Teaching the Blind

[aaeolean]

Hello everyone, I have a question for some of the other teachers out there.

I've been teaching for about 6 years and in a few weeks I will be taking on a blind student.

Up until this point my teaching has been pretty straightforward. With this new student starting in a few weeks I'm trying to prepare lessons a little differently.

It's always a case of "look at my fingers" or "look at this chord diagram", or "look at this sheet of music". I have to admit I'm a little curious about how to approach this.

Has any teachers on here had experience teaching someone who is blind? I spoke to his father and this guy is 17 and he's been playing for about a year.

I have no problems as far as what to teah him but I'm a little confused as to HOW to teach him.

Does any one have any ideas?

BEN

[Guila]

I always heard that when a person loses a sense(vision in this case) the other ones get more accurate. That might help him to identify the sounds or anything... I'm not a teacher I'm just trying to help

[Koala]

Hey, ive worked with blind people before, two of them and two different systems arose from teaching them. One of them, after learning intervals would just want me to dictate everything in intervals (which made great exercise for me as well), he was not a beginner in any way so he´d be able to copy off anything i played by ear.
The other fellow liked feeling my hand to see youd id fret stuff, and then i had to help him place his.
Something I found real helpful is to teach them to always feel the frets if they slid up or down. It got to a point where it became an unconscious behaviour and any time id ask they would know exactly where they were.

Hope this helps, thats my experience.