Blind Sight: How to practice piano when you can’t see sheet music

Recently, I talked with a piano teacher who gives online lessons. She is seeing an increase in the number of blind students who want to learn piano, and she wants to be as effective as possible in helping them learn to play with their limited or nonexistent vision. This teacher is sighted, and she was curious about what helped me learn piano as a visually impaired student. We had a great conversation that yielded significant insights for both of us.

In the weeks since our discussion, I have continued to think about the strategies that enabled me to become proficient on the piano. My low vision makes it so that I have to lean over the keyboard to read sheet music, and this was not sustainable as the music I practiced got more advanced and the notes got smaller to make room for the added complexity. I want to offer some of my compensation methods, thoughts, and experiences here in hopes that other piano teachers and students (whether blind or sighted) may find them useful.

My journey at the piano

It might be beneficial to begin with a quick overview of my musical story. I started taking piano lessons when I was five years old and continued with these through college with a brief interruption during my rebellious early teen years. Along with my computer science degree, I earned a minor in music that included several more courses than necessary. Throughout my youth I played in recitals, talent shows, church services, and even a fashion show.

As an adult, I have served as both a volunteer and staff music director and worship leader in several churches and provided music from the piano for weddings, funerals, and many many Sunday mornings. I have had the chance to create multiple albums of original piano-driven music which are available on Apple Music and Spotify. During the early days of the pandemic, my wife and I hosted a Facebook group to connect with friends and family where I offered contemplative hymn improvisations to help ease our collective anxiety.

Currently, I get to participate in and help lead my church’s worship team. I have found a strong connection between music, spirituality, and faith, and this has proven a great help in facing and embracing my own blindness.

With that context in mind, here are some techniques which have helped me grow and thrive as a blind pianist.

Memorizing music

Even though I cannot see the symbols on sheet music when sitting at my piano bench, I still have to read and learn them. Picking up the music and holding it close to my face enables me to examine short passages, phrases, and chords. I will look over a few measures this way, put the music down, and practice them from memory, repeating this process as necessary until they are engrained into my brain and fingers. Then I will move on to the next phrase, approaching it with the same method until finally I have covered the entire piece.

Invariably, there are spots in a song that need extra work. Sometimes having the music memorized is useful, as long as I have the correct notes, dynamics, and articulation locked into my head. When practicing these rougher sections, it’s helpful to look closely at the music again to make sure my memory is accurate. This can be a tedious process, and I have great admiration for pianists who can sightread a new piece in its entirety on a single run-through.

I remember learning the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique in C Minor this way when I was 16. It was an arduous process that took several months, particularly because had never actually heard the piece before and didn’t know what it was "supposed" to sound like. I performed it at my small town high school’s winter carnival celebration, and was pretty pleased with myself. It wasn’t until years later when I listened to a professional recording of the sonata that I realized how much I had clumsily hacked and stomped my way through the beloved masterpiece. I realized that although rote memorization helped me learn the basic mechanics and structure of a song, it did not give me the understanding of nuance and finesse required to master a complex piece of music.

Playing by ear and improvisation

These are really two separate skills, but I am combining them here because I learned them together.

Growing up my best friend’s dad was a DJ at the local radio station, and he would bring home records of Top 40 shows that we listened to. When I heard a song that stuck with me, I would go home and try to plunk it out from memory. After a while, I got pretty good at reproducing the melody and basic chord progressions, even if the screaming guitars in most 80’s power ballads didn’t translate directly to ebony and ivory.

This actually proved to be a good thing, as I would try to fill in the sonic gaps with complementary chords and lines specific to the piano. Pretty soon I was reharmonizing and extending songs with my own material.

I also loved the video games on my Nintendo Entertainment System and found their musical soundtracks addictive. I would listen to and learn the best of these, adding flourishes and variations. In this way, I came to love this form of improvising so much that it distracted me from the music I was supposed to practice for my lessons.

It got to the point where I felt so bored and bogged down with the scales and technique exercises my piano teacher assigned that I quit. I tried to assuage the disappointment on her face and the guilt in my heart by showing her my amazing rendition of the theme from the final level of Kid Icarus, she seemed unimpressed. But I was unencumbered and free to pursue my boisterous and daring musical embellishments, even if they were horribly undisciplined.

One of my most valuable ear training experiences was playing piano at my church. My family was part a lively congregation where the people clapped, raised their hands, and danced to spontaneous and passionate old-timey gospel choruses. Our church band didn’t rehearse for Sunday morning services. As church began, the song leader would launch into an unknown set of songs in an indeterminate key, and we instrumentalists would have to follow along as best we could, finding matching chords and rhythms.

The piano and church organ were next to each other, and the organist knew all the songs and was really quick to locate the right chords and harmonies to support the changing vocal melody. As the weeks and months went by, I started to recognize common themes, recurring chord progressions, riffs, and dynamic distinctions in the church’s musical repertoire. Over time, I learned to rapidly lock into a song’s key, meter, and rhythm, anticipate harmonic changes, and add colorful ornamentations to them.

This fly-by-the-seat approach to music was exhilarating. I grew to love the adventure of these unpredictable Sunday morning song sets. Yet at the same time, part of me longed for a bit more planning and structure that I could preview and practice beforehand.

Putting it together

Eventually, I realized that I could learn music faster if I combined the techniques of memorization, playing by ear, and improvisation. Committing sheet music to memory provided the foundation of a song, hearing it helped me understand its feel, and improvising it made me confident in my ability to reproduce and at make it my own.

I got ahold of sheet music to hits like Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx and Michael W. Smith’s Place in this World. They didn’t win me any girls, but boy did I learn them fast. Discovering the power of combining these multiple "alternate" learning methods was key to my success at the piano.

These are just the first of several strategies that have helped me to become a proficient piano player who just happens to be blind. I plan to share more of them in the near future and explore how I put them together for some amazing growth. I am optimistic that others who can’t see sheet music might put them to good use.