sixtyPercent: Cochlear Implants, Aviation, Technlology, and Philosophy 2006/01/13
Learning Piano with a Cochlear Implant
While visiting my sister in Dallas recently, I sat down with my son Brendan at her piano. Brendan was plunk-plunking away, so I pointed out some of the patterns on the keys -- two black keys, then three, then two, and so on. Like any little kid, hey kept pecking and banging and seemed to generally enjoy himself. After a few minutes he went from bang-bang-bang to playing simple sequences.
Then I demonstrated a very simple C chord (middle C and E) and noted how nice it sounded. Brendan tried it, did a decent job copying me, then went back to the bang-bang peck-peck. Pretty soon he tried the simple chord again, and to my amazement transposed the chord all the up and down the piano, always hitting the C and E keys in each octave. Mr. Pattern strikes again!
Two things strike me about this: First, Brendan seems to have picked up the pattern of the key layout very quickly, and figured out that the same patterns work in any octave. Second, Brendan is completely deaf and has been since birth. His cochlear implants work so well that many days I simply forget how amazing his hearing can be. I just take it for granted. I'm glad he finds ways to remind me not to do that.
This inspired me to get a piano of our own, and I settled on a Casio PX-110 digital piano. I'm gleefully looking forward to the phone call to arrange for piano lessons: "Hi I'd like to enroll my deaf son in your piano class" :-)
by David Creemer : 2006/01/13 : Categories life music cochlear_implants (permalink)
