Interest Group on Music and Disability

• BBC Parent's Music Room: Disability and Music
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• Drake Music Project: The Drake Music Project was established in 1988 to enable disabled children and adults who are unable to play conventional musical instruments to discover their musical abilities and explore, compose and perform their own music.
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• Berkshire Hills Music Academy: Berkshire Hills Music Academy is a private post-secondary school providing young adults who have learning or developmental disabilities the opportunity to live in a collegiate setting and acquire independent living skills while developing their musical potential
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• Disability Studies Quarterly
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• Disability & Society
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• Special Needs Project: An online bookstore
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• from Bruce Quaglia

  On behalf of the West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis I would like to announce our new policies regarding accessibility at WCCMTA meetings with hopes that other regional societies will soon follow suit. These new policies were adapted from those listed in the memo drafted by DISMUS and subsequently sent to the SMT executive board last fall. They are somewhat more modest in scope due to the limited resources of WCCMTA, but we are hopeful that this is just a starting point. These action items were discussed and then ratified by unanimous vote at our annual business meeting. A few items were implemented already by this year's program chair, Aine Heneghan for the meeting held last weekend in Seattle.

  The following is a summary of these new policies excerpted from the minutes of that meeting:

  Accessibility:

  The following were ratified as new WCCMTA policy:

  * Modification of the CFP for all future meetings to include a statement that says that the WCCMTA is committed to making its meetings accessible for all participants and that reasonable accommodations will be made available.

  * Modification of registration forms to include a section that asks participants if they will require any special accommodations, and then a statement to the effect that the WCCMTA will work to honor these requests to the best of its abilities through its officers, program committee and local hosts. A statement that indicates that accepted papers may be requested in either electronic form or paper form in advance of the meeting if this is requested as an accommodation by a participant. Some number of handouts in easy-to-read large font formats should also be requested of all presenters. (These items were implemented the 2008 Seattle meeting).

  * When Scott Cook redesigns the WCCMTA website, we should work to ensure that the web site conforms to all current standards of accessibility. A statement of WCCMTA's commitment to accessibility should be added to the site in a prominent position on the home page.

  * Conference hotels. Since WCCMTA hotels are often recommendations and are not always arranged by contract between the hosts and the hotel, this will vary. Any contracted hotel should be in conformity with ADA standards. If only recommendations are supplied to participants, information regarding accessibility should be included for each recommended hotel.

  * Future considerations: making meetings accessible remotely via the internet to participants and presenters that cannot travel. The technological requirements for this were generally considered to be minimal and the recent DISMUS meeting in Baltimore was cited as an example to emulate.

  * Although this year's registration form included a space to request accessibility accommodations, none were requested this time around. It is hoped that if our revised policies are made known, and appear on the CFP, that we may attract new participants in the future who have simply not applied in the past.

• Society for Disability Studies
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• National Arts Center Disability: web tour
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• Philia: a dialogue on caring citizenship
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• Society for Disability Studies 20th Annual Conference: "Disability & Disability Studies: Works in Progress" (Seattle , May 31-June 2, 2007)
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• Canadian Centre on Disability Studies
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• Canadian Disabilities Studies Association
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• Learned Societies Congress Call for papers in Vancouver 2008
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• Social Sciences and Humanities info on CDSA
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• Disability and Popular Music Studies

  from Bruce Quaglia

  I'm wondering how many of you caught the recent airing of the movie about the British punk/rock band Heavy Load on IFC (or were perhaps already familiar with the band)? The band includes a few members with cognitive differences and they often play club dates to audiences which include folks with disabilities. Heavy Load launched a campaign called "Stay Up Late" when they noticed that the disabled members of their audience would all start to disappear around 9:00pm because their professional caregivers were going off shift and had to take them home.

  I found the film fascinating on several fronts and am curious whether anybody here has been looking into this band for fun, research or activism. The film appears to be enjoying some success and is making the rounds of film festivals etc. I'm also curious about whether Heavy Load is especially unique in this respect or whether anyone here is aware of other rock or punk bands with ties to communities that identify as disabled to some extent?

  Heavy Load has a web site for those who are interested:

  http://www.heavyload.org/

  I'm seeking any comments or information that might relate to Heavy Load or similar bands as a topic. Thanks,

  from Anthony Tusler

  I've been researching popular music written and performed by people with disabilities over the past few years. Thanks for the info. Heavy Load's "Stay Up Late" campaign is a perfect use of the rock and roll tradition to challenge the mainstream.

  Interestingly, I couldn't find their music on their website and had to go to their MySpace site. They specifically reference the Ramones who have disability imagery and identity woven throughout.

  If anyone would like a taste of disability rock and roll there is a podcast of a half hour show I did on Berkeley's Pacifica station, KPFA, http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=25639

  from Anthony Tusler

  Here's a digest of the latest of my research into disability and popular music:

  Susan Swartz, a columnist for our local newspaper the Press Democrat, got excited about the songs and wrote a column, http://www.e-bility.com/articles/disability-songs.php

  Here's my picks for Best of 2007, http://www.AboutDisability.com/Culture

  And finally, I promised (quite awhile ago) to post any info on the radio show I did on disability: songs, singers, and songwriters. It was a two hour show. I've posted two, one hour MP3s, 1 Radio show of music created by and about people with disabilities (Disability_Songs Pt I)

  http://www.divshare.com/download/2659231-940

  2 Radio show of music created by and about people with disabilities (Disability Songs Pt II) http://www.divshare.com/download/2659232-383

  The play list is at, http://www.aboutdisability.com/pages/KRCB.htm

  Well, have fun with this. Our history is woven through popular music

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• Michael Beckerman, New York University

  Right now I'm working on three "Czech" composers: Antonin Dvorak, Jaroslav Jezek, and Gideon Klein. The first suffered from serious anxiety, and the second was almost blind, while the third suffered the disability of being a prisoner in a concentration camp. I believe, and it must remain as a belief, that all three were profoundly affected by their disability, and wrote music that reflects it in some way. Actually though, I'm in the awkward position of believing that all three wrote better and more interesting works as a result, but one has to be careful what one preaches in that regard.

  I just gave a talk called "Dark Blue World" on the blind Czech composer Jaroslav Jezek. His most characteristic tune is actually called "Dark Blue World" and forms a kind of triple pun on the blues, darkness, and the actual shades Jezek could see. I'm working this and some other Jezek related topics into a larger project.

  Even though it's an unconventional notion of disability, I'm working on another project called "Musselmann and Music" about the most marginzalized and disabled prisoners in concentration camps, and in particular, the creation and performance of a song about them written in the camps by Alexander Kulisiewicz.

  I'm doing some "Late style" work as well. I published on Janacek's late style in The Gerontologist

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• Cynthia Folio, Temple U

  I wrote a musical composition about epilepsy, inspired by my daughter, who has seizures every day. It's a multimedia composition that uses artwork by people with epilepsy, called "When the Spirit Catches You ...". The CD version of this piece is available now (w/o the artwork) at http://www.meyer-media.com. The DVD version (with the artwork) will be released soon (pending funding). This artwork, and the friendships that I developed with these visual artists, convinced me that their art was intimately connected with their condition. Their works are both inspirational and disturbing, and they were the guiding light for much of my music.

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• Allen Gimbel

  Theorizing Disability in the Music of Allan Pettersson

  Allan Pettersson (1911-1980) was a Swedish composer of formidable distinction active primarily in the third quarter of the 20th century. A beaten child brought up in the slums of Stockholm, he started playing the viola at an early age and eventually turned to composition as well. He made his living as a violist in the Stockholm Philharmonic until severe rheumatoid arthritis forced early retirement from the orchestra. The condition led eventually to wheelchair confinement. A bout with cancer resulted in extensive hospitalization later on. He remained active as a composer throughout these ordeals, his music explicitly reflecting psychological, physical, spiritual, and even political issues that may make him an ideal subject for Disability Studies in music. He left 16 massive symphonies, two violin concertos, a viola concerto, three large concertos for string orchestra, an important song cycle, and several other works of consequence. Pettersson is considered a national hero in Sweden, and has generated substantial scholarly and performance activity both there and in Germany. He is known in the US primarily to record collectors, though he made a brief public splash in this country with the release of his Seventh Symphony conducted by Antal Dorati on a well distributed London LP in the 70s; his Eighth Symphony was recorded by Sergiu Comissiona with the Baltimore Symphony on Deutsche Grammophon and released shortly after his death. His complete works are available on German and Swedish labels and may be easily obtained here. Pettersson's compositions are striking and bring up numerous provocative issues for music theorists. My paper will begin with an introductory overview of Pettersson's symphonic output in relation to the various musical manifestations of disability that may or may not be present in these works. There does exist considerable skepticism in the literature regarding analytical activity that seeks to consider the extramusical connections in this composer's output. As I view these connections to be at some level essential to the works' thorough consideration, these notions will be scrutinized, as will the pieces' reception histories in relation to these issues. Part Two will examine some of the burgeoning recent (mostly German) scholarship on Pettersson and its stance on the potential relation between events in the music itself and the biographical facts. Part Three will examine selected passages mainly from the Sixth Symphony and Second Violin Concerto, and a conclusion will suggest avenues for future research.

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• Stefan Honisch, UBC

  My research builds upon Professor Straus' article "Normalizing the Abnormal: Disability in Music and Music Theory." My discussion focusses on physical impairment and how it impacts instrumental performance, specifically at an advanced (ie university and beyond) level. My aim is to move beyond special education and music therapy paradigms. I am hoping to encourage a move towards what Professor Straus describes as a narrative of disability accomodated, which I think has particular relevance to instrumental performance. I argue that distinguishing between the physical fact of impairment, and the negative barriers of disability is a crucial first step in being able to use the impaired body (as I do) to play an instrument. Rather than being threatening, the physical facts of impairment remain neutral, and are accomodated within a technical/artistic approach.

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• Shersten Johnson, University of St. Thomas, Music Department

  Notational Systems and Conceptualizing Music: a case study of print and braille notation

  College music courses that include visually impaired students present challenges that can baffle not only teachers but also sophisticated disability support personnel. The study of music theory is particularly problematic in that it centers at many levels on notation, with students learning to mediate between audible sounds and the visual depiction of those sounds. While one might assume that blind students can simply depend on tactile representations of music in the form of braille notation to function in the place of printed scores, in practice the two systems signify music very differently. Whereas print notation acts as a graphic image of music providing symbols that make direct, one-to-one mappings of many of our musical concepts like pitch and beat groups, braille is an alphabetic code that describes music using combinations of letters and other symbols derived from the 63 possible configurations of the 6-dot braille cell. Moreover, sighted teachers, at a loss for alternatives, often ask visually impaired students to respond to classroom instruction in the terms prescribed by print notation. Thus, both teachers and blind students end up navigating a complex, three-part interaction between music perception, printed scores, and braille music code.

  Drawing on recent developments in cognitive studies, this paper seeks to add to the ongoing discovery of how music notation systems result from, as well as constrain, the ways in which human beings think about music. An examination of the metaphorical notions that underlie both types of notation provides a basis for understanding some of the differences between modes of representation. Examples drawn from activities undertaken in the music theory classroom highlight these differences, with special focus on analysis, part-writing, and "sight" singing.

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• Alex Lubet, U of MN

  Last time I posted, I mentioned three oddly diverse studies upon which I was working; on Richard Wagner, Bob Dylan, and Les Paul. They're all finished and with their respective publishers and, while I can't absolutely confirm the publications of the latter two, the Wagner study is out in Richard Wagner for the New Millennium: Essays in Music and Culture, edited by Matthew Bribitzer-Stull, Gottfried Wagner, and myself (Palgrave Macmillan). Matt and Gottfried are also among the contributors and Matt and I co-authored the intro. If your interest is Wagner, I can confidently recommend that you buy it. If your interest is disability studies, take it out of the library. Mine is the only DS piece and it's the shortest in the book.

  I have every reason to believe the Les Paul and Bob Dylan pieces are forthcoming. I'll keep you posted. Les Paul will be in a special music forum of Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal. You should be able to access back issues at rds.hawaii.edu.

  I'm currently editing a special forum of Review of Disability Studies on disability and music. My own contribution will be an article on guitarist and inventor Les Paul. I recent gave a paper on Bob Dylan and disability that, further down the line, will serve as the template for a book.

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  My essay "Richard Wagner and Disability Studies" will be out soon in Richard Wagner for the New Millennium: Essays in Music and Culture (Palgrave), edited by Gottfried Wagner, Matt Bribitzer-Stull, and Alex Lubet.

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• Adam Ockelford

  Colleagues may be interested to read "In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini", published in the UK by Hutchinson and available from internet outlets such as amazon.co.uk. Derek, now 27 years old is an exceptionally talented pianist, despite being blind and having severe learning difficulties. The book relates Derek's development as a musician and a young man, and deals with a range of issues relating to disability and music.

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• Bruce Quaglia, University of Utah

  Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata, First Movement, and the Normal Body: The Idea of Formal Prosthesis

  My paper explores the discourse surrounding certain 'extrinsic' formal areas such as codas, slow introductions and interpolations in relation to the 'normal musical bodies' to which they are appended. Taking Joe Straus's critique of Formenlehre tradition, and his analyses of Beethoven and Schubert major key sonata movements, (JAMS 59:1, 2006) as a point of departure, I develop the idea of formal prosthesis as a rhetorical narrative strategy in Beethoven. The present paper (presented recently at Rocky Mountain AMS/SMT) confines itself to a discussion of the first movement of the Pathétique sonata, where the passages marked Grave enact such as prosthesis by virtue of their "otherness" and the manner in which they carry, and are carried by, the normative musical body. While this movement may provide one example among many, particularly in Beethoven's output, the idea of formal prosthesis is not dependant upon a distortion of normative form. On the contrary, the very idea of normative form and of normativity itself is, as disability scholars have argued, entirely dependant on the existence of material differences. As the paper expands, I intend to explore many of the commonly remarked upon Beethoven codas that have been under scrutiny since Kerman and Rosen's scholarly exchange of more than two decades ago.

  One important strand within this paper is the consideration of 18th and 19th Century form and form theory in relation to biological models of embryonic development and especially the rise of Teratology. In general usage, teratology refers to the study of unusual formations and births found in nature. In earlier centuries teratology simply marked a fascination with anomalies in both the plant and animal worlds, but as biology became increasingly organized as a discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, it also began to exert an increasing control over human bodies in a complex set of relations that Michel Foucault has called the emergence of biopower. By 1840, biology had undergone a major transformation when Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire created a 'new science', which he called teratology. Its purpose was specifically the classification and study of anomalous human births in order to understand and control how both normal and pathological bodies came into being during embryonic development.

  In the final part of this paper I attempt to problematize the idea of rhetorical/formal prosthesis in order to avoid it becoming a fashionable synonym for the same old structuralist parsing of form that I am interested in critiquing. In order to do this I propose a seemingly contradictory model for viewing extrinsic areas as simultaneously acting as 'phantom limbs' and as prostheses. This plays upon memory and especially memory in relation to embodiment. I cite Merleau-Ponty's discussion of anosognosia in Phenomenology of Perception as an example for how such a seeming contradiction may become a means for avoiding Cartesian binary oppositions. This aspect of the paper is presently rendered in purely speculative terms and will need to be demonstrated through musical examples as the work proceeds.

• Laurie Stras

  I'll be contributing an article on Connie Boswell to Popular Music's special edition on music and disability studies - an extended and reworked version of the paper I gave at Seattle - that uses Rosemarie Garland Thomson's "rhetorics of disability" to analyse both the production and reception of the Boswell Sisters' music (and, by association, 20s and 30s jazz).

• Joseph N. Straus, CUNY

  Disability and the "Late Style" in Music. The "late style" is a longstanding aesthetic category in all of the arts. Music in the "late style" is presumed to have certain internal qualities (such as fragmentation, intimacy, nostalgia, or concision) and to be associated with certain external factors (such as the age of the composer, his or her proximity to and foreknowledge of death, lateness within a historical period, or a sense of authorial belatedness with respect to significant predecessors). Upon closer inspection, it appears that many of these external factors are unreliably correlated with a musical style that might be described as late. Late style is better correlated with the bodily or mental condition of the composer: Most composers who write in what is recognized as a late style have shared experiences of non-normative bodily or mental function, that is, of impairment and disability. Composers inscribe their disabilities in their music, and the result is often correlated with what is generally called "late style." I explore this argument through close readings of three modernist works: Stravinsky, Requiem Canticles; Schoenberg, String Trio; and Bartók, Third Piano Concerto. In each case, I contend that the features of these works generally understood as markers of lateness are better understood in relation to the disabled bodies of their composers.

• Society for Disability Studies Links
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• Untangling the web: Listing of Disability Information on the Web
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• CHANCE websites for People with Disabilities

• PDF format accessibility
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• Web Access Center
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• Accessibility by Alastair Campbell
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• Web Accessibility
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• Web Access (UK)
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• University of Southampton Student Support
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• Autism Forum on Music Therapy
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• Music Education Network for the Visually Impaired

• Indiana Institute on Disability and Community
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• Teaching Technologies

  from Bruce Quaglia:

  This site includes a number of podcasts which seem to all deal with the experiences of disabled folks using assistive technology on Mac OS X. You can subscribe to the podcasts for free. None of the ones that I have listened to seem to explicitly address music so far, however, it seems to me that the implications for music and music pedagogy are significant and these may just be of general interest to members of the list.

  http://www.assistiveware.com/podcasts.php

  One could easily read an intent to promote Apple and their products in these podcasts, but they don't seem to be ads per se and appear generally informational.

• Braille scores and related materials

  Joe Straus

  AMS/SMT in Nashville, Shersten Johnson will be giving a paper on braille notation

  Jane Clendinning

  For those on the list who might want access to Braille scores, these are available through the Library of Congress National Lending Service program. Their information page is

  http://www.loc.gov/nls/reference/factsheets/music.html

  The scores should be requested directly by the user needing them so that the Library can keep records of the type of scores particular users might need. The user can either phone in an order or use the online web form. If a score is needed by an institution instead of an individual, it can be requested through ILL.

  There are a wide range of scores available, including many "standard repertory" scores that could be used for class materials. LC is in the process of digitizing the scores to allow them to be shared through files and streaming media instead of shipping the cumbersome printed volumes, and already has over 1000 scores available in their digital collection. These are delivered directly to the user's computer for reading or printing. This clearly will be the direction of the future, as the score conversion is now done using computer software instead of by hand, and the electronic file versions are made in that process.

  The accessible Musician's Guide textbook materials that I am compiling will be made available through my publisher, W. W. Norton. Their contact person for all types of accessibility issues is Cliff Landesman. The folks at W. W. Norton indicated that they provide assistance when requested for persons who need an alternative format for any of their books or teaching materials. This would suggest that another course of action to secure accessible teaching materials is to ask the publisher of the textbook to at least see what they can provide. If the materials I am compiling would be of use prior to their completion in the spring, contact me and I can send them as they are ready.

  from Jane Clendinning

  This reply doesn't really address the encoding of scores, but rather taking another direction to elicit the analytical information. The student probably has a sound activated voice recorder (and if he or she doesn't they are not that expensive for a good one). Perhaps for indicating location and type of cadence, phrase letters, information such as parallel period, etc. the student could use the aural representations of the piece (i.e. CD recordings) and use the voice recorder to record their "narrative" of the piece's formal design over the sound of the CD in the background. The student could listen a few times to the piece to get in mind where the events that are requested in the analysis are in the piece, then put the recorder on and speak in the locations ("phrase a" "half cadence here" "phrase a'" "PAC here" "Parallel period" "this section is repeated" etc.) over the background sound of the music, just as a teacher might in class listening. That should take no longer to grade than listening to the piece. Probably the student will be doing analysis of this type (by ear) in "real life", and actually that is what we would like all students to be able to do.

  To simulate the experience of "slowing" the piece down by looking at the score (where it is "frozen" in time) for clues that a visually-oriented student would use to identify chords, cadences, phrases, etc., perhaps the student could use the "Amazing Slower-Downer" or some other computer program that allows the music to be slowed down and stopped without loosing pitch or relative durational information. That could simulate the visual process of looking at the chord until you figure it out, by substituting listening to the chord until you can figure it out, then moving to the next chord or event. From that, the visually-impaired student could indicate Roman numerals, figures, chord functions, etc. using a word processor or other means of writing it down (but not attempting to write on a score they cannot see) or again, use the voice recorder to overlay that information on the sound of the piece where the events occur.

  from Gretchen Horlacher

  I want to add something that has been working very well for me and my student. A few weeks ago we discovered the Lime music notation program from Dancing Dots. This program works in conjunction with other common braille software - JAWS for oral sound, Goodfeel to produce a musical braille score, and interfaces with a a refreshable braille screen as well. So a student who receives a musical file in Lime will have multiple ways to engage with that excerpt: s/he can hear a sound file of it while at the same time a speaker is describing what pitches/durations are sounding, and a musical braille file can be loaded into a computer with a "braille pad" that the student can use to read the notation that way.

  My student, who has used a number of products including Braille Music Editor, really likes this system, and learned it easily. (He was already an expert musical braille reader.) I really like it because with almost no difficulty I am able to produce a score in Lime (Lime is like a simplified version of Finale), and send him the score on a flash drive or attached to an e-mail. He can bring this to class while I discuss something. Or better yet, if I send him a homework assignment or a test, he can complete the exercise by altering the given file and either print it or mail it back to me.

  Here is a mp3 file that Dancing Dots provides to describe how Lime works; it is read by a blind musician who describes how he can create a piece of music using Lime and send it to sighted users:

  www.dancingdots.com/huge/LimeAloudPresentation.mp3

  I have found a few limitations to this software. It really doesn't have Roman-numeral figured-bass capabilities built in; but we have figured a way out to use it in this way, making annotations above the score that look something like V 6/5. And as with all musical braille notations, it's best if everything appears on a grand staff (no more than two staves) simply because more staves are difficult to read in musical braille. However, Lime has this great feature where you can create a score in more than two systems, and then condense them onto fewer staves (i.e., enter a string quartet, and then a command moves the parts onto two staves).

  My institution has been very generous in hiring someone to transcribe all of my student's music (i.e., his piano music, his music for choir, his music theory workbook, etc.), and this person - a music graduate student also studying library science - has been able to keep up with our needs pretty well using Lime (producing both the Lime files for computer and via Goodfeel also producing musical braille scores when needed). Now I am beginning to be able to produce simple scores on my own so that I can decide to use something "on the spur of the moment."

  from Laurie Stras

  I had a totally blind grad student in composition around 1990 and had several blind classmates though that was thirty years ago. There's some remarkable technology out there. I think the basics are to 1) ask the student, who is an authority or her/his needs and probably knows the technology 2) use your disability services office if you've got one.

  My article on Music and Blindness in the Encyclopedia of Disability (Sage) may have something useful.

  from David Pacun

  I would strongly suggest that you learn a bit of Braille music notation; you can do this visually by memorizing the patterns of dots. You might even purchase a 'slate and stylus' to learn how to Braille music manually. (I think Boston School for the Blind--not sure of the name--still makes these. A small slate was about $20 four or five years ago). There are several Braille manuals available--and the basic system can be found online. I use an old, somewhat dated guide: "Introduction to Braille Music Transcription" by Mary Turner De Garmo (Library of Congress, 1970). Braille notation has changed over the years.

  In any case, it is very helpful to understand from the inside how Braille works. Braille can notate most everything in sighted scores, but the notation is linear and additive with individual cells for pitch and rhythm, and small groups of cells for other marks (octave register--there are no clefs, slurs, dynamics, articulation, etc.). And the question of alignment for chords, for left and right hands in piano music, is or can be a bit tricky. Hence, a Braille score reads something like this: 5th octave, D-quarter note, forte, tenuto, begin slur--at that is just one note.

  To me (sighted) at least, Braille is less of a real-time system and more of a learning and memory aid; a violinist I worked with was unable to play in orchestra because the simple rehearsal cues that what we take for granted--'start at measure 65'--just don't work very well.

  Here are some quick recommendations (FYI: I'm giving a mini-paper on this at Nashville):

  1. Get music to the student early! In fact, get everything to the student early--syllabus, text, chapter notes, etc. And be prepared to spend a bunch of extra time throughout the semester.

  2. For music excerpts, simplify the score--omit dynamics, slurs, articulations; the cleaner the copy, the easier it will be to learn. (Or maybe have two versions--a simplified one and a full one.) Generally, longer scores are divided into small segments; since the divisions will or should align with phrases, the notation may alter how you teach phrase form and overall form.

  3. Know what student services has available; ours has been quite helpful and supportive.

  4. The sighted students will have to adjust as well--calling out pitches in their proper octave register, etc. You might try to enlist a few students to help out. I usually teach a bit of Braille notation to everyone in class.

  5. You will need to work out a system for dictation. One student I had used a slate and stylus; another (current) is computer savvy. In either case, it is real helpful to be able to read the dots just as you would any student's notation. (You may also want to have a small midi-keyboard handy.)

  6. Think carefully about what we take for granted: after you learn a bit of Braille, try imagining what a multi-level, Schenkerian voice leading reduction would 'look' like in Braille?? Incidentally, one blind student I worked with very briefly was pretty fascinated by the idea of underlying voice leading structure, and not put off by the complexity of how to represent it.

  That is for all its cumbersome aspects, Braille is or can be--again to me at least--a very analytical notational system; and as it involves 'chunking,' evaluating and memorizing as you go along, the way one learns the score from the notation resembles analysis. In fact, you might even find yourself borrowing a bit from the visually impaired side of things: for instance, why not ask students to memorize a short chunk of music and have them reproduce it on a quiz. All of a sudden, they might find music theory pretty useful.

  from Arnie Cox:

  I have taught my blind students primarily in private readings, which has seemed to me more efficient than classroom instruction and also a better way to take advantage of their exceptional ears. (I have made classroom attendance optional, so that they can take part if they like.) My focus has been on reproducing lines by ear - any or all voices, depending on context - as well as creating and producing reductive lines for tonal music, and scales, sets, row forms, etc. for post-tonal music. They reproduce the music vocally and/or on their instrument and on the piano (when piano has not been their primary instrument). The result is a reshaping of the curriculum to suit each student's abilities and needs, and this in turn has contributed to a more ear-oriented approach in my usual classroom teaching. As it happens, I haven't yet had a student who used, or relied much on, Braille music notation; however, if I did then I agree that learning a bit of Braille would be important.

• Adapting Curriculum & Instruction in Inclusive Classrooms.
  Publications, Indiana Institute on Disability and Community
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• Disability and Legal Resources

• Indiana University Legal Resources
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