You may have noticed many performers humming along with their playing. This helps activate the stapedius muscles sooner so that their contraction will stiffen the ossicles, which act like levers, much like a grand piano action. The job of the ossicles is to transduce the acoustic energy entering our ear into mechanical energy, which is much more powerful. They do this so that when the energy enters the fluid filled cochlea, it is strong enough to move the basilar membrane thus activating the hair cells, which send the electrical message to the brain, which registers the sound. Thus, When the ossicles become stiffened, the sound is attenuated. Unfortunately, the impact of the piano hammer on a hard blow happens too quickly for the stapedius muscle to react and protect our hearing. I've tried humming while tuning, but for some reason it doesn't work too well :-) Diane Hofstetter Porritt, David wrote: > Oh, and when your hearing is muffled after a rock concert, > it's not from the muscle contractions, but from cochlear > fatigue. Too much of that and you'll get cochlear damage. Right. The little muscles both react, and recover, very quickly. But they eventually fatigue when overworked continually, quit damping effectively, and leave the cochlea unprotected. That's the way I read it. Ron N Diane Hofstetter
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