Hear The Music

Naomi Croghan is a classical musician and a Research Audiologist at Cochlear Americas. Her research interests focus on improving music perception and speech perception in complex environments with cochlear implants and hearing aids. During the holiday season, I began reading a book called Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life, by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. This book describes how to

Parts 1 and 2 of this blog series discussed some research about the negative emotional effects of music (or noise versus music).  The studies touched on two real-life scenarios:  1. the effects of music as opposed to noise; and 2. the effects of liking one type of music and hating another type.  This part of the blog series will look at

In part 1, the work of Hormann and his colleagues was discussed showing that if a person disliked or was negatively predisposed to music, then their temporary threshold shift (TTS) was greater than if they were neutral or positive towards it.  This “third” factor that may contribute to noise or music exposure- with the sound level  (in dBA) and the duration of

This is a great video clip.  Even the bassoonist downwind jerks his head, and I feel badly for the horn player, and I even have some feelings for the percussionist. While not typical, this is fairly representative of the environment that many professional musicians find themselves in.  Sometimes they are confronted by a blast from their rear; sometimes it is

  During this holiday season, the editors at Hearing Health & Technology Matters (HHTM) are taking some time off. However, we are not leaving you without anything to read on our blog this week. Instead, we are publishing a special holiday edition filled with what we call our Readers’ Choices. HHTM has had more than half a million page views

In part one of this two-part series, I made a call for those hearing health care professionals who are interested in working with musicians and those in the performing arts. In part 2, I suggest a curriculum of topics that would delineate a minimum requirement for working with musicians. I have listed these under four general categories. This is just a

“Is there someone in my town who can work with musicians?” That’s the number one question I am asked–usually by email but sometimes by snail mail. I’m usually fairly “lucky” in that I know someone who practices at least near the writer, so I can send the person in the right direction. But luck carries me only so far. This brings up

Once again, the field of automotive racing has stolen some ideas from audiology. If I had a nickel for every time this happened (rather than the other way around) I would have at least … several dollars (Canadian, which is about $1.91 US). The field of audiology and room acoustics is not shiny, does not have neat doors that swing

Last week, part 1 of this series examined Naomi Croghan’s research. She, along with her PhD supervisors and now colleagues, Kathryn Arehart and James Kates, had recently published an article in Ear and Hearing entitled “Music Preferences With Hearing Aids: Effects of Signal Properties, Compression Settings, and Listener Characteristics” They used a virtual hearing aid where music could be processed through

For listening to music through hearing aids there seem to be two rules of thumb(s): One is that less change is more, and the other is that music settings are not all that different from speech (in quiet) settings. There are no thumbs left for the other side of the issue: Music settings are more compressed than those for speech.