Ear plugs and intonation

[lgb&dtuba]

Normally if I'm playing in a very noisy Oktoberfest environment I user an in ear monitor, but this weekend I forgot to bring it along.

So, after the first night of sitting with the drummer's crash cymbal beside my right ear I went out the next morning and bought a set of Hearos 15 db attenuation ear plugs out of desperation. Normally I don't like ear plugs because all I get to hear is lip buzz inside my head. Screws with my sense of what I sound like terribly.

Maybe it's because these were the 15 db version instead of the higher attenuation (22 db?) ones they let a lot more of the ambient noise in and I could hear enough of myself so that the lip buzz wasn't so apparent. Overall I was pretty pleased with the results. And it was a lot less trouble than futzing around with the in ear monitors.

A trumpet player who wears these things all the time told me that it affected his perception of his intonation and that he had to adjust quite a bit. I noticed a difference, but without sitting down with a tuner for a hour or so I can't tell if I was getting a false idea of how in tune I was or not. My sense was that I needed to adjust a few notes to get better in tune. I did so and no one commented one way or the other, so I guess I'll have to experiment.

All this leads up to my questions for the Tubenet jury.

1. Do you use ear plugs or other hearing protection? What kind?
2. What have you experienced with your sound while wearing
hearing protection?
3. If you wear ear plugs have you noticed any intonation problems?

Jim "won't leave home without them" Wagner

[Carroll]

I always use plugs when I play in big band (lead trumpet blowing in the back of my head for 4 hours) and it really makes a difference in my overall feeling of well being on the drive home. I took the plunge and was fitted with Musician's Earplugs.

http://www.etymotic.com/pdf/erme-brochure.pdf

As the trumpet section ages, they play louder just to hear themselves. I started with the 15 db filter but over the past 15 years have moved to the 25 db filter. I can still hear the band leader call tunes and questions from the guy playing second or the subs, etc.

The interesting thing to me is not intonation, but articulation. I can hear "stuff" in my articulations that I do not hear with open ears. I have asked other people and they do not hear it either. But when I "plug" I can hear, and then fix the "stuff". Other people then claim to hear a better attack and overall sound from my horn. I have even incorporated some earplug time in my euphonium practice routine.

[jeopardymaster]

"Normally I don't like ear plugs because all I get to hear is lip buzz inside my head. Screws with my sense of what I sound like terribly."

Are you sure you mean that?

Reminds me of an old bit we used to do in a German band I played in:

"My dog doesn't have a nose."

"What a shame. How does he smell?"

"Awful!"

[windshieldbug]

When I was working, every 4th of July (and other pops concerts) braught out the cannons, which were not only loud as crap, but percussive. I eventually had a perpetual pair of earplugs in my gigbag for just such an occurance. If we were on stage, the management could be counted on to put up plexi barriers is we complained about the percussion players, but cannonfire is, well, cannonfire.

I tried a several different kinds that I used under my helmet when racing, and the noise-suppression ones that have what look like a cigarette filter stucking out of your ears worked best (in fact, at the track, we'd do that if hard-up; rip cigarettes apart and stick the filters in our ears), but nothing would cut it when subjected to either close cymbal crashes or cannons.

Only the ones that block your ears do the trick then. And its very wierd playing with them, beacuase you hear a very squelched orchestra in the backround (HEAVY on the trumpets, of course), and mostly your own buzzing.

The buzzing, you can trust. That's the pitch being amplified through your horn. If you have doubts, try playing a part alone with the plugs on, and play it back. See if the pitch is what you thought it was. It'll be the same when you play with the band.

Your ears are your livelihood. Take the best care of them you can!!!

[lgb&dtuba]

"Normally I don't like ear plugs because all I get to hear is lip buzz inside my head. Screws with my sense of what I sound like terribly."

Are you sure you mean that?

I think so, yes. The proper term is "occlusion effect" I now know from reading the link: http://www.etymotic.com/pdf/erme-brochure.pdf. It's the same thing as when you stick your fingers in your ears and listen to yourself talk or buzz.

Let's see - a finger in each ear, a hand on the horn, one for the valve fingerings - something is adding up wrong here.



Jim Wagner

[finnbogi]

1. Do you use ear plugs or other hearing protection? What kind?
2. What have you experienced with your sound while wearing hearing protection?
3. If you wear ear plugs have you noticed any intonation problems?

1. I always use earplugs (cheap foam ones) in big band rehearsals and occasionally in dixieland and polka band, i.e. if I have to sit next to the crash cymbal. In fact, I usually carry a pair of earplugs in my briefcase, because I sometimes need them when in the cinema or a pub.
2. Like Carroll, I quite like hearing my buzz and articulation and find that it helps my somewhat dodgy trombone intonation, which again is mainly the result of my even dodgier slide technique.
3. No, quite the opposite. At least as long as I can hear the rest of the band.

[Bandmaster]

OK, what about taking this discussion a step further and get into playing with hearing aides. I just started wearing hearing aides a couple months ago and have been going through the steps of trying to get them dialed in properly. I have told the doctors that I didn't want the type of devise that completely plugged my ear causing the "occlusion effect." But I also find that my ears are more sensitive to loud noise as I have gotten older. So how do I balance hearing what I want to hear and block loud noise that makes my hearing get worse. Sometimes sitting in rehearsals at the back of the room still hurts my ears. I have also have some tinnitus (ringing) that I have to deal with and I have noticed it getting worse now that I have been using the hearing aides. How can I combine hearing aides with noise suspression? Anybody here have any experience with this that you can pass on so I can improve on my "learning curve" with these new devices. Thanks in advance.

I have worked around marching bands and drum corps for over 35 years and have had untold hours of close exposure to very loud drum lines. Not to mention standing in front of and conducting 60+ brass arch blowing their brains out with their bells pointing right at me. Plus I worked in my dad's repair shop for a number years around loud air tools. So my ears have really taken some punishment over the years. When I was younger nobody was talking about using ear plugs. They unfortunately came into fashion well after the damage was done to my ears.

[markaustinhowle]

Ear plugs and intonation:

As a band director, private instructor and brass performer I have done a good bit of experimentation with the use of earplugs as a tool for improving intonation. My students ranged in experience from beginner lever up to undergraduate. I performed in a university faculty brass quintet and in a weekend regional professional orchestra.

My first observation was while teaching high school band. (I had become fanatical about intonation.) The level of players in the wind ensemble was pretty good overall with some really strong players mixed in with some pretty average players. There was one particular player on euphonium who had a hearing aid in one ear. His tone was weak, but other things he did on his audition made his score high enough to be in the top performing concert group. While checking individual pitch within the entire group over a period of two years, I realized that this young player always played in tune. Always. Very Unusual. My next observation was when I used to sing in choir. I noticed singers put their finger over one ear while singing and was told that it helped them sing on pitch better.

The most important thing I learned while teaching intonation to wind players was that the players had to be able to match pitch with other players in the ensemble. I taught them all to recognize beats while playing with a constant pitch source. (Electronic synthesizer) Next I taught them to bend the pitch of their instrument with the embouchure, hand or hand slide. Then I taught them to decide if they were in tune or not, and to bend the pitch if they were not in tune. It was amazing how well this worked with high school students, especially when we did unison warm- up exercises. I even had the students play the Remmington exercise while listening and matching to the synthesizer on their audition for chair placement within the wind ensemble.

I soon learned that some students had lots of trouble being able to really tell if they were out of tune, even when they played alone with the synthesizer as opposed to playing within a large group. Remembering my choir experience, I began experimenting by having these students stop up one ear with a foam earplug. Without exception, every student, who could not hear if he/she was in tune or not (with both ears open) was able to immediately hear very clearly if he was in tune or not. All of a sudden, the student began to hear for him/herself how import intonation was. After several years of experimentation I have never found a player who could not hear his/her own intonation better (when matching pitch) with one ear closed with an earplug.

The last few years I performed professionally on the tuba, I always used an earplug. There was never any question what I should do in order to play in tune with the ensembles I was in. It was like having radar ears compared to not being able to hear my own intonation very well at all (relative to the other players). The only negative response of the earplug was that precision was harder to hear, so I always stopped up the ear that was pointing away from most of the other ensemble players.

Many students did complain about not liking their (perception of ) tone while playing.

Maybe someone on this forum would like to do formal research on this?

[tubatooter1940]

I wish I had worn ear plugs the 25 years I stood in front of a Fender Twin Reverb. The amp had two legs so I could rock it back and have it hit me in the back of my head. When standing straight up, the sound came out of it straight through the back of my legs and really hurt people. I had to rock it back to aim it at me so I could tell how much damage the treble was doing.
All my life I have noticed singers cover one ear to hear their own pitch as well as the other voices in harmony. It works.
In the recording studio we wear the headset over only one ear so we can hear ourselves and the guide (click) track at the same time.
Dennis Gray
tubatooter1940
www.johnreno.com/

[iiipopes]

Alright! Someone else who wears recording headphones only over one ear. I thought I was the only one. But what do I know? Indeed, especially in the studio, in spite of isolation booths, if one of the guitar players really wants to let it hang out, you better have the plugs because of the close proximity.

[Chuck(G)]

Eric Clapton going deaf
Tuesday, 12th September 2006, 11:55
LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - Eric Clapton is going deaf - because of his own rock concerts.

The legendary guitarist has revealed he suffers from mild tinnitus, ringing in the ears, and is convinced his excessively loud performances with Cream back in the 60s are to blame.

He told Britain's Daily Express newspaper: "My hearing isn't ruined, but if I stop and listen I've got whistling all the time which I suppose is a mild tinnitus.

"I probably had two 100-watt stacks at the height of things and I would turn one on for guitar solos. It was just mad!"

The Who frontman Roger Daltrey recently revealed years of rocking stadiums around the world has taken its toll on his ears - and forced him to swap raucous riffs for classical music.

He said at the time: "If I'm playing any music at home these days it's probably classical, mainly because I haven't got much hearing left.

"What I have got left, I want to keep."