Reader Question: Track Selection For Blind Musician

An ATMac reader, Neil Quinton, has written in with a question about track selection in GarageBand or iTunes for a musician who he works with:

I often do gigs with a 100% blind pianist/singer who currently uses a traditional CD player for navigating his playbacks. I’d like to switch to a MacBook to make life and transport easier. I accompany him as driver, technician and musician.

Ideally he needs a simple keyboard (or remote control) with a series of commands to select a track by number (not stepping through as he has 40-60 songs) preferably in GarageBand (second choice would be iTunes or Logic), which he then can start, from the beginning, with just one key in solo mode.

GarageBand covers some of these points but the catch is always the direct selection of a certain track with keys without any form of scrolling or counting key pushes. He selects his playbacks spontaneously, no fixed song set, using the 1-9, 10+ keys of a CD player.

Do you know of any possible solutions?

Please leave a comment if you have any ideas about solutions Neil and his musician partner could use.

- Ricky Buchanan