24 February 2022
Newsdesk
The vast majority of musicians, especially gigging musicians, don’t take hearing protection seriously enough. You might attend a concert, and feel the force of a modern PA system, only to go home late at night and fall asleep with ringing in your ears.
Over time, the cumulative effect of exposure to loud noises (like guitar riffs and drum hits) can be devastating for your hearing. If you’re making a living and being creatively fulfilled through music then this can be more debilitating than it might be for an average person. Moreover, it’s not just amplified music that poses a problem. The brass section of an orchestra can put out a serious amount of volume – which tends to be bad news for any musician sitting directly in front of a row of trumpets.
Sustained volumes more than 85 dBA can cause hearing damage. When you consider that the average rock concert can run well in excess of 100dbA, you can see the potential for trouble. Remember that decibel is a logarithmic scale, so small increases in number can describe huge increases in volume.
Why is Hearing Protection Important?
Ear plugs will limit the intensity of the sound that reaches your inner ear without completely restricting your ability to hear what is happening around you. The components of the ear are incredibly finely balanced and fragile. While the brain can adapt to small amounts of damage there, there’s only so much you can adjust for.
Moreover, damage of this kind is often irreversible. Once you’ve been exposed to a loud noise, it’s impossible to repair the ear. Prevention, therefore, is critical. Given that hearing loss occurs after many episodes of excessive volume, making the habit of wearing hearing protection is the best way to prevent hearing loss.
This has been recognised in a whole range of industries, including construction. But musicians, arguably, face a unique version of the threat – since their livelihood tends to depend on being able to hear well.
How to Spot Hearing Damage
Hearing damage is unsurprisingly evidenced by an inability to hear. Since volume is relative and subjective, you might find that the extend of your hearing damage isn’t always obvious when you’re observing it directly.
Common signs that your hearing is suffering include:
• People having to repeat things to you in order to make themselves understood.
• Having to put the volume on the TV or car radio up to levels that other people find excessive.
• Getting a warning from your mobile device that you’re listening at an excessive volume.
Sensorineural hearing loss disproportionately effects frequencies in the upper mid-range. This means that you might have greater difficulty distinguishing words that are spoken by women and children, whose voices are higher. You might also find that sounds are muffled rather than simply reduced in volume – this is because higher frequencies are being squashed more than lower ones.
