Dyslexia, Planets, White-Out, and Re-Composing

Photography by Lynn Godfriaux Maloy.  From "The Well-Tempered Poet: 24 Pictures and Poems"  Copyright 2010

Dyslexia is like falling into the same mud hole day after day.  You know the mud hole exists, you know that you should be able to avoid it, but suddenly you're being sucked down yet again by a mud hole you didn't ask for and don't understand, don't want, but can't get rid of.  EVER.

Okay, that's off my chest.  On to how to work with dyslexic students who can't get out of their mud holes any better than you can.  Working with them takes patience.  LOTS OF IT.  Working with them requires a total re-invention of the term GOAL.  Working with them requires not only thinking outside the box but thinking on a completely different PLANET.

So are you as a music teacher willing to go to Pluto to help a student with dyslexia?  Because let me tell you from personal experience both as a dyslexic and as a professional teacher working with dyslexic students, you will explore new music worlds never before mentioned in any pedagogy classroom.  Like changing terms from "left hand" and "right hand" to "low voice" and "high voice".  I hit upon this one recently with a student who has made major leaps in reading by dyslexic standards, but absolutely cannot keep straight which hand is which.  I kept referring to left/right hand issues, and we would spend agonizing minutes straightening out which hand I was referring to.  Then at her last lesson I started using "low-voice/high-voice" terms and she knew immediately which hand to adjust.  Then there is the implied distance on the score between notes and the real distant between those notes on the keyboard. There is no connection between the two.  None whatsoever.  Non-dyslexic folks don't understand the absolute craziness caused by that unrelated relationship because, well, most pianists aren't sucked into a dyslexic mud hole because of it.

And then there are editions.  Large print works okay, but what really works is primer-styled editions for advanced music.  Large print, sideways scores, lots of white space.  But the cost would be astronomical, so we're left with large print scores for some of the music and trying to convince a copy shop that we're not breaking copyright laws when we ask them to enlarge a piece from four lines per page to four measures per page.  There's got to be a way publishing companies could offer this style of edition on a print-on-demand for students who can't get through large-print editions, much less standard editions.

And then there is the problem of trying to find an arrangement of a favorite piece that works.  Easy editions sound, well, easy.  All too often the really cool harmonies and such are lost because the edition has been stripped down to bare essentials.  So I pull out the white-out and re-compose arrangements.  They're arrangements, right?  And I have bought the edition.  It's just that arrangers and composers arrange and write for people who don't have reading issues.  Of course that means arguing with the copy shop again because I really don't want to white-out the original.  Standard literature is another monster.  There's no white-out or enlarging that will help with a Chopin Ballade.  That's where insta-memory is really helpful ... if only I had "insta-memory".

I guess all musicians have issues, and those who read and sight-read well often start quaking in their boots at the thought of a performance by memory.  That's where we dyslexics shine.  I need to remember that.