Category: Jam Session
Just curious if anybody on here has taken them? These are the courses you can get from www.musicfortheblind.com. I just found out about these earlier today during a Private QN chat with Gemini here on the Zone, so I went to check them out. Not all of them are working for some reason but I listened to the sound sample of the guitar course and I have to say that it so far seems much more detailed than the face-to-face guitar lessons I've had in the past. So I'm curious if anyone else has taken them and, if so, what you all thought of them. I also have one other question if anyone knows. How in the hell is one supposed to fill out that stupid registration form for their shopping cart? I'm not talking about an accessibility issue here unless there's something I'm missing. Instead it seems sort of vague. It tells you that fields marked with an Asterisk are required. Well fine. And if you know how you can figure those ones out with the arrow keys on your screen reader. Problem is that when I submit the form it says to please make sure I filled out all the required fields properly. Properly? I put information in them, and it is accurate. So I haven't a clue what I could be missing here. Well thanks in advance for your input on the courses.
Brian, I have used these lessons. I found them very helpful and learned more from them than anything else I've tried. I still can't play the guitar but that's because I haven't devoted the time to it. I was making great progress with the lessons until I got distracted by something else and quit working on it. I've actually been thinking about starting again. I don't know what to tell you about the form. It's been a year or more since I purchased the lessons so I don't remember anything tricky about it. Good luck.
I'm glad you started a board topic about this. I was considering doing the same. I have always wanted to learn to play the guitar, and I'm really interested in knowing how well Bill's courses are done.
As for the online shopping cart problem, you can probably give them a call and see what to do about that.
The real problem with that is that it doesn't give you any indication as to which field(s) could have been improperly filled in. All I know for sure is that I fill in all the ones marked with an asterisk. Of course it's going to be at least next month before I try taking the course but I'd like to iron this out as soon as possible. But I think I will call one of these days if I don't figure this out. I'd also like to take the penny whistle course, but I seem to have misplaced my whistle.
So ... are you going to publish a theramin course? I'm too busy to learn a new instrument right now, but it would be instructive to produce one, not just for the blind ... but produce one for anyone to use ...
Don't have a theramin now but ... they've always sounded interesting
Oh I don't see myself being proficient enough on the theremin (notice the spelling here), to produce a course at least for a few years. Thomas Grillo, the only legally blind thereminist I know, has been playing for at least three years. You can find six lessons from him on YouTube.
thanks for the spelling; so much for writing without a Braille display ... I'll have to look at those
They're not as blind friendly as either I or even Thomas himself would prefer but you can still hear what's going on. You at least get to hear him play. Of course he uses a different model of theremin from me, but the two are similar enough that it really wouldn't matter. The only real difference is that the Etherwave, the one I use, has a knob so you can change the instrument's timbre, whereas Thomas uses a Burns B3, which has just the one timbre. But it's a beautiful-sounding instrument despite that. But he can and does give lessons over Skype to those who are interested. But you need a webcam for that since obviously he'll need to be able to see you so he can judge your form and if necessary help you adjust it. The theremin is no simple instrument by any stretch of the imagination. Simple to learn but quite another matter entirely to play it well and even more so to "master" it.
I didn't order a lesson yet, but I did look at the shopping cart and didn't have any trouble whatsoever.
Weird. For some reason it kept telling me to make sure I'd filled out the required fields properly but didn't tell me which ones I could have gotten wrong. I eventually just had to ask Bill to help me with that.
Bill Brown's music courses are available free to patrons of the National Library Service for the Blind. Titles are often slow to update and you'll need to call the national library directly to order, but the courses work well and are available to loan for those who do not or cannot pay.
Oh I can pay for them. They're not that expensive. There just seemed to be an issue with the shopping cart, or at least with creating a profile to use it. I'd fill out the form with my details and it wouldn't accept them for some reason. Like I said it said to make sure I filled out all the required fields properly but didn't give me an indication as to which ones might have been done improperly. I finally just asked Bill Brown to help me with that. So next month I plan on ordering the guitar course and at some point the penny whistle course as well.
I tried taking the piano course. Didn't end up finishing it (more my fault than anything else), but from what I remember I did learn quite a bit. I don't read music so the fact that you don't need to to take these courses was pretty cool. Might take another one someday when I have more time.
So far that's the only reason I've heard why someone else wouldn't finish one of the courses. But they sound like just the sort of thing I've been looking for for all these years. I might actually buy both the guitar and penny whistle courses and take the guitar one now since I own a guitar. Then I can listen to the penny whistle course and, when I buy one, which I plan on doing absolutely as soon as I can, I can get started right away. I used to own a penny whistle but I lost it some years ago during one of my house moves.
And then of course there's the Guitar by Ear collection, which features quite a few songs I've been interested to learn for a while.
I know that NLS offers these lessons, but are they available by cassette only? I'd like to have something that I can keep. If they had it available for download, then I'd look into it. For now, though, I may just buy directly from Bill.
My feelings exactly. I'm going to get mine on CD. Then I can keep them for future reference. And no, so far the NLS doesn't have them available for download. And from what I've heard through talking with them I don't think they're ever going to make their entire catalog available that way either.
I'm also interested in these courses. Learning guitar will definitely give me something to do since at the moment, I have a lot of time on my hands. Any success stories from novice guitarists would be awesome to read.
Well I just received my course yesterday and it's been very informative, a lot better than some of the face-to-face lessons I've had. So I'll definitely be looking into more of his courses at some point.