::: Hearing loss - A nesessary evil? (good read, if you're interested) :::

[j_kay]

Hearing Loss - A Necessary Evil?

Loss of hearing has always been something of a worry for musicians, although possibly not quite so much for us drummers since we don''t need to `pitch'' accurately to play our instruments, and tend to veer dangerously towards the masochistic anyway! It''s more our loved ones who are concerned that all that banging and crashing about will do irreparable damage to our (and their) ears. There''s no doubt about the fact that excessive noise affects hearing profoundly and musicians are beginning to suffer from hearing disorders like tinnitus (a persistent ringing in the ears), loudness discomfort and of course partial deafness (an inability to hear certain frequencies.)

Technically the ear comes in three sections: external, middle and inner. The first part is the bit you see most of which is evidently beautifully designed and shaped to allow us to not only hear low frequency, high intensity noise like drumming better, but also pinpoint exactly which direction any sound is coming from. It''s then funnelled into the middle ear itself via a tube which has the actual eardrum set at an angle across the inner end. Behind this is the middle ear cavity which is spanned by three small bones: the hammer, anvil and stirrup.

So, a sound passes through the ear canal on its way to the drum, which is a membrane and causes those three tiny bones in the middle ear to move in the rhythm of the sound. This in turn persuades a fluid in the inner ear to move sympathetically, along with tiny hair cells of various lengths bathed within it. These cells transform that movement into nerve impulses which are carried to the brain and interpreted as sound and it''s these cells which are attacked, stunned and sometimes killed by loud noises. The only thing to add to this is that the actual definition of noise is simply any unwanted sound.

Ear-wax is actually not as nasty a substance as it seems - it''s secreted by the skin of the channel and cleverly humidifies, moisturises and even acts as an antiseptic to the ear whilst also catching particles of dust and other rubbish thereby preventing damage to the actual eardrum.

Of course, the ear is not just responsible for hearing; it''s also responsible for balance. This is why extremely loud or unexpected noises can make you feel like you''re falling down a hole; I''m reliably informed by experts that if music does this to you it''s definitely way too loud.

I was once working in Germany demonstrating drums at a trade show and after one of my clinics was accosted by a very serious Teutonic lady in a white lab coat who suggested if I always played drums that loudly then, I surely must be deaf by now. I was tempted to put my hand to my ear and ask her to speak up, but, when it turned out that the German government were seriously worried about musician''s hearing loss and were actually testing them there and then, I decided to have a go. She sat me down, gave me some headphones and proceeded to feed me what appeared to be random high and low frequency tones. I simply responded by nodding my head to every sound I could hear. I wasn''t able to cheat because she sat behind a screen and I couldn''t see her moving the frequency control, but I actually astonished her (and myself) by being able to clearly hear all the frequencies even normal people could.

So I guess I''ve been lucky because during my long career I''ve been exposed to an awful lot of noise, but, wherever possible, I''ve always tried to place myself out of danger. This might of course have given rise to my back problems because in the past I have sometimes been forced to twist my head and upper body un-naturally out of the way of some excruciatingly noisy massed banks of amplifiers.

More years ago than I care to count, bands like I was in used to go to German clubs to ‘get it together'' and ended up playing up to nine 45 minute spots per night on a small club stage. This was roughly the time when music was becoming more aggressive and progressive (in other words, louder) and within a short time we musicians would collectively suffer from what was known to us as ‘the blanket’. It wasn''t just high end loss because all the frequencies were muddied, a bit like playing with a blanket over your head. It wasn''t a permanent affliction and the next day all would ostensibly be back to normal. But was it?

I paid a visit to London''s famous Royal National Throat, Nose And Ear Hospital where a Dr Barbara Cadge, an eminent hearing specialist, told me a great deal about degrees of hearing loss at certain frequencies. Unfortunately there''s really no yardstick as to the amount of time you can actually listen to loud noise without impairing your hearing because some of us evidently have ‘soft'' ears while others have `hard''. Certainly people in industry are not allowed to subject themselves to average sound levels of 90dB(A) without wearing hearing protectors, but so far there is no specific legislation for musicians, or even their audiences. However HM''s government''s Health & Safety Executive have produced draft proposals aimed at reducing the risks to workers (including musicians) and members of the public at gigs and these state that:

1/ Delay towers should be used to distribute sound around a venue and therefore reduce the exposure of the audience to high sound levels. The implication being that if you only have PA speakers at each side of the stage these have to be very loud to reach to the back therefore deafening the people in the front few rows, who paradoxically paid extra for the privilege of seeing the show better.

2/ Sound levels should not exceed 104dB(A) in any public area.

3/ If sound levels are likely to exceed 96dB(A) promoters should ensure that information on potential hearing risks be given to the audience.

All this of course is good for the audience, but I''m not sure if this prospective legislation is really aimed at protecting the poor musician, who is after all deemed to be the

culprit in this situation as far as the audience is concerned, and guilty of shooting himself in the foot as far as he himself is concerned. Since all legislation and health guidelines refer to sound levels in decibels I felt it particularly pertinent to monitor the levels put out by the instruments around the drummer (including his own) to build up a better picture. Just to clarify, the decibel scale is a logarithmic one where an increase of 3dB results in a sound which is twice as loud. (ie 98dB is twice as loud as 95dB.)

I placed an IVIE Audio Analyzer (which metered the peaks of sound) at roughly my ear level and played as loudly as usual with the following results. An 8" deep wooden snare drum put out 140dB while a metal piccolo was measured at 141dB; even an 18" bass drum achieved a creditable 127dB while a 16" crash at 134dB was exactly twice as loud as a 21" Earth ride at 131dB. The quietest element of the kit was a pair of 12" hi hats which managed 124dB. To give some contrast to this, a power chord through a Fender Twin with the analyzer at ear level in front of it registered 125dB and it''s estimated this same chord would have been in excess of 130dB through a Marshall stack (the same sound level would be recorded by a bass which of course needs to be considerably louder to be audible).

On balance, these levels appear to be worryingly excessive, but with sound the danger is exacerbated by their duration. After all, a snare drum hit invariably lasts for under a second while even a slow crash cymbal won''t sustain for much more than 5 secs. It''s obviously the instruments which sustain high levels for a long time (like guitars and keyboards) are the ones which we should avoid being too near.

That said, drums definitely are inherently loud instruments on impact and I am sure that most of us have experienced the sound meter at venues which cuts off the power to the stage when the volume exceeds a predetermined level for longer than a few seconds. Initially they probably seemed quite funny, but they don’t seem funny now, do they? Especially when in many venues, the sound of un-amplified drums can trip the meter.

Incidentally, the ear is not particularly fussy which sort of sound frequencies cause it to malfunction, but, in what specialists call Leisure Hearing, it''s the frequencies between 3 and 6Khz which are invariably lost due to noise induced effect. It seems the heavy bass end is just as culpable in wreaking havoc with our hearing as the screaming guitar or organ; and even though our ability to hear high frequencies does diminish somewhat with age and noise bombardment, the others aren''t. I asked Dr Cadge if musicians were more prone to hearing loss since they might be said to use their ears more. Her immediate answer was that in a healthy person, who wasn''t abusing his ears, it shouldn''t matter. The same held true for older people, whose ears, providing there was no evidence of disease like diabetes, high blood pressure, or even high cholesterol levels, were no more vulnerable than a youngster''s.

So, if as I said my hearing''s reasonably intact after all the years I''ve been playing have I just been lucky? Well yes and no. Strange as it may seem, there''s a school of thought which says that people like me with dark hair and dark eyes have better resistance to noise than those with blonde hair and blue eyes. And, as I''ve already said I''ve always tried to keep well away from loud sounds. It''s much better to be sitting slightly back from the other guys'' amplifiers in the gig situation and out of line of them in all others. I hope that my hearing has faired better than a hippy guy known as Jesus, who habitually used to stand inside the bass bins of the PA system at the old Camden Roundhouse in the seventies. Unfortunately history hasn''t recorded exactly what long-term affect this had on his hearing or even whether he was a natural blonde but, I expect he may well have been ‘seeing God’ at the time anyway.

Headphones can be a very real danger to musicians, and drummer tends to be the most vulnerable because of the use of click tracks. Before we get used to playing with it, we tend to turn it up louder and louder, and are seriously in danger of momentarily deafening ourselves. I once wandered into the studio after a playback and heard my ‘cans'' playing back from something like 30 feet away and was appalled at how loud they were; they were more like sibilant hi-fi speakers. Measured in decibels I don''t suppose they were quite at what''s known technically as `the threshold of pain'' (140dB) but they were excruciatingly loud. Funnily enough Dr Cadge assured me that headphones per-se aren''t inherently dangerous, it''s the sound levels themselves that hurt your ears.

I know a couple of drummers who rumour has it have suffered from impaired hearing: Willie Green with the Neville Brothers (whom I wouldn''t consider to be an excessively loud band) allegedly blasted his ear drum at a sound check - something which normally takes the force of an explosion to initiate - while Terry Bozzio has long been said to suffer from `high end'' loss and now has to use custom moulded plugs.

Up until recently I''ve not been one for ear plugs, since I have found they have tended to either attenuate (reduce) the high frequencies much more than low ones and so distort the musical spectrum, or take too much of the sound quality away and muffle it to the extent that it changes the way I dynamically respond to it. But having tested some hearing protectors recently I''m coming round. The ones I tried were called Ultra Tech ER20 and made in the USA. They provide a tuned acoustic network comprising a filter and precision manufactured ducting, are made in three pieces and simply cut out some of the music without distorting it.

Gun shops also sell active protectors, which are the business because they are designed to only reduce peaks of sound like those produced by explosions or gun shots. Thankfully we are just as likely to be able to buy hearing protection from our local drum shop as we are sticks, and hearing awareness has become much bigger in the last ten years. If you want to get serious protection, you can ask to be referred by your doctor to a hearing specialist who can take the moulds and create your own custom plugs which will attenuate the frequencies evenly. However, it is likely to be a private cost (see later). There has been a recent trend at music shows for hearing specialist companies to take moulds from your ears and post the finished plugs to you a few weeks later.

But what about those squashy yellow ones you get in your local chemists, or even good old-fashioned cotton wool? Well the experts of the medical profession take the view that anything which affords some degree of defence is better than nothing, even screwed up pieces of loo paper, but since hearing loss is irreversible, it''s in the musician''s own interest to protect his hearing properly.

I''ve always suspected that our ears had a built-in defence mechanism which allowed us drummers to hit hard without discomfort to ourselves, simply because we were ready for it.

You may have noticed when someone hits a drum loudly next to you it only really hurts if you''re not expecting it. Dr Cadge corroborated my thoughts and told me this phenomenon is known as `temporary threshold shift'' (previously known to me as ‘the blanket’) and it is Mother Nature''s way of stopping us deafening ourselves. She went on to say that the middle ear has a tiny muscle within it which is initiated as a reflex to loud sound, and serves to partially dislocate the chain and protect the inner ear. It won''t wear out and will work so long as there''s no injury from disease. There''s even a damper in the middle ear which comes in at 85-95dB(A) and which there''s even some evidence to say can be triggered before the sound. But beware, this is not grounds for bombarding your ears and hoping all the various fail-safes in them will protect you. Temporary Threshold Shift can very easily become Permanent Threshold Shift.

So there are things we drummers can do to protect our hearing, even though like keyboard players, we''re static and unable to move out of the way of the loudest noises. Therefore more intelligent drum set positioning is one option, allied with the possibility of simply turning the offending amplifier away from you a little in the horizontal plane; another is the judicious use of those aforementioned hearing protectors; while the third is to remember that with noise damage there''s a direct relationship between intensity of noise and time. Therefore to reduce the duration factor and allow your ears to rest every so often would certainly help in the controlled conditions of a recording studio, but they''d be much more difficult to implement at a gig.

There was a wonderful programme on TV some time ago which showed Evelyn Glennie, who seems to positively thrive on being profoundly deaf, taking part in a Samba school and marching in the Mardi Gras parade in Brazil. She held her own very well, so much so that one began to suspect that the problems with her hearing couldn''t be that bad. However by a miracle of science the BBC were able to show us just how little Evelyn can hear. It was astonishing because she seems to hear music as if it were being played at minimal volume next door and just about penetrating the walls.

It''s difficult to say what constitutes a loud band because of measuring difficulties; even the government''s Health and Safety Executive recognise that where you measure the noise makes a hell of a difference. But it''s felt that bands which exceed 120dB for any length of time are at a critically high level. For safety reasons the Guinness Book of Records no longer lists superlatives of loudness but The Who used to hold the record at 120dB(A), while in the eighties an American band called Immaculate Mary were measured at 123dB(A) from 50 meters away. Mind you any band would need to work really hard to emulate a jet aircraft which puts out 140db(A) on take off.

An Audiogram, which is the traditional yardstick for hearing loss, only measures from 0.25Hz to 8kHz and musicians need to hear clearly frequencies much further up the scale than that with many hi definition audio devices going up to 30kHz even though the top range of human hearing is 20kHz. Dr Cadge says musicians will frequently report hearing difficulties at the high-end way above the 8kHz ceiling where an audiogram would be able to spot the problem.

So can we get our hearing tested on the National Health? Yes, but only if we can persuade our GP that we have a real problem, whereupon they’ll ultimately refer us to a specialist. Unfortunately it''s a `Catch 22'' situation if we simply want to reassure ourselves that our hearing is up to par. As a responsible on-line magazine we can''t recommend anyone clog up the already overloaded healthcare system by feigning hearing loss. However, for probably a hundred quid we can go privately to a specialist for a consultation and get an audiogram. Ring your local hospital and they''ll certainly give you the relevant information.

In conclusion a word of warning, EXCESSIVE EXPOSURE TO LOUD MUSIC CAN CAUSE PERMANENT HEARING DAMAGE; as Dr Cadge told me there''s only one real marker as to whether noise has damaged your hearing and that''s after it''s happened. Once the threshold has been shifted down as a response to noise, it can''t be predicted how many times the ear can recover from being exposed to the same noise again and again.

Source: http://www.mikedolbear.com/story.asp?StoryID=1867

[Da_Drumma]

Very informative and educational!!! So true as well.

[fretai03]

TLDR Version?

[j_kay]

TLDR Version?

Naw, I won't make one...   

[fretai03]

Naw, I won't make one...  

[JFunky]

Naw, I won't make one...   

...yeah man, we're just going to have to read this and absorb it because this is a very serious matter.  Thanks jkay!  Great post once again!