Talking Vision is Vision Australia Radio’s flagship program, discussing the latest news and issues from a blindness and low vision perspective.
This week Sam speaks with Antony Rako, a musician with low vision who sings, writes, produces, mixes and promotes his own songs by himself under the name Tony Lowkey.
After experiencing vision loss as a result of retinitis pigmentosa, Antony found he was no longer able to continue with his career as a freelance sound engineer. After a move into the community services sector proved difficult to find employment, he decided to pursue something he’d always dreamt about: becoming a solo musician.
In recent times, Antony has discovered a number of life hacks and adaptive technology to help him create his music, such as a screen reader, keyboard shortcuts, accessible mixing hardware and lighting to improve contrast in his studio.
“I’ve got hardware controllers so I can control certain volume knobs and different functions of my recording software, and also to see better I set up different lighting so it puts lighting I need above things, and the LED strips help me see the outline of the room,” Antony said.
All of this has enabled him to set an ambitious target of releasing a song every two weeks, but he is excited about the challenge of producing, writing, performing and mixing the songs on his own, as well as promoting them on streaming platforms and social media.
“It is very challenging and ambitious, but I’m the type of person that loves a good challenge. It’s challenging because it takes a lot of creative energy to cover all the different aspects, I have to put on quite a few different hats within that designated space but I’m very much enjoying it,” he said.
Listen to the full interview via Omny or in the player below:
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