sixtyPercent: Cochlear Implants, Aviation, Technlology, and Philosophy 2006/09/11
More on Cochlear Implants and Playing Piano
My son Brendan, who was born deaf, seems to hear quite well with his cochlear implants (see the previous link for more writings on that). He has now been taking piano lessons for about three months and likes to practice -- which he generally manages to do about four or fives days a week.
At first, I was unsure how well he would do at playing the piano. Before the first lesson, I sat him down at a piano, and asked him to identify the higher of two notes, which I then proceeded to play while he turned his back. He couldn't do better than chance at discriminating between two notes played on adjacent white keys (middle C and D, for example).
After three months of playing, he can identify the higher of two adjacent notes now with much, much better accuracy. While playing a song, he also seems to be able to hear when a note is one step off and self-correct. While he has not yet started playing chords in his lessons, we have been experimenting with them a bit at home. He can generally do a very good job discriminating between a single key, and a two or three note chord. His implant has theoretical frequency range from about 100 Hz to 8000 Hz, so all but the very lowest piano notes (range of about 28 Hz to 4200 Hz) should sound fine to him.
The piano lessons are a great source of joy and humor for me, and I hope for Brendan too. The teacher has pretty clearly just forgotten that Brendan is deaf -- she gives him no breaks and he responds well to her style. I still haven't told her that he has an off-the charts, fiendishly sharp memory, though she's starting to suspect that something isn't quite run of the mill. He also seems to have the best singing voice in the family, though that may be more sad than funny.... :-)
by David Creemer : 2006/09/11 : Categories cochlear_implants (permalink)
