Musicians have better hearing

Interesting article from the BBC about hearing issues.

However the problem they particularly talk about the "cocktail party problem" is one I suffer with badly...  not that I ever go to cocktail parties ;-)

The problem is the inability to pick out speech against the hubbub of background noise.  I really struggle with that - my wife knows it and will sometimes aid me by repeating salient parts of the conversation to me - I'm better one to one but I know that I look at people lips... am I just lip reading?

However to be fair - I'm clearly not a professional musician :-) So maybe I'm outside the influence of this research... I'm not someone who has "never played" and instrument or a professional musician.

I did some years back start wearing earplugs to most concerts - but I've dropped off that a bit, largely as we seem to go to larger venues now, esp The O2 at Greenwich and I find the levels generally less and cause me less short term issues than say places like The Lees Cliff in Folkestone.


Comments

  1. AS we get older we lose the extremes of our hearing ability and background noise just emphasises that. I know because I went for a hearing test because my children kept saying i was deaf. (I wasn't. Not for my age anyway ...)

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