By Simon Miner | From BayLines Express, May, 2026
Recently, I spoke with a piano teacher who gives online lessons. She has noticed an increase in blind and low-vision students enrolling in her classes and wants to better understand how to support them. As a sighted teacher, she was curious about the strategies that helped me learn piano with limited vision.
Our conversation stayed with me long after it ended. Much of traditional piano instruction assumes a student can easily see sheet music from a bench. For me, that was never true. I could read music only by holding it inches from my face, and as pieces became more advanced, the notes grew smaller and more crowded. Eventually, it became impossible to play and read comfortably at the same time.
Over the years, I developed alternative ways of learning music, some intentional, some born out of necessity. I want to share some techniques, thoughts, and experiences to encourage blind musicians and help teachers think more creatively about how students learn.
My journey at the piano
I began piano lessons at age five and continued studying through college, apart from a brief rebellious stretch in my early teens. Alongside my computer science degree, I earned a music minor and spent years playing in recitals, church services, talent shows, and community events.
As an adult, music has remained deeply woven into my life. I’ve served as a church music director and worship leader, played for weddings and funerals, and released multiple albums of original piano-driven music. During the pandemic, my wife and I hosted online gatherings where I shared reflective hymn improvisations to help bring people comfort during uncertain days.
Music has become more than a hobby for me. It has been a way of navigating blindness, expressing faith, and connecting with others.
Along the way, several techniques proved especially important.
Memorizing music
Even though I cannot comfortably read sheet music while seated at the piano, I still rely on it heavily.
My process has always involved studying small sections at a time. I hold the music close to my face, examine a few measures, then set it down and attempt to play them from memory. Once those phrases settle into my hands, I move on to the next section. Over time, the entire piece comes together like assembling a puzzle.
This process can be slow and painstaking, especially when learning technically difficult music. Certain passages require repeated trips back to the page to confirm notes, dynamics, and articulation markings. I have tremendous admiration for pianists who can sight-read fluently because that has never been my experience.
I remember learning the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique in high school entirely this way. It took months of careful memorization. At the time, I had never actually heard a recording of the piece, so I didn’t fully understand how it was supposed to sound. Years later, after finally hearing a professional performance, I realized I had bulldozed through sections with far less grace and nuance than I imagined.
That experience taught me an important lesson: memorization can help you learn the mechanics of a piece, but musical understanding requires more than correct notes. It requires listening, interpretation, and feel.
Playing by ear and improvisation
While memorization gave me structure, playing by ear gave me freedom.
Growing up, my best friend’s father worked as a radio DJ and regularly brought home recordings of Top 40 countdowns. When I heard songs I liked, I would go home and try to figure them out on the piano from memory. At first, I focused on melodies and basic chord progressions, but eventually I began filling in missing parts with my own harmonies and embellishments.
I also became obsessed with video game music from the Nintendo Entertainment System era. Those soundtracks were catchy, dramatic, and surprisingly sophisticated. I would spend hours learning themes by ear and then improvising variations on them. Somewhere along the line, improvisation became just as exciting to me as faithfully reproducing written music.
My piano teacher, however, was less enthusiastic about this development.
At one point I grew so frustrated with scales and technical exercises that I quit lessons altogether. In an attempt to soften the disappointment, I proudly played my elaborate arrangement of the final level theme from Kid Icarus for my teacher. She was not especially moved by the performance.
Still, those years taught me valuable skills. Improvisation strengthened my ear, deepened my understanding of harmony, and made me less afraid of mistakes. If I lost my place while performing, I learned how to recover gracefully and keep moving.
Learning in church
One of the most important parts of my musical education happened in church.
My family attended a lively congregation where services were spontaneous and energetic. The worship team rarely rehearsed beforehand. On Sunday mornings, the song leader would simply begin singing, often in an unpredictable key and tempo, and the musicians had to jump in immediately.
At first, keeping up felt impossible.
But week after week, I started recognizing familiar chord patterns, transitions, and rhythmic ideas. I learned how to quickly identify keys, anticipate harmonic changes, and follow the emotional movement of a song in real time.
The church organist became an especially important influence on me. She instinctively knew where the music was heading and could support the congregation with rich harmonies and confident accompaniment. Sitting beside her taught me how to listen actively and react musically instead of relying on written notation.
There was something thrilling about the unpredictability of it all. Every service felt slightly different. The music breathed and shifted in the moment.
At the same time, those experiences also revealed the importance of balance. Spontaneity is valuable, but so are preparation and structure. Over time, I realized I needed both.
Putting it all together
Eventually, I discovered that my strongest growth happened when I combined all these approaches.
Memorization gave me the framework of a piece. Playing by ear helped me understand its style and emotion. Improvisation gave me confidence and flexibility.
When I started learning songs I already loved listening to, everything accelerated. Pieces by artists like Richard Marx and Michael W. Smith suddenly became much easier to absorb because I already understood how they should sound and feel.
That combination of reading, listening, memorizing, and experimenting became my pathway into music.
Blindness forced me to approach piano differently, but not inadequately. My visual limitations pushed me toward deeper listening, stronger memory, and greater creativity.
There is no single correct way to learn to play piano. For blind musicians especially, progress often comes through adaptation, persistence, and discovering alternative routes to the same destination. Those winding paths can lead somewhere unexpectedly beautiful.