vagfilm bring the scores to the same distance as a book?
HZPiano The other thing being, people I know have three pairs of glasses,
As a physicist I strongly suggest you investigate this better, and forget your other ideas. You say
Drew-r Impaired eyesight continues to be the main reason why i do not continue piano playing & learning long term; its so frustrating, on many levels. For starters, my eyesight is pretty good for my age, i can see well enough to function all day without glasses, such as while walking, working & driving.
If you really see that well that you comfortably drive without glasses (and not be crazy to put your life and that to the others in danger), appropriate glass readers are the solution. You say that can read a book (well?) with the readers you have. If so, that's a great starting point. Let me assume that you use lenses with +2 dioptries for that. I can do the math, but you can take it easy and just do a rule of thumb: if you want to read closer, increase that, for example to +3. If you want to read at a larger distance, decrease it, for example to +1.
For this purpose, if you still can't deal with the optometrist, just DIY. If you have no idea, just buy several pairs (cheap ones are fine) and consider that you can STACK them and they just sum, so if you stack a +2 on top of a +3 you get a +5 (and some distortion since I assume you won't be able to stack them perfectly). Of course this is only for experimenting purposes: with only four pairs (a +0.5, a +1, a +2, and a +4) you can get from +0.5 to +7.5 in 0.5 intervals (for which you'd need more than a dozen pair, neat eh?). Once you figure out what works best buy the better quality for daily use.
Sometimes, I've found that glass shops have great personnel that (to make a sale, obviously) are extremely patient, knowledgeable and helpful. So you can try this avenue instead of full DIY. Very important: ask somebody to measure the closest and most distant distance from your eyes to the sheet music when playing in correct posture, and bring that number, some sheet music and a tape measure to the shop.
Hope this helps.
PS: regardless of this thing, please find another eye doctor who you can trust. If with this specialist you can't discuss this very trivial matter, what would happen if/when you'll need more serious help as it is very common with age? Better doing this search now when you don't need it, than later when you may -- and build the trust in normal times rather than in an "emergency" (ok, eye problems are very rarely an "emergency" but still)
