"Put a plug in it"

[Sarah Fox]

Hi Ron,

> >I hear a lot about hearing loss on this list.  It doesn't surprise me.  I
> >also wonder about hearing loss for the pianists who slave away at their
> >instruments for hours on end.
>
> Me too, especially those on those old Hamiltons in an 8X10 cinder block
> practice room. Waling away on two to six strings at a time is nothing
> compared to waling away on ten or twenty.

I have one of those Hamiltons.  VERY bright/harsh instrument -- hard to keep
voiced down.  My concert grand in my ceramic living room is a bit much also.
I hate rugs/carpet, but I think I'll make an exception under my piano.  If I
were a more serious pianist (longer practice hours), I think I would
probably wear hearing protection.

> Also, checking out the pedal problem under the grand as the customer
> decides to demonstrate by playing her most energetic piece. Hint: always
> wear ear protection when under a piano.

Also above directly in front of an open lid.  When I first got my grand, I
demonstrated its power to someone standing there -- almost blasted her
through the opposite wall.  I felt really bad about that.  :-(

> >  As a novice, I notice I
> >sometimes have to take longer than I should when tuning a stubborn string
> >(e.g. with a jumpy pin) -- probably much longer than any of you.  When
that
> >happens, I notice habituation to the frequency of that note.  (Perhaps I
> >notice it only because it is an interesting phenomenon to me,
> >physiologically.)  Anyway, when I notice that happening, I make it a
point
> >to move on to other notes and to come back later.
>
> Good observation. That tends to go away eventually as your hammer
technique
> improves and you learn to stop tuning past the point of diminishing
returns
> and move on.

I gather.  I'm never quite sure how much I can err, so I obsess over getting
it as close as I can.

> Another thing I noticed back when the earth was young and I was trying to
> learn to tune, were the "islands" in my hearing. My aural perceptions were
> lumpy. I discovered that the volume, clarity and resolution of my hearing
> was nowhere near uniform through the frequency range of the piano. In
fact,
> that's why I learned to tune from a C fork, rather than an A. I could hear
> the C better. Within a year or so, I had apparently made the internal
> calibration adjustments to compensate, and was (am) no longer aware of the
> difference. I can't imagine that these inconsistencies deep within my
shell
> pink audio receptors went away, but something about learning what to
listen
> for and where to listen masked the inconsistencies to the point I could no
> longer detect them.
>
> Another case of what we think we hear being what we actually hear after
> filtering through our expectations and experience.

I'll probably never have the experienced ear of a tuner, but I've become
keenly atuned to sound features in my research, picking out features that
others don't even hear.  It does seem to boil down to experience.  So I can
appreciate what you're telling me.  (Thanks!)

Peace,
Sarah