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Musicians have a strong emotional attachment to music. Scientific evidence has shown that they hold many advantages over non-musicians: better fine motor and co-ordination skills, better auditory working memory and spatial hearing, better phoneme and speech processing, better figure-ground discrimination, better pitch discrimination, and better identification of vocal emotions, to name but a few.
Musicians enjoy music enough to make it a career, and they spend many hours a day listening to, practising, and playing music. Research has shown that musicians prefer to listen to music at a higher level in dB than non-musicians. In general, whether a musician or not, preferred music is listened to at about 10 dB higher than less-preferred music. This supports the observation that when a person enjoys music, it is perceived as quieter than other, non-preferred music and is, therefore, listened to at a higher volume. Imagine enjoying music when you are invited to a neighbour’s pool party versus listening to the same music when you are not invited to the neighbour’s party.
These two elements—long exposure to music and high volume—put musicians at greater risk of music-induced hearing loss, especially if they listen to music above safe sound levels (85 dB(A) for more than eight hours a day). Many studies have now shown hearing problems in musicians which have a likely correlation to these heightened sound levels. Of course, some instruments are more at risk than others. However, classical, rock, pop, and jazz musicians are all at risk of increased hearing loss in the 3,000-8,000 Hz frequency ranges, which includes frequencies important for speech intelligibility.
Aside from hearing loss, exposure to loud music can cause tinnitus (ringing in the ears), hyperacusis (hypersensitivity to sound), and diplacusis (not hearing the same pitch in both ears). Tinnitus and hyperacusis are fairly common (up to 30 per cent in professional musicians) and diplacusis is less common (2 to 10 per cent), but there is less data available on the condition by comparison. Symptoms can also include dizziness, earache, and headache, to a lesser extent.
So, what are the solutions? The simplest answer is always to reduce the sound level at the source, i.e. produce less dB. However, this is not always possible—for example, if you’re playing in an orchestra or a jazz/rock band. It is not uncommon for these types of ensembles to record peak (not continuous) dB levels of up to 140 dB. Attempts to reduce sound levels by physical barriers such as risers, screens, or increasing the distance between musicians have limited or no effect. The use of earplugs to protect musicians’ ears, therefore, seems inevitable. Fortunately, technology is advancing, with more and more options becoming available to help them keep their super ears and give us many years of wonderful music to enjoy.
Sylvie Hébert, PhD, is professor and program director of audiology at Université de Montréal.
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