Interesting subject that I have indeed thought about from time to time over the years – I have an eye muscle imbalance which means that it is impossible for me to jump my eyes back and forth between a music stand and the strings – it takes a while for my eyes to lock onto whatever I am looking at and it also means I have no depth perception – fortunately for me, the muscles will lock into place when I focus on something down and to the right – just exactly where the strings are – and frankly, if it weren’t for that I would probably not be enjoying playing the harp – therefore, I do memorize everything I play and I have wondered what I might do to continue playing if I happened to lose my sight –
It seems to me I read once that the blind Irish harpers of old either tied knots in the centers of some strings or used an extra thick string where we are used to colored strings –
Back in the early 60’s Jean Langlais the blind French organist came to play a recital at the college – all the organ students got to visit and watch his rehearsal which I understand was pretty much standard wherever he went – and remember, he would play on totally different consoles at the different recitals – he would be seated on the bench and fix himself dead center and then his hands would explore the banks of stops wherever they were, the rocker tablets and piston buttons and the number of manuals – he would pull each stop individually, listen to a couple notes played on it and then go on – when he was finished, he had a map in his head of where everything was and what it did – all stored in muscle memory – when he played and wanted to change an individual stop, he reached to the top of the stop jamb and felt his way down to the one he wanted and then pulled it, but it all happend faster than it took you to read this sentence – same for changing pistons – he was famous for the French method of improvisation and he also played the standard concert organ literature with all the bravura pieces – I think he was the very definition of “muscle memory” which is all about the body knowing where it is in a given space – the same idea that lets you touch your index fingers together with your eyes closed or eat with a fork and not be stabbing yourself all the time –
The book is called “The Body has a Mind of It’s Own” by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee –
A few years back I loaned a pedal harp to a blind guitar player friend of mine – he was fascinated with the sound – he did want a marker for the middle c so we put a small piece of masking tape on the soundboard right next to the string – he enjoyed messing with it for about six months playing some of his own made up melodys but for him the guitar was his main love – (he did have a seeing eye dog and watching that was amazing) – Interestingly enough, he never learned Braille, but he has all the extra gadgets to work a computer –
Well, this all gets into the techniques of memorization and oral, aural, and kinesthetic learning styles – to quote Mr. Spock, “Fascinating”
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