using this platform, you acknowledge and agree to respect all applicable copyright laws and intellectual property rights of content owners. Any unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or commercial use of the content displayed on this platform is strictly prohibited.