[Smt-talk] Audio disability question

[adamsk01]

Amy,

I've never dealt with a partially deaf student, so I can't offer any suggestions  there. However, in 2008 we had an undergraduate whose severe asthma prevented her from singing more than 3-4 notes in a row. The disabilities office here at IU agreed to purchase a Theremin for this student, and she successfully completed her aural skills requirements on the instrument. As I recall, it was fairly inexpensive (around $250) and easy to learn to play. It proved to be a really effective workaround for that student.

Best of luck,

Kyle Adams
Associate Professor of Music Theory
Jacobs School of Music
Indiana University

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Amy Bauer <abauer at uci.edu> </div><div>Date:10/02/2014  4:34 PM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org </div><div>Subject: [Smt-talk] Audio disability question </div><div>
</div>Dear colleagues,

We have a very hard-working, gifted young pianist who cannot pass her aural skills sequence. She has bronchial pulmonary dispasia (which affects her ability to sight-sing). But her primary issue is almost total deafness in her left ear. She struggled for a long while to understand why she had absolutely no problems with speech or understanding speech, but had difficulty reproducing and recognizing pitch height. According to a recent research paper she shared with me, we use our left ears almost exclusively for that purpose, while using the right ear to decipher speech and syntactical relationships.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation, or has anyone dealt with a situation where a student simply could not complete their aural skills requirement for medical reasons?

Thank you very much for any replies.
-- 
Amy Bauer
Associate Professor of Music Theory
3043 Contemporary Arts Center
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-2775

Tel: 949-824-6615
Fax: 949-824-4914
e-mail: abauer at uci.ed
Department website
Ligeti's Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism and the Absolute
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