Protect Your Ears

On the one hand, thank you Rick Beato for discussing this the way you do in this video.

I grew up hearing from my stepfather and grandfather, pro musicians, that I needed to protect my hearing, otherwise I'd end up like them, half deaf, ringing, the whole bit. Of course, they were also both duck hunters who shot without hearing protection, and all the other things they did without keeping their ears safe...

From what I could tell, for many, the dividing line is whether you played live gigs after about the age of 18. Sure, people who played earlier than that, especially those of us who played both school gigs and club gigs early, started having ear trouble earlier, but from what I've seen, for those folks who keep playing, some form of hearing damage is damned near universal. Even among classical musicians, hearing protection just isn't as prevalent as you'd think.

And believe me, an orchestra at full grunt is louder than you'd ever believe, especially sitting the middle of it.

So yeah, for Rick, and the commenters (yes, this is one of the rare posts where you should read the comments), to discuss this is important. Really, yes, just about every musician you know has some level of hearing damage. Just about every soldier, especially if they've served during wartime. Most construction workers, or plant operators, also have some form of damage, usually in those cases a loss of certain frequency regions rather than tinnitus, but the concerns are the same: protect your ears!

Yep, thank you Rick. And also, I hate you for this. I typically go months at a time being able to ignore my own tinnitus. And then some nitwit with a video camera goes on and has a serious and important discussion of their own hearing issues, and here I am listening to the buzz and the ring at 10k, and wondering how long I'll have to go this time before I learn how to tune it out again...