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Play For Years – Protect Your Ears July 2010 - When I was just starting out playing drums in a band it never occurred to me that the best instrument I owned for the use of making music was my ears. I was fourteen, naive and unaware of the dangers that were there waiting to erode the best part of my music experience – hearing it. I will admit that I have never been in a band as a full time job. Could have been because I became a pretty good carpenter early on and the money lured me away. Could have been a number of things but whatever I did I always at least listened to music and played instruments as a hobby. Through the years as a carpenter though, and especially when running a cabinet shop I had been exposed to very loud continuous noise. I am sure it would have been similar being in a band full time. I do not believe there was much actual hearing loss, though it could have been contributing to the problems I ran into later on. Point is that any loud continuous noise can contribute and cause hearing loss. In my late forties the item that pushed it over the edge was most certainly a rehearsal room that my band was renting. It was a decent size room with more than enough space for a three piece band. We had a guitar, bass, drums, a vocal PA with monitors, thin walls and loud young neighbors bleeding through. So just to hear ourselves clearly took a little volume. But the guys I was playing with had no problem standing in front of stacks of speakers and playing all night. They stepped up the volume to unnecessary levels. Both had to have already lost some of their ability to hear at least high end frequencies. It was so loud that I was forced to buy mics for my drums so I could be heard. At that point I also purchased some ear protection but the damage was already done. I tried telling my band-mates that we had to turn down so we could more easily hear what we were trying to play. One night we had a friend come in to listen to our music. He was a recording engineer at a well known studio in the area and in our mind was there to critique and possibly offer to record us in exchange for some future sales agreement. After listening to one of our songs at the typical jet engine volume, instead of saying anything about the music simply asked, “Do you always play at this volume?†He explained that he had to do some mixing first thing in the morning and if we continued to play at that volume he would have to leave in fear of fatiguing his hearing. I just kind of shrugged my shoulders at the other guys and showed the engineer my ear plugs. They finally understood where I was coming from and no, he did not record us. The earplugs I purchased are made by Alpine and include a case and three different attenuation inserts to adjust the volume of what you hear with minimal changes to the overall frequency spectrum of the music. There are some rather expensive professional musician earplugs that probably take this concept to a more perfect attenuation vs. frequency loss level with a bit more comfort but for the typical musician the extra $ 300-$ 400 is not worth it. I hate sounding like an old man time stressing the importance of the lesson I learned the hard way. I thought it could never happen to me. While I was in this loud band experience I was listening to our own music a lot in mp3 format because my CD player in my car would not load a CD no matter how many times I tried to clean it. When the band went to crap and I fixed my CD player I started listening to some of my favorite jazz and noticed something was missing. The faint high pitched triangles, crotales and other subtle volume accents I knew existed were missing or barely heard. That is very disheartening to me as a percussionist. It also effects the casual conversation in a noisy environment in a big way. You will find yourself nodding and smiling a lot and really not knowing what the heck the conversation is about. If you are at a club or concert forget about hearing someone while the music is playing. All this with just a diagnosis of -15db in just the 4k frequency range. Not anything close to actually going deaf but enough to make it hard to differentiate between such words as Sue, shoe or you, especially in a high noise environment. In short, the loss is caused by tiny hairs that process the movement of the three bones sitting against the back side of the ear drum into a signal the brain can understand. It is kind of like the needle on a record turning a physical friction action into an electrical signal. These hairs can wear out over time when severe movement occurs. The image of these little guys movement gives me a clear understanding of what is happening and cause a quicker response to take action. Do not take me as a person that does not believe in loud music. I do understand the feeling of the bass thumping and the basic physical makeup of most speakers that actually have to move to be heard properly. Without sufficient power to the speaker they will not duplicate the sound trying to be reproduced. That is why expensive speakers have the ability to reproduce truer signals at a larger range in volume. The trick is to allow the correct volume of that signal to reach your ears So if you love music please heed my advice and avoid the often difficult realization of hearing loss. Take care of your ears now before the damage is done and you must protect what hearing you have left. For more information visit www.organicpercussion.com today! Author: Michael Russello Michael Russello is the owner and operator of http://organicpercussion.com/ Organic Percussion
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