DEAFNESS ??

[iancwilx]

Very seriously - does anyone have slight/difficulty in hearing conversations either in multi company or on TV ? - do you ever find yourself staring at a persons mouth or the TV screen, willing yourself to hear them ? - can you some times only pick up odd words from a conversation and try to get the gist of it ?
Do you ever answer a half heard question directed at you with an embarrassingly inappropriate response ?
Having spent 30 years Fronting a professional Show Band with a massive PA Rig behind me - I am now suffering all these problems - Note - If you keep saying " I 'm sorry - I didn't catch that " people treat you like the "Village Idiot" !!

 

[neiltwist]

I am starting to get such effects myself, although not with the tv, and I'm not sure how much of it is my own lack of ability to understand accents, but I do have trouble

 

[CaharleyFarley]

I am aged 49 and my left ear deff has a problem, not serious, but it isn't 100%.

So...sitting on front row, the player to my left often says summat to me during playing (in a geordie accent) which prob means....leave next 8 bars to me I'll do em - you play next 8 bars. But I always just nod and smile, and havn't a clue what he said :?

I put the bad left ear down to teen years when I played heavy rock at max volume thru headphones. (Mind you I still sometimes do just that )

 

[Trom41821]

Very seriously - does anyone have slight/difficulty in hearing conversations either in multi company or on TV ? - do you ever find yourself staring at a persons mouth or the TV screen, willing yourself to hear them ? - can you some times only pick up odd words from a conversation and try to get the gist of it ?
Do you ever answer a half heard question directed at you with an embarrassingly inappropriate response ?
Having spent 30 years Fronting a professional Show Band with a massive PA Rig behind me - I am now suffering all these problems - Note - If you keep saying " I 'm sorry - I didn't catch that " people treat you like the "Village Idiot" !!

Hear Hear :shock: Sorry couldn't resist.
I suffer/cope with all of the above and have done since I was 13. Mines medical though not self inflicted. I've ended up in some awkward predicaments having answered a question with something I thought I heard. Very embarassing!

 

[ted]

I find that when there is background noise, I find it hard to hear the person who is speaking to me, but I hear the background noise perfectly. Like when someone is talking to me and there is another conversation going on about 10 metres away, I'll hear the other conversation and I'd be thinking to myself "You want to listen to the person talking to you" but I just couldn't.

Or if I'm reading or watching TV, (when there is a voice in my head) i can't hear much of what other people say.

These days I have to lip read and hear them to get what they are saying. Just have to tell them that they have to face me when they're speaking to me. They get used to it.

I'm almost 20 and I've been playing since I was 9.
Ted

 

[BeatTheSheep]

I've not had many problems yet, but I was worried at one stage. The final straw came when I did a concert with the cymbal right next to my ear. This prompted a change of instrument. Bandings a good hobby, but I'm not going deaf for anyone!

 

[CaharleyFarley]

I always wondered about the "blank stare" from the bass players, until I realised there closeness to the percussion!!

 

[Naomi McFadyen]

Yes I am experiencing this kind of problem... not so much with TV (i can adjust the volume easily! (;-)), but when with a large amount of people in the same room I find it hard to catch what the person who is talking to me is saying...
Most of the time, I just nod and smile or laugh when they or others do... and when I know I need to really hear what they are saying (which is most the time) I have to keep on asking them to repeat what they said... if I have to ask more than 3 times, they usually say 'dont worry, it doesnt matter now'

:shock: :roll:

 

[Maestro]

Last year, my old forces band had to have the Health & Safety people in to 'reconstruct' the band's seating. The reason for this was that there were fears, from a non-musician, that the way the band were seated was unsafe and could and probably would cause premature deafness.

 

[craigyboy1]

As I work in heavy industry I have had many lectures and have been shown countless videos on hearing protection.
In certain noisy areas I have to wear double hearing protection (Ear plugs and Ear defenders).
I have no problem complying with this for the following reasons:
Hearing loss is cumulative...you can be in a noisy area for two minutes and have exceeded your noise dose for the day....any further exposure causing damage.
The symptoms you mention are classic to industrial deafness....you lose your hearing at certain frequencies. You can hear a conversation fine one to one but conversations in a crowd are just a mish mash of noise.
Your hearing is not repairable :!: ....once damaged always damaged...the only improvement comes via a hearing aid.

I am not in anyway medicaly qualified so may have some of the finer points wrong but if your hearing is deteriorating you should act now before it gets any worse :!:

Imagine being in a crowded bar and a friend asks you three times what you want to drink and you cant hear them :!: :!:

Concerned :?

 

[lynchie]

I always have trouble hearing what people are saying to me... i read somewhere it's something to do with missing high and low frequencies so you miss starts and ends of words, or something like that.

Anyway, I blame a mixture of brass bands and rock music. I used to listen to my walkman turned right up so anyone within 5 miles could hear it! I tried to cut down a bit when I got ringing in my ears a few times, but i think i may have been too late!

 

[Di B]

My hearing is going slightly I admit.... I can't pick out people in the band who have the same rythms as me for exampe - I have to guess! :lol:

I personally blame all trombone players since I usually sit in front of them and they always blast untunefully into my ear drums :lol: :lol: oh, and in our band I would also blame one of our current bass players.... on a rememberance sunday march he was so loud he set a car alarm off! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

 

[Steve]

Mine is completely involuntary. I have a tendancy to switch off without wanting / meaning to and then miss whatever anyone is saying to me, despite the fact there is no-one else around and I am staring straight at the other person. I dont know why I do it but I always find smiling at the person talking seems to get me through it.

 

[shedophone]

I get problems hearing sometimes, not usually the tv, but i cant hear people talking. I often answer the wrong question, or look blankly at them- i get so fed up with saying 'pardom, sorry, what' all the time! :?

Then again, i'm a percussionist. Says it all. Especially recently, stood next to the timp player going mad on baba yaga! :twisted:

 

[Keppler]

My hearing's never been so good. About the only place I have a problem though is in bar with loud "music" playing. Coupled with the fact that my voice doesn't project through the noise, and you have a non-communicative Kepps..

 

[Straightmute]

...Looks like we're not going to be short of adjudicators in future...

D

 

[andyp]

I've found my right ear has very slight loss compared to the left, but I think all principal cornet players are at risk from the sop player in their right ear ! Having said that, our rep can blow just as loud (if not louder) so maybe things'll balance out........

I only notice the volume behind me when I'm not playing myself, does the pressure buildup in your head when playing block some of the noise out perhaps?

 

[geordiecolin]

My hearing's fine, i only struggle when i'm not paying attention. Mind you, with the amount of rubbish my housemate spouts, its becoming quite a habit. He tends to mumble and even gets bored halfway thru a sentence and will just tail off!! Hence, I don't really tend to listen to people anymore unless i know its gonna be worth the effort, or if they're asking me what i'm drinking!!

Bad habit I know.....

 

[MartinT]

I'm concerned to see the number of people in bands suffering in various degrees from this problem - I thought I was unusual in my experience, but it seems I'm not.

I have a family tendency to deafness (stress can be a factor too), but matters probably haven't been helped by playing bass - remember the cymbal crash introducing the Caribbean bit in "Oceans"? That was right by my ear .

I would recommend anyone, especially younger people (I'm 51) experiencing hearing difficulties to take themselves off to a doctor and ask for a hearing test to be arranged. I now wear two hearing aids, and believe me, I would give a very great deal not to have to use them.

 

[sudcornet]

Looks like it's a commom BB problem. My company medical this year said I had a "reduction" in my hearing, not that I needed them to tell me.
I am always being told "the telly's a bit loud", I struggle to hear conversations in noisy places...pubs etc. I have had over 30 years in BB's, plus my teenage/early 20's were spent playing in and listening to rock and punk bands, and, I used to shoot without hearing protection...complete that by working as an engineer in some horrendously loud environments... (you can't beat a big refrigeration compressor for volume)...then it's hardly surprising I'm going a bit mutton is it?

Sud.