Fortissimo! Is it bad on your hearing?

Gandalfe

Gandalfe

Striving to play the changes in a melodic way.
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Having sat in front of trumpets for years, I found the NYT article "No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down" very interesting.

"Tests showed that the average noise level in the orchestra during the piece, ?State of Siege,? by the composer Dror Feiler, was 97.4 decibels, just below the level of a pneumatic drill and a violation of new European noise-at-work limits. Playing more softly or wearing noise-muffling headphones were rejected as unworkable."

I actually have a Radio Shack Sound Level Meter that I think I'll take to jazz and concert band tomorrow. I also have musician's earplugs that I rarely use.

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I recall in high school when in the state honors band through Wayne State Univ we played 1812. We had real canons. Not big ones mind you, small heavy, BUT real canons. Those things were loud even outside when we used them.

But I can certainly understand. Ever listen to music really loud with headphones on and your ears ring afterwards.

The only good thing about sitting in front of the trumpets is that you are not facing them. If that was the case then you'd definitely go deaf.
 
One of my major challenges in playing more is that my ears can't take it. A few years ago I was playing three nights a week for a few months and my ears were really hurting by the end of it. I have tinnitus - the ringing type and I generally avoid trumpets and cymbals whenever possible. Piccolo also causes discomfort to me. I stay away from really bright mouthpieces on soprano as well.

I've noticed at the Chicago Symphony that many times the trumpets are playing into a Plexiglas partition to protect the players in front of them. I think more groups should adopt this setup.

Like Gandalfe, I've tried various ear plugs but they don't work well for me. I get too much resonance in my head and can't hear the dynamics going on in the band.
 
Ed Svoboda said:
I've noticed at the Chicago Symphony that many times the trumpets are playing into a Plexiglas partition to protect the players in front of them. I think more groups should adopt this setup.
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I've heard this plexiglas has to be angled to keep the noise from coming right back at them. Actually, I agree with whoever said that the trumpet players should be forced to hear the full force their instruments for a week. I wonder if that would change their volume? Nah, probably not. :emoji_rolling_eyes:

Ed Svoboda said:
Like Gandalfe, I've tried various ear plugs but they don't work well for me. I get too much resonance in my head and can't hear the dynamics going on in the band.
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They are a pain and not my favorite way to protect my hearing. But I need to use them more.
 
I'm convinced that if you took a bunch of trumpet players and placed them in a perfect circle facing each other that they wouldn't hear a sound. Then again I think they're deaf most of the time anyways. He's something I have only heard a handful of times in my life from a conductor - "could the trumpets please play louder". :D
 
I have another trumpet joke.

Ornette Coleman started playing trumpet with absolutely no training on the instrument. Trumpet players were aghast. Everyone else thought "sounds like a trumpet player".
 
Ed Svoboda said:
I have another trumpet joke.

Ornette Coleman started playing trumpet with absolutely no training on the instrument. Trumpet players were aghast. Everyone else thought "sounds like a trumpet player".
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Reversing that, Maynard Ferguson started playing soprano sax with absolutely no training on the instrument. Sax players were aghast. Everyone else thought "sounds like a soprano sax player".
 
In the classical group I play with we have three sax players and we all own sopranos. We keep "offering" to bring our sopranos every time we have a piece that has multiple piccolos going.
 
A bit of the background on the Maynard Ferguson (MF) story:

My ex-wife is/was a trumpet player. She took me to a concert with MF many years ago: up until that time, the only thing I really knew about MF was that he played the theme to "Sesame Street."

(FWIW, and to help out Jim and Ed who know how old I actually am, yes, I married young.)

So, it was an outdoor concert. Decent. I thought the tunes he was playing were OK. Until he pulled out a soprano sax and said something like, "This is my new toy."

{voice="Bart Simpson"} I didn't know that it was physically possible, but this both sucks AND blows. {/voice}

The ex-wife, who was really into Maynard, even grimaced.

Yes, I know MF died about two years ago, so I don't wish to speak ill of the dead ... at least not for a couple more months. But he should have stuck with trumpet.
 
I first saw him (Maynard Ferguson) in a concert in 1982 in some local high school auditorium. I don't remember much of the concert. The person that drove us then smashed his 1969 Pontac GTO into a tree on the way to take us home. geez .. that brings back memories. I still remember seeing the tree in slow motion like it had fog around it as we were approaching.

lost my train of thought there .... but i used to have a nice little tape collection of his.
 
That 97 dbA figure is deceptive. It's not an absolute limit that cannot be exceeded, but rather one of several tiers that regulate how long you can be exposed to that level. While some bonehead with the EU may be misinterpreting their rules, it's probably more like someone unfamiliar with how the system works shot his or her mouth off without thinking first.

Prior to my retirement at the start of the year, I was a manager for OSHA, the United States agency charged with workplace safety and health. One of the laws that my "people" enforced was our "noise standard", and it is generally similar to that used by the EU.

Under these noise standard, you can be exposed to a level of 90 dbA for not more than eight hours during a single work day. As the noise levels get higher, the amount of permitted exposure time at that level progressively gets shorter. These "exposures" are cumulative, and any time spent at 89 dbA or below counts as exposure to a level of zero.

(There is an absolute upward limit, a level that no noise level is allowed to exceed without some protective measures. 140 dbA is a level often reached with weapons, and of course with the stoner crowd in some types of rock music. Most folks are smart enough to avoid this sort of thing.)

While a sound level meter (SLM) is a good screening tool, the only way to accurately figure exposure is to use a device called a dosimeter. It measures the level on a continuous basis and does the total computation that gives the end result. Much simpler than the manual method that we used back in the early 1970's (which required timed readings on an SLM to a strict schedule).

When a musical piece has a peak sound level up in the high 90's, it's important to keep in mind that the high readings are only part of the picture; you have to consider the entire exposure, not just one fortissimo passage.

Push comes to shove, if you find (at any noise level) that you are ending up with ringing or buzzing in your ears, you are overexposed (for your particular body's limitations). The sound levels set in these standards are only required to be protective for 95% of the total population, and there are many who are more sensitive and will be harmed even at the 90 dbA level. Use the plugs if you are in this group, and it doesn't hurt to use them in any case. You will get used to them over time, believe it or not.
 
Gandalfe said:
SteveSklar said:
I actually had a trumpet player apologize to me for being so loud in practice last night. Amazing
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Was he a doubler? I can't imagine a trumpet purist saying sorry for the noise. :cool:
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don't think so. seems as though the higher they go the louder they get .... don't they know balance ??
 
SteveSklar said:
Gandalfe said:
SteveSklar said:
I actually had a trumpet player apologize to me for being so loud in practice last night. Amazing
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Was he a doubler? I can't imagine a trumpet purist saying sorry for the noise. :cool:
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don't think so. seems as though the higher they go the louder they get .... don't they know balance ??
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No. Although I think some questions answer themselves. :emoji_smile:
 
I do not work with trumpet players that often, but honestly they're not usually the problem. Hard hitting drummers and guitarists can make my ears ring at times. I typically only play in groups twice a week, so it hasn't been a major issue yet. I used to have a very good set of earplugs that consisted of 3 rubber domes. I loved them because they did not muffle the music like the foam ones do. Come to think of it, I'm going to go out and buy a pair before this weekends gig. This thread has me paranoid about my hearing now. :geezer2:
 
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