Hear The Music

Who would ever have imagined that a musician could be a rock star?  I would never have believed that the word “musician” and the phrase “rock star” could appear in the same sentence! My surprise stems from the early 1980s whenb the only rock stars were audiologists who wandered into a hearing aid manufacturer’s office.   At that time, everything stopped

Although I have not seen Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart clinically for a couple of years, I know him well enough to know that he was ahead of his time, hated old conventions, and was always pushing the envelope to expand the music, especially when it came to the masses. So, if Mozart were here today, how would he have changed the

Last week I saw a violinist with an 8000-Hz audiometric notch in her hearing test. This is not unheard of and I have observed this clinically before, especially with violin and also some piccolo players. Textbooks in audiology are fond of stating that any long-term damage from noise (and music) exposure tends to be restricted to the 3000-6000 Hz region,

It is almost as if music has something in common with everything- psychology, physiology, acoustics, engineering, most areas of the arts, and now the lowly spondee. Recently I have been reading a book on combinatorial mathematics  (don’t panic- the book is written for the lay audience and not meant to conjure up memories of doing math problem sets with 4

In part 1 of musical roads, we reviewed the subject of where grooves could be cut into roads such that vehicles traveling 0n them at a certain speed would generate musical notes and tunes.  In Japan, South Korea, and the United States a few such musical roads exist, albeit for different reasons- in Japan and the United States as  a

Recently I have been reading The Sound Book by Trevor Cox and came across something I had never heard of before- musical roads.  Musical roads, as the name suggests, are roads that can “play” a song while you are driving on them.  The first report of a musical road was in 1995 in Denmark. Called the Asphaltophone, it was an

I have long known about the research of Dr. Brian Moore, specifically about his work with dead regions in the cochlea.  I have even purchased and used the TENS test to determine whether or not a region was healthy  enough to receive amplified sound.  “Cochlear dead regions” is a phrase that refers to a very significant amount of damage to

I am frequently asked by my musician clients if they can have control over my software programming tools when fitting and adjusting their hearing aid.  At this point I usually look over my glasses frame and, with my best paternalistic look, I say “no”.  At this point they get impatient with me until I explain in a calm and professorial

In their last series of meetings before this most recent municipal election, he New Orleans City Council and Mayor Mitch Landrieu had called for legislation that would in effect decree that no toilets can be flushed in New Orleans; no telephones can be used; no conversations can be held where there are more than four people talking; and no music

Now, this is a great title.  It sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone or a 1950’s Japanese Science Fiction monster movie where Godzilla meets Von Helmholtz. Well, that’s partially correct- it is something from the University of Tokyo in Japan, and the history is well known.  It has to do with everything that has associations with wavelength resonances.