Hi all and welcome to the first installment of Musical Monday, before we get into the meat of this weeks article I just wanted to let you all know what I’m listening too as I type. Well, I have Pandora playing “Swinging Cheese radio” for those of you who aren’t familiar with Pandora, give this a read 
Anywho onto this weeks feature. Turn that S**t off!I saw this story a while back and I’ve been meaning to post about it since so I think there is no better way to start a weekly music feature than reminding people that in order to enjoy music fully you need to be able to hear it fully. This is something I can speak with some authority on, in the past I worked in the music industry and having stood in front of a 6500 watt+ PA for 5 or more nights a week for almost 3 years I can say that I am very lucky not to have severe hearing damage, but in reality luck had very little to do with it and ear plugs had everything to do with it.
Unfortunately, I do suffer from some minor tinnitus which has over the last 10 years gotten slightly better, however does tend to leave me with sleepless nights if I go to a Gig or concert.
My case is a little extreme in that I was in front of a PA almost every night for 2-3 hours minimum. I should be far worse off but I was lucky enough to have been warned of the dangers by a rather kindly middle aged drummer, he explained it rather well. It’s not so much really loud noises that do the damage as those that are higher pitched and close by.
If you go to gigs you may have already noticed this but in general the older a drummer gets the further away their cymbals get from there head, this is because they have recognised that high pitched noises (like cymbals in particular) tend to do more damage than say a more bass sound.
Now before we (the human race) discovered amplification and industrialisation of the world, hearing problems were far less common than they are today, unfortunately our modern world gives us plenty of opportunities to damage our hearing without us doing it deliberately.
Where that BBC article goes wrong, imho, is that it focuses on MP3 players as being the evil ear damaging device. This is not entirely true, yes they provide the sounds but it is the headphones that deliver this sound to you. By and large most headphones that are sold with MP3 players are small and do not block much ambient noise out, as a result the wearer ends up turning the volume up to block out the other noise so they can hear their music choice clearly, the irony being that this behavior will lead to hearing loss. In fact I challenge anyone to sit in a quiet room and not hear a buzzing sound at some level when the room is in fact silent. That buzzing sound is damaged hearing. It is almost impossible to avoid in our modern society but there are a few simple things that you can do to avoid unnecessary damage.
- When going to nightclubs, concerts, gigs or other places where amplification is used or there is a lot of noise such as an F1 grandprix, printing press, iron works etc. etc. wear some ear protectors or ear plugs depending on whats appropriate to the environment.
- If you must listen to music on headphones make sure they are the best quality that you can afford, over ear types are usually better than the in ear type at blocking external noise and do tend to help stop “volume creep” to drown out the ambient noise.
- And finally in the words of Chris Rock “Turn that s**t off”
To wrap things up I thought I’d share a video I found on you tube recently. This kid’s musicianship is fantastic but I think he needs a band, otherwise it just seems a little lonely and well we all know what happens to kids that play with themselves to much
and maybe we’ll all help make our roads safer for us all.
