Instruction for the impaired

[jeremyjchilds]

Greetings to all of you! I have read a lot of your topics, but this my first post. I will try to be as brief as possible.

I have agreed to take on a student who is impaired by way of sight. She is not completely blind, but reading notes is out of the question. I have spent a lot of time mulling over the exact process by which I will introduce her to the fundamentals of piano playing. My hope is that there will be some with experience in this "niche" area, who could lend me some additional guidance (or conversely, someone with no experience, but a vivid imagination!)

I should mention that she is young, (five and a half), but I must admit that at the interview, she did seem bright, eager, and mature for her age.

Thanks so much,

Jeremy Childs

[dveej]

I am dealing with a similar situation with one of my students. She is seven and very bright, and legally blind, although she can read a "normal" book if she holds it up to her face about two inches from her nose. She does not do Braille at all, but uses the hold-it-up-to-her-nose method for all her schoolwork.

What I am having an issue with is that I have to hold up the book in front of her face if I want to get her to play while reading, and it is quite tiring to sit there, leaning over really close to her holding this book and trying not to move it. If I put the music on the music rack, it's too far away for her to see without leaning over in a position which I don't think is healthy to play in.

What I'd like is to have a music stand that has an arm that swings in and out, so that she could sit down, put her book on the music stand arm, and pull it in so that it is right in front of her face. That way she could play with good posture while being in charge of the position of her music. But I don't know where to get such a music stand.

Aside from that problem, I am having great success with her. Because I didn't know what to expect when we started and the mom told me she was blind, I started her out with listening to the Suzuki CD. In about four months she has learned almost half the book's right hand melodies, and played Cuckoo with its LH broken chord accompaniment for her first recital. But this music reading thing is getting to be a problem, because she resists reading strongly. If not monitored by her parents, she "forgets" to do written work, and her "practicing" consists of playing through all the pieces she has memorized, but failing to learn the new pieces from the books I have given her (other books besides Suzuki). I have even recast some of the Suzuki repertoire in great big huge notes, to see if she could put it on the music rack and see it well enough to play it (she can't see anything on the music rack so it doesn't help in that regard, but I recast the pieces anyway because it seems to make it easier when I hold it in front of her face).

I don't want to let her learn just by memorizing, because she can read. It's just so difficult for her...

This problem is a "work-in-progress" for me: I am going to keep tweaking it until it works.

[dveej]

Jeremy, I wanted to add something to my original reply, because it didn't really answer one of your concerns.

I realized early on with my student that there were only two ways she could learn to play piano: the way "real blind" people learn, which is by reading Braille music for a few measures and memorizing those few measures, and then playing it; or by reading the notes with her eyes and then playing it. There is no middle way. Any student who is visually impaired is going to have to do one of these two methods.

You say that for your student, reading notes is "out of the question". I would say that for any student, reading notes is a necessity: the only question is will she read the notes with her eyes or by Braille? If you think about it you will see that any way she is going to learn piano will have to incorporate one of these two methods of reading. If she reads Braille, then you need to go the Braille route (can be expensive; I checked it out, and I was OK with learning to read Braille myself so I could input it, but the equipment is beaucoup bucks). There are many online resources for teaching Braille readers music. What country are you in? I am in the US and there are some US resources that involve government funding. If you're interested in the Braille track I will look up all my old links and give them to you.

[abell88]

Dveej, just wondering how she reads (or is supposed to) at home...does someone hold her music in front of her nose? If so, then her parents should be enforcing the practice of new stuff (at that age, they should anyway, I think). If no one is holding the music, that might be making it just that much harder for her...

You're right about learning to read if she wants to play classical...but it is possible to play piano (popular) by ear.  Depends on her/her parents' goals, I guess.

[dveej]

Abel88, this is part of the problem which we are working to solve. She is in a family of very busy people, and the mom and one of the older sisters also take piano from me. They are an actiive family who all do sports (even my student does sports-- she is on the cheerleading team) and take part in community theater productions. Since she does her school homework by reading it on her own, the assumption has been that she will do her piano homework on her own. It is now apparent that she is going to need an extra "push" to be reminded to do what she is supposed to do. That happens with many students. I think that requiring a family member (or me, for that matter) to sit and hold up a book is not fair to us or to her, so I will be trying to figure out how to get a stand set up like the one I described. She has to have the tools to be able to do it herself, before she can be held accountable for doing it herself. So there is the issue of providing her with the means to read as comforatably as possible, and then there is the "normal" issue of getting her to do her practicing and her written homework like she is supposed to. It's complicated...

[dveej]

Also, abell, you're right that it is possible to play by ear...but cutting out reading from the piano learning process is very limiting. Plus everyone else in her family plays an instrument, and they all read music. And, I teach classical music with a smattering of pop, jazz, blues and rock mixed in for education and fun and variety. Unless there is a compelling reason for her to be different from everyone else in her family, she should learn to read music as they do. Having taught her for several months now and having seen what she can do both with school work and with piano, I think she should read music: it's just my job and her parents' job to facilitate her learning to read so that she doesn't feel that it's a huge impossible task..
If she had a severe handicap that ruled out reading, like maybe a developmental disability, then I would adjust my teaching accordingly. But she reads books for school, so she should read piano music as well, in my opinion. Keeping kids with differences mainstreamed is important for their emotional and social lives.

[jeremyjchilds]

thanks so much,

Well, first, I live in Canada (Vancouver)
Secondly, I definitely agree about the reading issue, and would like to check out the braille system. It's funny, though, people always come to me becuase I am known as the "jazz" guy, thinking that I won't be getting my students to read notes, (totally wrong) so it may be difficult to convince the parents to spend "mucho" dollars on braille.

Speaking of which, I must confess that I know nothing About the Suzuki method, All I know is that I had a transfer student who was in Suzuki who had a bunch of great sounding memorized pieces, but had to spend a half a year on a strict reading program to have basic reading skills.

Could Suzuki be the way to go if braille is not?
What's your take on ear?...I know a lot of music defies being learned by ear, but there is also a lot of music that can.
Any internet resources available for learning to teach Suzuki?

Thanks so much for the help, I hope sometime in the future I can answer one of your questions.

[dveej]

Jeremy, if your student is already headed down the path of learning Braille, then the parents will have most of the equipment. The only thing you could take advantage of would be an embosser. They have them that you can hook up to your computer, so you can input notes in programs similar to Finale or Sibelius (not sure of the exact requirements). But the embosser is $5,000 US! Now, if the parents are going the Braille route, then they either have an embosser or they have access to one. So you wouldn't have to buy one, but you would have to buy the software (I think it's a couple of hundred dollars) if you wanted to convert music into Braille music. When I was checking all this stuff out it seemed like it would be a good investment if I became known as "The Piano Teacher Who Teaches Blind Kids". But then my student turned out not to be doing Braille, so I didn't go down that road.

If you don't want to go through the Suzuki training, you can simply use the repertoire books and the recordings (and there is an excellent handbook for Suzuki teachers: "Studying Suzuki Piano" by Bigler and Lloyd-Watts). Of course, there are other methods for piano which have recordings as well, and maybe you should pick one that has the pieces you would like to teach. I try to collect as many as I can, so that when the need arises, I have stuff at home that I can use in a pinch for teaching. The "Everybody's Perfect Masterpieces" series, published by Alfred, is good standard repertoire, and recordings are sold of the contents of each volume.

So I would break up the whole enterprise into two parts: what she's going to play, and what theory books she's going to be working in. It all hinges on whether she uses Braille or not, or whether she will use Braille later or not.

In the US, the local school system has money allocated for people with disabilities, so my student's family got this huge expensive magnifying reader with fancy shmancy lights for free. I am going to see if the people in charge of assisting the visually impaired can help me with a music stand or something like that. That might be an avenue to pursue with your student, if she is already going to school: maybe they have some sort of assistance bureau or something that would point you in some good directions.

Is she going to learn Braille?

[abell88]

Jeremy, I suggest you contact the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind). They may well have some helpful suggestions or materials, or perhaps they can put you in contact with an experienced teacher of blind/visually impaired students.

About the music stand (dveej), what about something like this?

https://www.staples.com/Catalog/Browse/Sku.asp?PageType=1&Sku=445849

Regarding Suzuki, I understand they introduce reading to their pianists much earlier than to their violin students, for instance, simply because of the complexity of piano music. 

[dveej]

abell, that is brilliant! Thank you for posting that link: now I know that there is a word for what I want, and the word is "copyholder". Now I will search the web for floor-mounted copyholders. 
And you're right, that is the main rationale behind why Suzuki piano students start reading earlier than Suzuki students of other instruments: because the written music is more complex. But when I was taught cello, we learned to read sooner than most Suzuki students do.

[jeremyjchilds]

Thanks so much, that's all such great advice!

[silverpeal]

Please let us know if you find a copyholder that works. 

I am visually impaired and play the piano.  I'm not legally blind but I'm close and do not see well enough to drive.  I was born premature due to an RH factor conflict and had some complications with too much oxygen in the incubator which damaged my retinas, blinding me completely in my right eye.

I read normal text (books, computer, you name it--I read it.)  But I do have to hold things close.

I'm an adult pianist at the early intermediate/ intermediate level.  I play for relaxation and as part of my singing interest.  (I'm a classically trained light lyric soprano.)

I've struggled with reading piano music.  Unfortunately, I've had to sacrifice some good posture at the keyboard for the necessity of being able to read.  Once I learn a piece I do try to sit nicely aligned at the piano.  I look for music that is either large print or that has wide, even spacing.

You might also try enlarging the music at a photocopy machine.  Unfortunately, this can get very cumbersome but it can work sometimes.

Thanks for posting this and best of luck to you and your students.