South Bay Daily Breeze Sunday, July 3, 1994 SEEING through SOUND Redondo Beach boy excels at making music despite being blind by Carol Baker     All of 9 years old, his hands move smoothly across the keys, tapping them confidently with a musical ease and skill that belie his youth.     His face turns to one hand, then the other, as they dance across the smooth row of ivories.     It’s his passion that’s most striking to anyone who watches. Scott MacIntyre clearly feels for what he plays, even as he feels his way to playing it. His entire body seems wrapped up in the music making.     You would have to look awfully close to tell that his eyes, framed by long brown lashes, are not taking in all that his hands are doing.     Nothing in the music would betray that Scott is blind.     Visually, his world is reduced to about all that can be spied through the end of a straw: one piano key, a music note, a very short word. The Redondo Beach resident was born with a retinal affliction commonly known as tunnel vision.     At age 3, when he first picked out melodies on the family’s old upright, Scott began creating his own musical panorama in a vivid, though non-visual, world. He finds deep dimension in harmony. With a pitch-perfect ear, he gleans colors in melodies.     Scott would rather play the piano then talk about why he loves playing. "I guess I just like the sound," he said. "It feels good."     Glimpses of what he sees in music slip out in other conversation. He describes the sound of the family’s old upright as "bright." On the other hand, the new Schimmel grand piano in the MacIntyres’ den has a "fuller" sound, he said.     Scott’s parents, Carole and Doug MacIntyre, give him every opportunity possible to pursue music, but are careful not to force it upon him.     "I’m just so proud of Scott," said Doug MacIntyre, a program manager for Allied-Signal Aerospace Corp. in Torrance. "And it’s such a pleasure to come home from work to a house filled with music."     Like many pianists, Scott also plays the organ. He recently started learning the drums and has expressed an interest in other instruments.     The piano, however, probably always will come first for the budding virtuoso.     Scott can’t remember a time when he did not play it. He also has composed music - arrangements that now win awards - all along. "I think I remember that I used to make tapes for my preschool teachers," he said.     As a toddler, Scott would sneak out of his room late at night, sit down at the piano, and try to figure out a tune from bedtime music recordings his parents would play in the hopes they would put him to sleep.     "I think that was the driving thing," Carole MacIntyre said. "He could re-create this melody, and that was the impetus to keep going when he started his piano lessons."     Scott’s many compositions, which include a range of tunes from show-style numbers to a jazz arrangement, display sophistication well beyond his years, said his piano teacher, Mary Crum. "It’s like listening to an adult playing. He plays with such feeling. He’s superior."     Besides having perfect pitch - which enables him to identify a note by sound - Scott has a keen sense of rhythm and his own style, Crum said. "He has the intelligence, the musical ability and the determination, which is a winning combination."     Scott has been winning a lot lately.     For two years in a row, he took first place in a statewide young composers competition sponsored by the Music Teachers Association of California. For the second consecutive year, he also was selected to play in the prestigious MTA Schumann-Schubert Convention. He performed Friday at the LAX Marriott Hotel.     To qualify for the convention, Scott took a battery of tests that graded his performance skills, ability to recognize music by ear and his knowledge of music theory - a written examination that he needed help filling out.     As usual, his piano playing flowed easily. The judges were impressed. "He seems to be a natural performer," Crum said.     On occasion, he has been a performer to the stars. While playing at benefits and talent shows, Scott has rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as Barbara Eden and actor Don Knotts. He also has befriended Davis Gaines, the lead in the Los Angeles staging of "Phantom of the Opera," one of Scott’s favorite musicals.     While wholeheartedly supporting his achievements, Scott’s parents try to see that he leads a life not so different from his younger brother, 6-year-old Todd, who has normal vision.     The boys take karate, love to swim and are fond of drawing pictures. Scott makes sketches of miniature houses and mazes, which he draws in series of short segments that begin and end with his line of sight.     He also enjoys playing big brother to 3-year-old Katelyn, whose vision is impaired by an extreme far-sightedness unrelated to Scott’s blindness. Scott has been diagnosed as having congenital lebers, an affliction in which light cannot pass through the retina.     After two years of home schooling, Scott attended Alta Vista Elementary School for second and third grade and will continue there in the fall.     "We took the philosophy that we wanted him to be in the ‘mainstream,’" said Carole MacIntyre, a homemaker. "Sometimes I wonder if we made the right decision, but it seems to be right so far."     Three days a week, he comes home 1½ hours early so that his mother can help with his studies.     Besides school work, piano and drum lessons, Scott also is learning to read Braille, which will help if he decides to advance to Braille’s touch reading technique for music.     Despite his talent, Scott still faces extraordinary challenges learning to play music that isn’t his own creation. He can see only one note of enlarged sheet music at a time, and must learn the role of one hand in a piece of music, then the other.     "He’s got a good enough memory so that once he’s memorized both hands he can mix them together," his mother said.     It’s a taxing process, but it doesn’t seem to discourage Scott much, Doug MacIntyre said. "The frustrations are more in the other areas - other than music."     Scott uses a computer attached to a keyboard to compose and store his own arrangements. With special software, he can mix different instruments in his compositions, edit and arrange them.     On long trips, he takes a portable keyboard and plays in the car. Last year, a family vacation that included visits to a mission outside of Lompoc and the coastal community of Nipomo inspired his award-winning composition, "Mission to Nipomo."     He usually practices piano one or two hours a day. His mother says hard work is the major reason for his success: "Any kid would be as good as he was if they played as much."     Few, however, have the passion for music to keep them drawn to an instrument the way Scott is. His mother described a recent evening when she found him completely caught up in his piano playing.     The sun had set, the room had darkened, and no lights were on.     A tad embarrassed by the story, Scott hastened to explain. "I was having such a good time," he said, "I didn’t know it was dark."