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
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