Member- Aug 21, 2014
- 5,049
- Tinnitus Since
- 1999
- Cause of Tinnitus
- karma
This has been on a my mind a while but I barely post these days; I was skimming and noticed this thread was still getting some activity: I Want to Become a Musician... Should I Not Because of Having Tinnitus and Minor Hyperacusis?
First Disclaimer: Before I get into this, my choices are my own and I am happy to talk about my path here. Instruments are loud, we're all in different situations and what I have found acceptable may not be so for you. That's fine!
Penultimate Disclaimer: Certain kinds of music production are harder or impossible without headphones, additionally, I personally don't think there's anything magical about headphones or even earbuds. That is, they're generally dangerous because they make it easier to blast your ear with high volumes, and occlude the canal, but if you don't blast your ears, a soundwave is a soundwave and I personally think the quality of the speaker tends to matter a lot more for ear fatigue. That said, this is not a place for debates about headphone use in general; again, I respect that there's a spectrum of experiences here and I am not encouraging headphone or speaker use of any kind.
Purpose
I got tinnitus in 1999; it became substantially worse following noise trauma in 2010 and I was never satisfactorily able to do much about it until starting a medication set (not discussing that here, I've discussed it to death elsewhere) which has been effective. Note that I am in the process of slowly withdrawing from those medications, so they are less and less a part of my story. None the less I put a footnote at the bottom to keep people from having to go on a fishing trip through my posts, because I know that reading about someone else's "successful" medication plan without them listing the drugs is really annoying.
In 2017 a friend with tinnitus encouraged me to buy a synthesizer to mess around with noises, because he personally had found it helpful in his journey. I like toys, so I got one, but I didn't do much with it until the pandemic hit and suddenly I was able to vaporize a bunch of old collectables that were gathering dust (Magic cards from the ~mid 90s) for $25,000 and do a bunch of home repairs and also just go deep on home audio stuff and sound design, and so I've... done that, you might say:
One thing to call out right off the bat: That's a reasonably accurate dB meter on the wall. When I am mixing a purely electronic signal chain, I just don't let that get over 75 dB or so. Ambient sound in here can be in the low 40s dB with all fans etc off, so that's more than enough headroom to do amateur grade mixing and mastering.
Some things are inherently impossibly loud: that's an alto sax, and sitting in here with the door shut playing into the wall, it will hit 110db pretty easily. Most of the force of the noise is projected away from the horn, but that's loud enough that I play outside whenever I am able, and use hearing protection in all cases.
Hearing Protection, with Safe(r) Sax in Mind
Like I said an alto can easily blow through 110 dB so we're into ranges where we are talking "safer" and not "safe". I don't imagine I am ever going to play an indoor set with an amped band at a live venue; even with muffs on and monitors underneath, that sounds way crazy for me. My goals are mostly to be able to play my sax (which I have ~a decade of prior experience with) and jam with a friend in a way that doesn't degrade my hearing, I'm not looking to be the next Sam Gendel.
Left is a set of musician grade earplugs with varying kinds of tips. Passive attenuation, not quite as good as normal foamies but lets a nicer spectrum of sound through. Maybe $25 on Amazon (Etymotic makes nicer ones). These are what I use for normal practicing.
Right is a set of Shure basically inexpensive in-ear monitors. They have maybe 18 dB of passive attenuation when properly inserted. This is less ideal than foamies for just playing a horn, but if I am playing my horn miked into some kind of electronic distortion chain, or playing along/into a mix that I need to be able to hear over or along with the horn, then I slam these in and slam a pair of earmuffs on top of them, and look like a total fuckin goon, but it works well enough.
A Word on Speakers
These are JBL powered monitors that I use for the front channels, and 1972-era Criterion unpowered monitors that go through another amp for rear channels (of course we're doing quadraphonics in here what fun is life if you can't send the front mix to a reverby soup behind you...)
Keeping this stuff at a reasonable volume is easy; these are all at least decent speakers with a warm sound response and there's a decibel meter on the wall.
This is a Boss Katana 50W guitar amp. It's super cool, on board DSP that can be flashed keeps me away from buying pedals for my uses, and it's got settings for 0.25W, 25W and 50W. It's also a friggin guitar amp and it's insanely easy to accidentally blast yourself with feedback through any number of means. This is probably the most dangerous sonic thing I own, and it basically only gets used outside and with extreme caution.
It's also absolutely hilarious to play an electric kazoo through a heavy delay/reverb/distort into the woods and make the local wildlife wonder wtf, so, life is full of compromise.
Headphones
Above, I showed a pair of occlusive IEMs. They have the exact singular purpose I mentioned for me. They also scare the living hell out of me because there's nowhere for the sound to go, so the only thing preventing me from some kind of ear damage accident, is: having good, reliable gear, and double and triple checking everything. I take safety when using this stuff, as seriously as I would if I was using a chainsaw or a firearm.
There's all kinds of headphones but for comfort and to some extent safety reasons I have come to prefer open-backed or semi-open backed models. These are not suitable for use sitting directly next to someone else, as they will hear your music escaping as a tinny sound. But, because sound does easily escape, there's some degree of protection against accidental volume spikes.
These are Blon B20s, they are made in China and can be obtained for around $350. I think they punch well over their weight class at that price. They don't leave home; I have a pair of (closed back) Sony MDR-v600s as road cans. I almost never need headphones when playing out with friends.
Noise Control
If you're mixing this stuff in a residential area that wasn't made to be a studio, your acoustics suck. If you're lucky enough to live in the middle of the woods like me your neighbors won't notice, but your spouse may be less than thrilled about any number of low and high frequency oscillations emanating from your music cave. Also, any noise you can take out of the air with absorbant surfaces, is noise you're not exposing yourself to, as well. Generally, you want your space to absorb as much as possible, especially if you're doing any acoustic recording with normal condenser / pickup mics (piezos are a different story).
I've got a couple sections where I have insulation mounted from the ceiling on lines so that the angle can be adjusted, and then I put a bunch of sound insulation against the wall behind the racks, and have slowly been adding it in the corners of the room. The floor in here used to be bare wood, now it has a thick absorbent pad under a thick blanket. The sound profile in here is a lot nicer and less "inherent Room reverb", high-frequency transients don't ping off the walls quite as much, and given that I keep volumes pretty well below what professional music is usually mixed at (80-85 dB, I think, and using headphones or extremely good monitors?), it's all working pretty nicely.
Take Breaks and Listen to Yourself
Volumes and sonic frequencies aside, I am of the opinion that:
Why Get Into an Obviously Dangerous Hobby, Given That You Already Have Tinnitus?
I played a sax for 8 years and have been dabbling with electronic stuff since the mid 90s. It's in the blood. But, I would turn that around and ask "why wouldn't I pursue a hobby that I find meaningful and fun, given that I believe I can do so in a way which doesn't pose any risks to my medical condition that Life Itself doesn't already impose, worse?"
That's the crux of the cross for me. I am not advocating become-a-musician-therapy for tinnitus. Even if I wanted to make an argument that it worked for me (which I don't), I am a weirdo and also just one person. On the other hand, I don't think that having tinnitus is necessarily a bar to hobbies that involve noise. It really depends on the person, the activity, the degree of tinnitus, etc.
I am not here to tell anyone else to do; this is simply the studio space I've constructed for myself to have fun with, and the tinnitus related considerations I have processed as a result.
At this time I've been doing this as well as operating substantial amounts of small gas engines for the better part of a decade, and if anything my tinnitus is quieter and less bothersome than it was in 2012. However, I accept that there is risk in all things and doing this stuff certainly could be leading to insidious hearing damage.
That's okay, the world is full of unknowns and I could get cancer tomorrow or die in the Eco-Fascist Food Shortage Riots of 2029. For now, I am making bleeps.
That's Sure a Lot of Crap You Have, What's Your Favorite Thing?
The saxophone, for sure, because I have the most hours on it and can actually play it. As far as the electronic garbage, MakeNoise/Soundhack Mimeophon is probably my single favorite piece of sonic technology (Soundhack Spectraphon is a close second), but for anyone looking to get into synthesis my honest advice is "buy the best iPad you can get for $350 and then mess with a bunch of free / cheap synth and drum machine stuff, maybe slowly buy into the Korg Gadget ecosystem, and then go from there".
My Recordings Et Cetera
I am active in a handful of small synth communities and I do post my mostly sketchy, raw or otherwise not super impressive bleeps a number of places, but I'm not linking to any of that here because this is just explanation and not self-promotion. I'm easy to find, though, especially if you start pawing at the world of modular synth chatter online
Fine Fine, What About Those DRUGS You Mentioned?
Ultimate Disclaimer: I have a history with Clonazepam that predates my tinnitus, I was first scripted it from 1999-2005 which was during critical brain development years for me and I strongly suspect that Clonazepam may work differently on me than the average person as a result.
After trying basically everything under the sun besides the Shulman protocol of a combination of Clonazepam & Gabapentin, and having found substantial short-term relief from PRN use of Diazepam, and being in a state of utter misery with a baby child I felt that my tinnitus and distress was interfering with bonding with and raising, I threw my hat in the Shulman ring, initially on 2 mg Clonazepam / 300 mg Gabapentin and eventually peaking at 900 mg Gabapentin in 2021 or so. Since then I have been steadily reducing both drugs extremely slowly, starting on the Gabapentin. I currently take 1.5 mg Clonazepam and 50-100 mg Gabapentin. There's another thread on here about that protocol specifically where I have been active, and I will be happy to discuss this → there but this thread is intended to be a thread about audio production, performance and related tinnitus concerns.
I can't be the only person dumb enough to have macawed my way into a room full of Shiny Synth Things, so if there's any other sound design psychos out there, let me know
P.S.
There's room for an entire follow-up post on using in-line compressors and other things as part of your signal chain (both primary signal chain, and the chain that just goes to headphones) to prevent accidentally blowing your hearing up, but I wasn't sure if there was enough interest to get to that level. "Buy a decent compressor and jam it at the end of your signal chain" is pretty simple advice, and if you do your monitoring through a DAW, you may just get this built-in for free.
First Disclaimer: Before I get into this, my choices are my own and I am happy to talk about my path here. Instruments are loud, we're all in different situations and what I have found acceptable may not be so for you. That's fine!
Penultimate Disclaimer: Certain kinds of music production are harder or impossible without headphones, additionally, I personally don't think there's anything magical about headphones or even earbuds. That is, they're generally dangerous because they make it easier to blast your ear with high volumes, and occlude the canal, but if you don't blast your ears, a soundwave is a soundwave and I personally think the quality of the speaker tends to matter a lot more for ear fatigue. That said, this is not a place for debates about headphone use in general; again, I respect that there's a spectrum of experiences here and I am not encouraging headphone or speaker use of any kind.
Purpose
I got tinnitus in 1999; it became substantially worse following noise trauma in 2010 and I was never satisfactorily able to do much about it until starting a medication set (not discussing that here, I've discussed it to death elsewhere) which has been effective. Note that I am in the process of slowly withdrawing from those medications, so they are less and less a part of my story. None the less I put a footnote at the bottom to keep people from having to go on a fishing trip through my posts, because I know that reading about someone else's "successful" medication plan without them listing the drugs is really annoying.
In 2017 a friend with tinnitus encouraged me to buy a synthesizer to mess around with noises, because he personally had found it helpful in his journey. I like toys, so I got one, but I didn't do much with it until the pandemic hit and suddenly I was able to vaporize a bunch of old collectables that were gathering dust (Magic cards from the ~mid 90s) for $25,000 and do a bunch of home repairs and also just go deep on home audio stuff and sound design, and so I've... done that, you might say:
One thing to call out right off the bat: That's a reasonably accurate dB meter on the wall. When I am mixing a purely electronic signal chain, I just don't let that get over 75 dB or so. Ambient sound in here can be in the low 40s dB with all fans etc off, so that's more than enough headroom to do amateur grade mixing and mastering.
Some things are inherently impossibly loud: that's an alto sax, and sitting in here with the door shut playing into the wall, it will hit 110db pretty easily. Most of the force of the noise is projected away from the horn, but that's loud enough that I play outside whenever I am able, and use hearing protection in all cases.
Hearing Protection, with Safe(r) Sax in Mind
Like I said an alto can easily blow through 110 dB so we're into ranges where we are talking "safer" and not "safe". I don't imagine I am ever going to play an indoor set with an amped band at a live venue; even with muffs on and monitors underneath, that sounds way crazy for me. My goals are mostly to be able to play my sax (which I have ~a decade of prior experience with) and jam with a friend in a way that doesn't degrade my hearing, I'm not looking to be the next Sam Gendel.
Left is a set of musician grade earplugs with varying kinds of tips. Passive attenuation, not quite as good as normal foamies but lets a nicer spectrum of sound through. Maybe $25 on Amazon (Etymotic makes nicer ones). These are what I use for normal practicing.
Right is a set of Shure basically inexpensive in-ear monitors. They have maybe 18 dB of passive attenuation when properly inserted. This is less ideal than foamies for just playing a horn, but if I am playing my horn miked into some kind of electronic distortion chain, or playing along/into a mix that I need to be able to hear over or along with the horn, then I slam these in and slam a pair of earmuffs on top of them, and look like a total fuckin goon, but it works well enough.
A Word on Speakers
These are JBL powered monitors that I use for the front channels, and 1972-era Criterion unpowered monitors that go through another amp for rear channels (of course we're doing quadraphonics in here what fun is life if you can't send the front mix to a reverby soup behind you...)
Keeping this stuff at a reasonable volume is easy; these are all at least decent speakers with a warm sound response and there's a decibel meter on the wall.
This is a Boss Katana 50W guitar amp. It's super cool, on board DSP that can be flashed keeps me away from buying pedals for my uses, and it's got settings for 0.25W, 25W and 50W. It's also a friggin guitar amp and it's insanely easy to accidentally blast yourself with feedback through any number of means. This is probably the most dangerous sonic thing I own, and it basically only gets used outside and with extreme caution.
It's also absolutely hilarious to play an electric kazoo through a heavy delay/reverb/distort into the woods and make the local wildlife wonder wtf, so, life is full of compromise.
Headphones
Above, I showed a pair of occlusive IEMs. They have the exact singular purpose I mentioned for me. They also scare the living hell out of me because there's nowhere for the sound to go, so the only thing preventing me from some kind of ear damage accident, is: having good, reliable gear, and double and triple checking everything. I take safety when using this stuff, as seriously as I would if I was using a chainsaw or a firearm.
There's all kinds of headphones but for comfort and to some extent safety reasons I have come to prefer open-backed or semi-open backed models. These are not suitable for use sitting directly next to someone else, as they will hear your music escaping as a tinny sound. But, because sound does easily escape, there's some degree of protection against accidental volume spikes.
These are Blon B20s, they are made in China and can be obtained for around $350. I think they punch well over their weight class at that price. They don't leave home; I have a pair of (closed back) Sony MDR-v600s as road cans. I almost never need headphones when playing out with friends.
Noise Control
If you're mixing this stuff in a residential area that wasn't made to be a studio, your acoustics suck. If you're lucky enough to live in the middle of the woods like me your neighbors won't notice, but your spouse may be less than thrilled about any number of low and high frequency oscillations emanating from your music cave. Also, any noise you can take out of the air with absorbant surfaces, is noise you're not exposing yourself to, as well. Generally, you want your space to absorb as much as possible, especially if you're doing any acoustic recording with normal condenser / pickup mics (piezos are a different story).
I've got a couple sections where I have insulation mounted from the ceiling on lines so that the angle can be adjusted, and then I put a bunch of sound insulation against the wall behind the racks, and have slowly been adding it in the corners of the room. The floor in here used to be bare wood, now it has a thick absorbent pad under a thick blanket. The sound profile in here is a lot nicer and less "inherent Room reverb", high-frequency transients don't ping off the walls quite as much, and given that I keep volumes pretty well below what professional music is usually mixed at (80-85 dB, I think, and using headphones or extremely good monitors?), it's all working pretty nicely.
Take Breaks and Listen to Yourself
Volumes and sonic frequencies aside, I am of the opinion that:
- Something which does not seem to be causing hearing damage, may still be doing so.
- Anything which seems to make my ears feel tired or sensitive, is bad and should be stopped.
Why Get Into an Obviously Dangerous Hobby, Given That You Already Have Tinnitus?
I played a sax for 8 years and have been dabbling with electronic stuff since the mid 90s. It's in the blood. But, I would turn that around and ask "why wouldn't I pursue a hobby that I find meaningful and fun, given that I believe I can do so in a way which doesn't pose any risks to my medical condition that Life Itself doesn't already impose, worse?"
That's the crux of the cross for me. I am not advocating become-a-musician-therapy for tinnitus. Even if I wanted to make an argument that it worked for me (which I don't), I am a weirdo and also just one person. On the other hand, I don't think that having tinnitus is necessarily a bar to hobbies that involve noise. It really depends on the person, the activity, the degree of tinnitus, etc.
I am not here to tell anyone else to do; this is simply the studio space I've constructed for myself to have fun with, and the tinnitus related considerations I have processed as a result.
At this time I've been doing this as well as operating substantial amounts of small gas engines for the better part of a decade, and if anything my tinnitus is quieter and less bothersome than it was in 2012. However, I accept that there is risk in all things and doing this stuff certainly could be leading to insidious hearing damage.
That's okay, the world is full of unknowns and I could get cancer tomorrow or die in the Eco-Fascist Food Shortage Riots of 2029. For now, I am making bleeps.
That's Sure a Lot of Crap You Have, What's Your Favorite Thing?
The saxophone, for sure, because I have the most hours on it and can actually play it. As far as the electronic garbage, MakeNoise/Soundhack Mimeophon is probably my single favorite piece of sonic technology (Soundhack Spectraphon is a close second), but for anyone looking to get into synthesis my honest advice is "buy the best iPad you can get for $350 and then mess with a bunch of free / cheap synth and drum machine stuff, maybe slowly buy into the Korg Gadget ecosystem, and then go from there".
My Recordings Et Cetera
I am active in a handful of small synth communities and I do post my mostly sketchy, raw or otherwise not super impressive bleeps a number of places, but I'm not linking to any of that here because this is just explanation and not self-promotion. I'm easy to find, though, especially if you start pawing at the world of modular synth chatter online
Fine Fine, What About Those DRUGS You Mentioned?
Ultimate Disclaimer: I have a history with Clonazepam that predates my tinnitus, I was first scripted it from 1999-2005 which was during critical brain development years for me and I strongly suspect that Clonazepam may work differently on me than the average person as a result.
After trying basically everything under the sun besides the Shulman protocol of a combination of Clonazepam & Gabapentin, and having found substantial short-term relief from PRN use of Diazepam, and being in a state of utter misery with a baby child I felt that my tinnitus and distress was interfering with bonding with and raising, I threw my hat in the Shulman ring, initially on 2 mg Clonazepam / 300 mg Gabapentin and eventually peaking at 900 mg Gabapentin in 2021 or so. Since then I have been steadily reducing both drugs extremely slowly, starting on the Gabapentin. I currently take 1.5 mg Clonazepam and 50-100 mg Gabapentin. There's another thread on here about that protocol specifically where I have been active, and I will be happy to discuss this → there but this thread is intended to be a thread about audio production, performance and related tinnitus concerns.
I can't be the only person dumb enough to have macawed my way into a room full of Shiny Synth Things, so if there's any other sound design psychos out there, let me know
P.S.
There's room for an entire follow-up post on using in-line compressors and other things as part of your signal chain (both primary signal chain, and the chain that just goes to headphones) to prevent accidentally blowing your hearing up, but I wasn't sure if there was enough interest to get to that level. "Buy a decent compressor and jam it at the end of your signal chain" is pretty simple advice, and if you do your monitoring through a DAW, you may just get this built-in for free.
