The Beck Approach: A Musician's Guide to Hearing Conservation

Redux faster , drier , smarter , verified auto set , the modern ear cleaning device . Welcome back to another episode of the Hearing Matters podcast . On this episode , we are going to be discussing musicians and hearing protection with Dr Douglas Beck . Doug , before we dive in , you are a musician and you have released countless records .

Share with us your music background .

She and I were doing an expert form recently and we were talking about playing by ear and she corrected that and she said you know , really should be learning by listening . So I like that a lot and I think I like that yeah . And so I use that a lot . So I learned by listening .

Early in my career , back in the 70s , one of the most important musical developments was when Beatlemania first was aired as a show , as a musical . It was at the Winter Garden Theater in 1978 , just off Broadway , and I was one of the runner-ups for that show .

So that was a ton of fun to work with those guys and to get to play with that band quite a few times . And then careers happened and I became an audiologist and lots of studying and lots of work there . But I've always maintained my interest in music .

The Jeff Keith band if you look that up online you can still buy any of our three albums and we played all over Southern Texas for oh , it must have been 2010 to 2013 . And we had a great run . We actually played for the Susan G Coman Walk for the Cure . I think we had 30,000 people there , wow .

And you know the funny thing was they hired us because we were doing all original Americana music . We had a nice fan base and everything was cool . But when we started playing Twist and Shout by the Beatles , you know , 30,000 people started dancing . So that was kind of cool .

Probably in elementary school I started , but then I realized that the cool thing about guitar is you can strap one on your back and go across the world with it , right , and you can't do that with your drums . So you know , I mean , I still play drums . I have a drum set at home , but it's considerably less portable . So I started getting involved with guitar .

So now I've been playing drums for about 54 years and I've been playing guitar for about 50 years .

It's not their area of expertise anymore than my area of expertise as being a recording engineer . But what happens is it's very easy when you're in a rock band or you're using in-ear monitors and you're just going about your day and minding your own business , you're causing hearing loss . There are known guidelines for this .

For instance , osha , which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration , says 90 decibels of sound over eight hours will cause hearing loss . Now , that's a general rule and here's how it works . So it's 90 dB after eight hours , 95 dB four hours 100 dB two hours 105 dB one hour 110 dB . 30 minutes , 115 dB about 15 minutes .

So when you go to a concert , even if you came to the Jeff Keith band , you were listening to about 130 , 140 dB for two hours . So that's why people leave those concerts and their ears are ringing and their ears feel full . You've definitely caused a temporary threshold shift .

Now , sometimes what happens is a temporary threshold shift can become a permanent threshold shift , and there's no way of knowing ahead of time . So instead of going through all of that , potentially causing damage that's going to impact your hearing as well as your listening , as well as your brain , it would be smarter to avoid loud sounds .

Now , I'm a Texan and I was in the Air Force and I'm a musician . Thank you for your service , you're welcome and you know I have no hearing loss . Now , I do need a better signal to noise ratio than most people in order to make sense out of sound , but my thresholds are all within the normal range , despite 40 or 50 years of performing on stage .

And so this is what I encourage audiologists to talk to their patients about , who are musicians that if I just sit here and strum a D28 , it's going to be about 90 decibels . So that's an acoustic guitar .

For people who aren't familiar , and they come from Nazareth , pennsylvania , right where we're sitting right now , from the Martin factory , these are among the world's best guitars .

The Martins are just extraordinary , and when you just play one and you play an open G chord and you're just strumming it , your ears listening to 85 or 90 dB and then you start singing and now it's louder , and then you have two or three people playing bass or drums or another guitar or keyboards and you amplify all of that .

Well , you're very quickly in the danger zone . What I recommend is that performing and practicing musicians should always wear musicians' earplugs .

Now , this irritates some people because they're expensive , but you know what , when you're using a custom made hearing protection , what it does is it enables you to converse , because it only takes out the highest highs and the lowest lows , so it reduces them substantially . We can reduce those by more than 15 or 20 dB .

When we do that , we allow you to have more sound exposure without causing damage , and you can still converse to your colleagues and peers on stage while you're playing . If you don't do that , you're risking damaging your ears , damaging your hearing , damaging your brain , and once that starts , it's really hard to get a grip on it and to reverse it .

So I think that the easiest thing you can do as a musician is invest a couple of hundred bucks , get a set of musician's earplugs . There's a few different people who make them . I know that your office handles that sort of thing and you know these can easily run two or three hundred dollars . But the thing is they are custom made .

We take a cast of your ear . We look at your hearing loss first or we do a complete hearing assessment first to make sure everything's okay , and then we take a custom impression of your ear . We send that to the factory . They custom fit filters into there so that they can do the job .

If you don't have that and you go into a concert tonight , you can go to one of the pharmacies around town by those squishy little yellow earplugs . Stick them in your ears . Better than nothing . But not very good , because most people don't use them properly .

To really use them properly , you actually need somebody to show you , because you have to roll it in your fingers and you have to insert it deep into your ear without damaging your ear canal , and it's not fun or pleasant to install these things correctly .

So I'd recommend buy a set for 99 cents or two bucks , whatever it is , and then make an appointment , see Dr Dolphinos , see Blaze , learn how to install these correctly in your ears , because the vast majority of people that I see using them including the guys out on the tarmac at every airport in America they're not using them properly .

They're doing almost nothing for them , and this is a big deal , because if you use these 99 cent plugs properly , at least you're getting some protection , but it's rare to see somebody insert them correctly .

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Dr Beck , oftentimes when you go to a concert and really back in the day you saw a lot of the wedge monitors In-ear monitors weren't such a big thing . They were expensive and they still are expensive . They're expensive systems , but we always say that the cost of untreated hearing loss is greater than the price of the in-ear monitors .

And sounds cliche , but it's true . Why should musicians invest in in-ear monitors and should they wear them during rehearsal ? Should they wear earplugs ? Why are in-ear monitors so important ?

So we have a colleague in common , michael Santucci , who's an audiologist up in Chicago , and Michael kind of was the lead guy in inventing Sensophonics , which are probably the premier in-ear monitors that are available commercially , and they're not cheap .

And they shouldn't be cheap because Michael insists at least last time I spoke to him that you can have a complete audiometric evaluation . That's step one . We need to know what's our starting point . Number two he's going to take a custom impression , much like we would for musicians earplugs or for custom-made hearing aids .

Number three he's going to measure the sound that your ears are perceiving while using an in-ear monitor , to make sure it doesn't get too loud . And this is the thing that garage bands get wrong . All across the country . They'll buy in-ear monitors over the counter and they'll buy the less expensive ones , which we all understand .

But the problem is that if you're the vocalist , you're going to set that in-ear monitor to where you can hear yourself singing really , really louder than the rest of the band , because you want to make sure you're hitting the notes and when I sing back up or lead vocal , I really need to hear myself really , really loud in order to sing well , and so that's

what they're doing . But they have no idea what the SPL or the sound pressure level is , and quite often and this is a warning that Michael Santucci and I wrote up years ago people will be listening to sound at 130 , 135 dB , and if you go back to that scale OSHA says 90 dB for eight hours will cause hearing loss . We start talking about 115 , 120 , 125 .

That's causing hearing loss in a matter of minutes or seconds . And so in-ear monitors , if they're fit professionally , much like a hearing aid , if we're measuring the sound pressure getting to the eardrum , then they can be very useful and safe .

My fear is that the vast majority of people using in-ear monitors are listening way too loud to their instrument , and you know , generally I'll play either rhythm guitar or lead guitar . I'll play piano in most bands , and so what I would do as a musician on stage is I would have the sound engineer crank it up so I can hear what I'm doing .

But if you were to measure that sound , it could easily be very dangerous and the musician has no way of knowing . You can't say oh yeah , that's about 125 dB , yeah , that's . There's no reference . You can't do that . You absolutely cannot do that , and so it's got to be measured .

So I'm good within in-ear monitors , if they're professionally dispensed Again , for the folks in the audience , we can measure exactly how much sound is at the eardrum .

It's called a real-ear measure and there's all sorts of ways of doing that within in-ear monitors to make sure musicians are using it safely , because if they're not using it safely they're causing hearing loss and that's going to cause a much , much greater problem later .

So in-ear monitors , hearing protection devices , hearing aids this is the beautiful thing about having trained , licensed professionals involved is they're assuring your safety because they know what they're talking about . They're not just going to set it willy-nilly to where it sounds pretty good , and I've seen this a million times . I mean , I am still a musician .

I go to a lot of concerts and I see guys on stage within-ear monitors and you know darn well , and most of them are just cranking it up to where it sounds good and that's cool , because I'm an audiologist and we call that job security .