ear problems?

[GC]

I've fought ear problems almost all of my life, but I think that playing tuba helped my hearing. I know that my hearing loss was around 50% before I started band, and it improved radically over the next few years. One doctor attributed the improvement to using a high-air-volume instrument, because it helped keep a proper balance of pressure in my middle ear.

I've seen several references that say that heavy use of ibuprofen can cause ringing in the ears and distortion of perception of pitch.

Fluid in the middle ear can cause distortion of pitch and timbre. Usually it comes from infections, but music can be a problem. Listening through headphones turned up too loud can cause it. Being a bass player, being too close to a loud bass amp can cause the same thing; for rock, blues, or big-room gigs even with a big band, I have to use earplugs or my ears stop up.

Middle ear infections can also spread to the inner ear and cause the nerves and hair cells in the cochlea to behave unpredictably; they can fire on other pitches than the ones that nature designed them to respond to.

Listening to too much out-of-tune playing can ruin your sense of pitch. Middle school music teachers take note.

And of course, if your ears are made of tin . . .