The Day the Ear Stood Still: Aural Skills with a Theremin

One of the most defining characteristics of Mary Wennerstrom’s legacy is her commitment to pedagogy at the highest level. But above and beyond simply advocating for excellence in teaching, she also advocates for and supports innovation. Though Prof. Wennerstrom maintained a commitment to upholding the highest standards of auraland keyboard-skills pedagogy, she continued throughout her career to explore new and exciting ways to connect with students and to expand their hearing. At times, these innovations were not across-the-board general strategies, but highly individualized solutions designed to tackle unique learning obstacles. Thus, it was not surprising that she wholeheartedly supported the project that we describe in this article: using a Theremin to assist in sight-singing for a student with a severe disability. The pedagogical vignette presented here is not intended to make grand claims about aural-skills pedagogy or disability studies, but rather to present a simple case study in one student’s experience, in the hopes that it might encourage future pedagogues to consider similar routes. The challenge presented by this student’s disability forced us to consider the factors that make the human voice the best instrument for in-class sight-reading activities, in order to enable us to find an adequate substitute for it: the voice lacks a consistent pitch spectrum, a discrete