I am no authority on Musical Dyslexia and I am certainly no researcher of this topic, so the thoughts I express here are just simply my own thoughts.
Now I have gotten the all important disclaimer done, I think this topic is an interesting one and as a piano teacher, I think that it is really important for me to know about and understand.
First of all, the label of Musical Dyslexia or Dysmusia was first coined back in the year 2000 by Dr Neil Gordon and currently it is neither confirmed or denied that it exists. My opinion is that it does exist because dyslexia (a reading difficulty/disability) and dyscalculia (a numbers/mathematics difficulty/disability) has been proven to exist. Neither of these two conditions are ever doubted as being real in the education system in Australia and probably many other parts of the world too.
Neither dyslexia or dyscalculia means that the people who have these conditions are intellectually inferior in any way, they just have great difficulty with words (dyslexia) or numbers (dyscalculia). People can, with lots of help learn to read successfully (in the case of dyslexia) and do maths (in the case of dyscalculia). Because I have also worked for many years in schools, I have seen many kids with the right assistance, work out how to successfully compensate for their difficulties.
So even though the experts have not decided yet whether dysmusia is real or not, I believe that it probably does. The reason why is that reading a language or reading mathematics is like reading a very complicated code that even under normal circumstances takes some years to learn. Reading music is similar – it has a complex code that takes years to learn to read to an advanced standard. I also believe (or maybe just really hope) that just like people who have dyslexia and dyscalculia, people who maybe have dysmusia will also be able to be helped.
I think it would be a good thing to be confirmed that it was real, because it would help people who have really tried hard to learn to read music, to realize that it is not their own fault if they find it hard or impossible.
I know that in other blogs I have mentioned that in the hundreds of piano students that I have had, there has not been any student that I have taught that has not learned to read music to the same standard that they can play, but learning more about the potential of dysmusia existing makes me wonder – how many students potentially had dysmusia and what did I do to help them successfully learn?
Even though it has not yet been confirmed to exist, I do believe that dysmusia does exist and if it does, then there is real potential for researchers to find ways o help people who have this difficulty.