I have a constant inner companion, inside my head. I’m not talking about the Holy Spirit (although He is a fantastic companion!), I’m talking about my not-so-friendly friend, Mr. Tinnitus.
Tinnitus is defined as non-auditory internally perceived sound. In other words, you can hear things (whooshing, ringing, chirping) that aren’t actually there. It is closely associated with hearing loss, and almost always accompanies hearing damage.
I recently watched a great video by Chords Of Orion (a.k.a. Bill Vencil) about how his hearing loss and tinnitus had progressed over the last few years. And of course, his experience mirrors my own. I have a constant 24/7 high-frequency buzzing/ringing in my ears that never goes away. It’s very faint most of the time, as I’ve trained myself to partially tune it out. But it permanently affects my ability to hear sounds in a certain frequency range. I’m constantly asking my wife to repeat herself if there’s any kind of noise around. I can only hear her clearly if it’s quiet. (Doesn’t help that she’s soft spoken.)
How has this affected me musically? Well, I’d like to say it hasn’t, but I’m pretty sure it has somehow. The problem is, I can’t really tell. But I know something’s up because I can hear some things clearly through noise, and others I can’t.
Is there anything I can do to treat it? Not really, unfortunately. Hearing is a finite resource, and once you lose some of it, it doesn’t come back. But there are a few things you can do to cope with the constant ringing:
- Retraining
- Masking
- Anti-inflammatory supplements
- Prevention
Tinnitus Therapy (also called “retraining”) involves listening to certain sounds that retrain your brain into tuning out the tinnitus noises. This seems to help me, as my tinnitus isn’t that loud (yet). Since the human brain is extremely adaptive, it is possible to train it to tune out those sounds. It takes time, but seems to have decent results.
For me, I use a tinnitus-specific noise generator that I can run in the background while I work. It tricks my brain into listening to the random tones (trying to interpret them) instead of the ringing, and so my brain filters out most of the ringing. Is it perfect? No, but it does help.
There are other treatments, but none of them really fix the problem, as it’s a neurological disorder. There’s some speculation about certain anti-inflammatory medicines working, and sometimes if your tinnitus is aggravated by sinus problems, it would help. But there’s no definitive cure yet.
Anyway, some ways to deal with it as a musician are:
- Listen to music at lower volume levels
- Pitch recorded tracks down, to move those frequencies to where you can hear them
- Get other people to help you mix
- Use a spectrum analyzer to see if there are frequency spikes above your hearing range
I’m planning on beginning recording soon, and I’m probably going to have to utilize all of these methods. I don’t have a good set of headphones any more, so I’ll also be investing in something that has clarity at lower volumes. My studio monitors work quite well, but I’ll most likely be looking into calibrating the room and getting a better amp to squeeze the most performance out of them, i.e. clarity and headroom without more volume.