I play the recorder, guitar and ukulele. It's just as normal as you would imagine.
How does one play the trombone, btw?

I was in jazz band in high school and there were several blind trombone players. I wouldn't say they sounded amazing, but, you know...it was high school jazz band, lol. No idea how they did it because that's not my instrument, but I know it's possible.

I played the alto saxophone, and back then, what my band instructor did was recorded himself playing my part on piano and singing the notes as he played, and then I listened to that and played along until I had it memorized. It was cassette tapes back then, ancient history now. I don't know what totally blind people are doing these days to learn music, especially if they're like me and don't have perfect pitch, but it worked for me at the time.

I also took piano lessons, and I had braille music for that. I obviously couldn't read it and play simultaneously, so again I had to memorize it beforehand. Not sure if braille music is even still a thing, and it wasn't a great system back then because the notations were braille contractions and it was confusing to my poor little brain, but I got by.

I play and teach drums for a living. As with a lot of other instruments, picking it up and getting comfortable in the beginning was hard, but intuition and spacial awareness will see you through. A lot of sighted musicians have commented on how adaptable I am on other people's setups. For context, some drummers are complete sticklers for everything to be set up the exact same way every single time. Living a disabled life caused this not to make much sense to me. Outside of having your own static studio setup, or touring with a precision setup that doesn't ever change from night-to-night, flexibility, adaptability, and compromise are necessary parts of the game. Enjoy what you have control over, and learn to accept what you don't. Most everything has a workaround.

So I was heavily visually impaired growing up, Until I was 22. Join the band in middle school, and I used a 19 inch computer monitor bolted to a heavy duty music stand, then had wires running to my laptop running software called finale that would display my music, I also had a foot switch to advance measures so I could play along with the class and during concerts. Picked up trombone in seventh grade for fun, and can still play halfway decent, the slide positions aren’t too difficult to get by feel. At one point or another I’ve picked up every brass instrument besides the French horn to play, I also play a little guitar and bass guitar. I’m having trouble with guitar because there’s not a lot of accessible tools for what I want to learn, and the things I do find I struggle with practicing thanks to ADHD.

Trombone player here. Not totally blind, but can’t read music anymore.

Honestly it’s made me a better musician as it forces me to listen more. I play better in tune and can connect with the groove better.

Good news is you can still do all that with or without sight.

I took flute for a while but my band teacher honestly had no idea how to actually teach anything even though I was the last kid but who didn't drop the class and then even I couldn't bother with it anymore


And then I took piano for half a semester before it started going into learning flax and other types of weird cords that I couldn't keep up with and then the Braille music was different from the Braille system I'd invented before that cuz nobody had brought me beer on music before


I also once played a cello which was fun and I was told I was the only person who made it sound decent on my first try


I'd love to check that out more but for now I'm going to stick to singing

I played flute and piano in school as well as bell choir. While I could read some music most of how I played was getting a feel for the motion of the notes (piano) and playing at the right times with the rest of the band (flute).

I was trying to learn guitar last year and that was almost entirely by ear. the challenge with guitar and ukulele both for me was just how unfamiliar they are and how big the task of figuring them out is. I did make some good progress but mental health got in the way and currently they're in their cases under my bed. I look forward to picking them up again though, it was really fun to just have that kinisthetic connection with the music again.

I have sight, but I could never read the music when it was on the stand, so I memorized it. I can actually feel the tension across my shoulders and back from my hours of being awkwardly hunched over to see the music while practicing the fingerings/pan positions while listening to/humming music just THINKING about having to memorize a new piece. But I used to play the clarinet in band (marching and concert), and the lead pan (lead as in the type of pan—others include double tenors, seconds, guitas, and bass—I was by no means a soloist) in a steel drum ensemble!

Music is literally the only thing I miss about school, and I miss it greatly in adult life. I know nothing is stoping from playing (well I couldn’t afford a steel pan so that’s out lol) but nothing beats being a part of an ensemble.

I have always wanted to learn the piano and the violin at some point in life

I think you could definitely do it! As you’ve said, you don’t need to see to know you’re in the right space on the slide for the note, it becomes muscle memory really quickly! But, valve trombones do exist if you wanted to give one of those a shot too! I’ve never had to experience memorizing music without sight, so I can’t speak to that, and I’m sure it’ll be difficult, but I’m sure you could do it with patience and practice

Plenty of blind musicians out there who are wicked talented.

I don't play anymore, but I played the piano for years when I was in school. I have some sight, so I used that, but I memorised my music. I could never sight read for shit. But in order to read the music without leaning awkwardly forward it had to be blown up so two or three lines fit on one large 11-17" piece of paper. Even if learned to sight read well, no way I could play well trying to flip oversized pages every two lines.

Braille music, you can't sight read at all (I mean, obviously), but more, because you always need one hand to read the music, if you also need two hands to play...well, it doesn't work, no matter how good you are. XD

My brother is a music therapist and plays piano, guitar, and accordion. He also spent a couple years playing the pipe organ (yeah, my high school had a pipe organ). He picked up the accordion while working, so at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if he knows a couple other instruments as well that I'm just not aware of.

According to my brother, perfect pitch is more common amongst blind people. I don't know if this has actually been studied, or what the numbers actually are. I assume it's the result of more practice with making fine sound distinctions. I know I'm pretty trash at hearing intervals, but wasn't half bad when I did ear training regularly.\*\* It makes me wonder if more sighted people have really good pitch then we realise, but never have any opportunity to hone the skill at all, especially when young.

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\*\* I have a pretty good ear for phonetics when I practice, too, as when I did my phonetics class, I was at least as good as the sighted students, except they had visual cues (what they could see the person's mouth doing) as well as auditory ones, whereas I was relying entirely on my ears. But I've never had visual cues, and didn't even know this was a thing (every sighted person basically half lip-reads already, who knew) until I took this phonetics class. The prof kept telling everyone to look at what his mouth was doing, and I had no idea why until I finally asked him.

I play the Irish tin whistle, sing, and I also play piano as well. The Irish whistle is easy to pick up, but can be difficult to master because of the techniques we use in traditional Irish music. There's a lot of ornamenttion that we use, and sometimes it can be difficult to incorporate that into tunes when playing. Picking up the Irish whistle has allowed me to really learn by ear. I've had to do that anyway, butI guess listening to and playing trad Irish music really helped me with ear training, since we in the trad Irish music world don't really use sheet music. All tunes are learned by ear, not by force or because we have to, it's just the tradition that people have passed down.

If there are any blind musicians on here who read braille music, how the heck did you go about doing so? I can read the absolute basics, but I'm terrible when it comes to piano music. I'd love to be able to do that.

I make my living playing bass and lead guitar. Because I can't read music yes it just becomes a feat of memory and that does stop me doing some things if I don't have time to rehearse it enough. I end up owing some of my musical friends a lot of dinners because sometimes I ask them to play stuff out for me. I don't read braille but even if I did, with the best will in the world it would be very unlikely any of my clients would be able to create braille music on the sort of deadlines we often work to, so it probably wouldn't help very much.

The hardest part is often still just getting to the place I need to be in order to do it. Working from home has been great but I don't want to become too much of a shut in!