Besides having less distractions, why are blind guitarists at an advantage? (this goes for keyboards and even drums as well).
Play blindfolded for a couple weeks. After all, you can sing on pitch, and do not need to watch your vocal cords to do it. And even if you could watch them, what's there to see?
Neural-visualization re-mapping is the key. Everyone has this ability, not just the blind... They simply have no choice. We can fixate on the fretboard, so we do-- often resulting in the unnecessary dependency of watching our fretting hand. We do lots of things without watching every motion. It shouldn't be any different with playing guitar. Just a bad habit, that ultimately gets in the way. When you run up and down stairs, do you have to carefully watch each foot? Whether you read, and have drilled all the scales, or have no music training at all, the instrument can, and should exist in your head in a navigational context. And it can "look" like lots of things. I wonder if Jeff Healey ever drew a guitar, how recognizable it was as a guitar.
In this sense, blind musicians have an advantage by total necessity. It's an advantage of avoiding a detour. Similarly, left handed people can do more with their right hands than right handers can do with their left hands.
Next time, we'll explore why the coolest licks are usually the most difficult to play. Do they really have to be? Or is it sometimes just a mental consideration that since it sounds cool, it must therefor be difficult?
Stratoblogster Labs - Ideas from driving with the top down in the rain.
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