I’m not a professional musician by any stretch of the imagination, but I can play the violin somewhat well and I attempted piano a few years back. I’d personally like to pick up the violin again or maybe guitar. As far as learning music goes, I personally just memorize each piece, but Braille sheet music does exist.

I have oca (best corrected near vision is like 20/80 but for distance 20/200 but it always fluctuates due to my nystagmus) I play drums, piano, and, percussion. I find that memorizing my sheets helps especially because I can’t read non-percussion clef the sheet music if it’s further from my face than it is at a piano. For band I have a start that I can move closer to my face and for jazz bad my sheets are more emotional support since i just memorize the chords and comp. I find drums are the easiest since my fine motor skills are garbage and it’s mostly ostinatos/easy to learn by ear. An interesting perk of learning by ear / getting into composing means I’m good at transcribing stuff and it’s great because I can make it as big as I want. For how clean/how likely you are to accidentally exsanguinate yourself from stubbing your toe it really varies from section to section.

Legally blind musician here.

It doesn't affect playing me when playing guitar but for some reason it does when playing keyboard. I have no left visual field and can't see my left hand when playing.

When I turn my head to look at my left hand while playing my brain hiccoughs and my playing goes to hell. It's probably more related the brain damage from my stroke than the sight loss though.

>Do you learn new music strictly by sound, or are there braille tabs/sheet music?

Even before my sight loss I always learned songs by ear. I tried multiple times to learn music notation but could never get it, so sight loss hasn't really affected how I learn songs because I still do it the same way I always did.

I'm legally blind, and I play guitar and hammered dulcimer. In high school I played all the percussion instruments.