[blindkid] no appreciation for praise

[Richard Holloway]

Kathy, I was trying to recall some books. My parents are retired music  
professors and preforming musicians so I may tend to follow a  
different path than some seeking a music teacher. Pretty much all of  
Kendra's musical exposure has come though the family, Unfortunately,  
even with the substantial resources available, Kendra prefers to do  
things her own way. Her grandmother has taught piano on a wide variety  
of levels from beginning up through college kids and Kendra is very  
close to her, but Kendra refuses to take lessons so far from her  
grandmother or anyone else. I think the day is coming (hopefully soon)  
where she'll decide she wants to take lessons on her own. (What we  
need is one of her friends to start taking and maybe then she'll  
decide it would be "cool" after all..)

In any case, our intended approach was to get her prospective teacher  
(my mom in this case) some information on beginning braille as we  
didn't come up with any available braille-reading teachers at that  
time then see what the teacher's comfort level was in giving it a try,  
but regrettably the books we had gotten were lost in a house fire some  
years ago and I'm not certain what we had located. I think they came  
from APH. You might go to APH.org and enter braille music in the  
search area and see what strikes you to look through and share with  
any potential music teachers.

I'll try and check with mom and see what she thought of that from a  
musician's perspective and to see if I can figure out exactly what  
book we gave her then let you know.

You might also contact your local or state NFB affiliate and see if  
they have any braille-reading musician members or known associates.

As someone else mentioned, you can get started with or without braille  
music, though if things progress very far you'll probably develop a  
need to have braille music available to read pretty quickly.

Good luck!


Richard

On Aug 25, 2010, at 9:07 PM, Kathy B wrote:

> Richard,
>
> Addie(4) also has a great ear for music with the ability to  
> recongnize pitch all
> those sorts of things.  (I'm not muscially blessed, can you  
> tell?) :) Anyway, I
> was wondering if you started Kendra in any music lessons?  I'd like  
> to start
> Addie with piano, but don't know how to go about finding a teacher  
> comfortable
> teaching braille music or a blind child.
>
> Kathy