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So... This thread came about after I inadvertently hijacked the "Post Pictures of your Next or Newest Instrument/gear purchase" thread. After a lot of positive and supportive posts I thought I'd create a new post so we don't derail the awesome gear thread any further. The quick version - I've never heard bass in my life and now I'm going to  My original post Dog_Meat posted:Not sure if it counts as "new music gear", but at the age of 41 I've finally got my hearing tested properly and am being fitted for hearing aids this weekend. If anyone can appreciate how massive this is for me, it's a bunch of musicians and gear freaks. The feedback was amazing and I have a list of tracks that have been recommended to me already. I'm not going to try to list them all here, but I've got them saved. The hearing aids will be set at 70% to start with and increased weekly by 10% as I get used to processing it all. I'm purposely holding off on listening to the rich, bass heavy stuff until I can appreciate and savour it! Some more copy/pastes from the other thread (apologies to those who have already read these) Snowy posted:You could have a whole thread about bass discoveries! It’s so exciting This is a perfect example and I'll come back to it eventually. I hear most of the drums and follow the guitar, but the bass is just someone miming to me. Watching her fingers I can see there's a massive chunk of the picture that I'm missing (fun fact - as a very young kid I honestly thought the bass guitar was a prop they gave someone to fill out the stage or make the special kid feel included. I literally learnt to play guitar while still thinking this. It was an awkward revelation when someone told me to follow the bass and I realised it was an actual instrument  )Keptbroom posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAT3aVj-A_E That visual bass line is interesting because while I can't hear it, it gives me a point to listen out and I hear the click of the string but not the note. It'll be good to watch that again with working ears to appreciate the layer I've been missing. At the time of writing all of the above, I'd only had a small, 2 minute test of what a hearing aid could do set at 60% and then had to wait. Dog_Meat posted:I'm making a list of all the recommendations in this thread Right now I've had the aids in for 48 hours. As soon as work quietens down I'll update with how it felt having them switched on properly, the walk home through a busy city, hearing the radio, hearing my wife's full voice for the first time. Then eventually... BASS ODYSSEY!!!
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Oct 29, 2019 14:21
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. It'll be a few weeks before I'm at full 100% settings as my brain has to learn how to cope with it, but I'll dip in with updates. They'll probably be mostly "Holy Fuckballs!!" and "oooh, THAT'S why my chest felt like it was being punched when that song came on".
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So psyched for your bass adventures, congrats!!! There’s so many kinds of bass to explore, here’s one that’s some satisfying deep boom but beware of violent, probably offensive lyrics  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LovvKj-AXPU We should crowdfund a subwoofer for you
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Oct 29, 2019 14:41
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Listen to Massive Attacks album Mezzanine. The whole album is just walls of thick dark menacing bass that I imagine wouldn't sound like anything if you were unable to hear it. I remember in school music class once the teacher played Angel to us and we were like "so are we gonna be tested on this or...?" and she goes "nah, I just wanted an excuse to play that through the music room PA system". It sounds like to me at least 2 bass guitars +synth layered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbe3CQamF8k massive spider fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 14:41
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Can you talk about your hearing loss? I imagine that it's one you've always had. I'm curious to see your audiogram. Did you know that you had a hearing loss and wanted to pursue music anyways? It's all interesting stuff to me. Most of the musician patients I see are older and have an acquired hearing loss, and it's usually in the higher frequencies instead of the bass.
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Oct 29, 2019 15:29
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Rifter17 posted:Can you talk about your hearing loss? I imagine that it's one you've always had. I'm curious to see your audiogram. I don't have the actual diagram to hand, but I had a test several years ago and the bass registers were way down in the severe loss range, but the mids had a literal step up to above normal and I continued into the high registers a little higher than average (probably compensating). As I've got older I've naturally lost the higher registers so that window of sound that I had has closed to the extent where I couldn't ignore it anymore. It's still the same shape, but the whole thing has dropped below the normal hearing line. Another factor that prompted me getting this sorted was my tinnitus appearing to get louder and more dominant, but now I believe I've always had the same level of tinnitus but it just appeared louder as I lost my regular hearing. As I'm sat here I'm aware of it while I think about it, but it's easily ignored now I have better hearing. Part of the problem is that I simply wasn't aware of how deaf I was. It seems to be a genetic thing in my family on my mothers side (something to do with the small bones in the ear) so nobody ever said "wait, you can't hear that?". There was also nobody musical in the family so they never had the "why do the notes not come out of this bit?" moment that I did. Add to that the brain's natural ability to adapt and compensate with overly active high end hearing and me not realising how much I was lip reading and the years just passed by. A lot of my childhood concentration issues were put down to hearing, so I knew it wasn't perfect, but I never scored low enough as a kid to have anything corrective and at the time (35+ years ago) we didn't have the options we have now. There was just nothing in my life that made me realise I was missing out. I always hated dance music because it was boring and I never realised why people were getting excited outside a club as I heard nothing but "TSS TSS TSS". I also grew up in a house without music (that would be an E/N in itself) so the only music I got was tinny radio playing over a workshop or my buddy's hair metal stuff which was dominated by screaching solos and vocals. the world just didn't have bass from the start, my family never noticed it either so it was just... normal. I knew bass as "that thing that makes the room shake" but I didn't realise it actually played a note. I know it sounds like a joke, but I literally had no idea what the bass guitar was for and it wasn't until someone said "jump in... we're waiting" and I was hearing nothing that I had to awkwardly say "join in with... what?". Until then I'd been an acoustic strummer taught by his (similarly deaf) aunt and had no idea I was missing out on so much. I always wondered why people complained about parked trucks leaving their engines ticking over. I just don't hear it
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Oct 29, 2019 17:29
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To be fair, a lot of dance music IS boring. Most of it is intentionally without hooks.
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Oct 29, 2019 21:45
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I, for one, can't wait to hear how your adventures in bass discovery play out. It's gotta be a mindfuck to gradually learn you're essentially missing half a sense.
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Oct 30, 2019 06:19
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Have you ever tried playing bass yourself?
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Oct 30, 2019 07:03
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Again, apologies for sporadic posting. The Day my Ears Were Switched On I had already had a brief test of an over-ear aid to check the fit and test the profile, but today was the day. I'd had to wait a week for my devices to come in so was kind of excited. I was warned not to expect some big superhero revelation moment as I was going to have to learn to process the sounds. There was also an explanation of the difference between hearing and listening. I had to be sure not to over analyse from day one as you can start thinking "well I can't hear X, they don't work!" as opposed to letting sound flow into my brain and letting it build a mechanism to sort out what it needs and wants to hear. Think of it like how you don't see your nose despite it blocking a chunk of your vision in each eye. Also, sorry if you're now looking at your nose and I've ruined your day. Obviously I'd had sufficient hearing to get into my 40s, so it wasn't going to be like one of those inspirational videos where a baby hears for the first time. It was going to be subtle. nobody would cry, there wouldn't be a cute moment of my head turning around the room wide eyed and full of wonder. Expectations had to be managed. He clicked the mouse, there was a squelch, some beeps and a calibration period, then they came on. gently caress expectation. My head looked around the room wide eyed full of wonder. My breathing was in my ears, HIS breathing was in my ears. There was a crackling noise... wait, that was the cushion of the chair going back into shape as I moved around. What the hell was that hum? Is that the PC fan? He typed something into the keyboard. By the sound of it, he was angry because those keys were getting hammered. Everything had an echo to it. Then he spoke and it was some burning bush Moses voice booming. Still quietly spoken, but there was a roundness to it. I spoke back and heard a huge, nasally, echoing voice in my skull... Jesus, is that how I sound? My mother would drown nothing. There was the sound of velcro being ripped off right by my ear. Actually, it was the receptionist quietly opening the door that dragged over the carpet to tell the audiologist that someone was outside waiting. While that door was open I heard EVERYTHING. No superhero moment? Bollocks. I heard the city. My city. The tannoy music, the bustle of people milling about, the echo of the shopping centre beyond, the tills opening and taking money, kids running about and footsteps everywhere. All I needed was a rooftop, a hero pose and some angst. We decided to turn it down from 80% to 70% as a starting point. This Daredevil hearing wouldn't last. It was like going to the moon and being able to jump 20 feet in the air. Eventually I would adapt and it would become normal to me. At this stage, I'm running at 70% of "normal" levels, so while it's a big deal to me I'm not truly hearing bass fully yet. But going out into the world for the first time felt like a big enough start. I felt oddly vulnerable and almost sorry for myself. Hearing aids are common, but I was suddenly aware of this (tiny) device on my head and felt it could be knocked out at any moment. I soon got used to it, but there was a flash of pride wanting to say "you don't need this". Walking back through the town to my car I was trying not to over focus on noises and over analyse it. But footsteps were deeper, voices were fuller and things had a clarity to them. My brain had gotten lazy so I still have to concentrate, but I could make out words across the store, I could tune out the din of squeaking shoes and rattling bags. I... wait, is that StreetFighter 2 I can hear? Yes. It's a retro arcade appeared in the shopping centre and that's Streetfighter 2. I don't care if I'm 41 and the machine is so low I have to bend down. I'm playing that! Holy poo poo, this sounds great. Sounds of my teenage years being used as a benchmark. Awesome. After losing to Sagat (cheap, fireball spamming rear end in a top hat) I carried on and realised I was starting to aclimatise a bit. I'd almost forgotten I was wearing them. Then I got outside. God drat, I knew traffic was noisy, but does every car make that noise as it's tires go over the road? Does it really echo back off the buildings like that? I think I just realised why I almost got killed by a car as a kid. Driving home - is my car damaged? Why does it suddenly sound like this? Did I just hit something? All part of realising how much I've been missing. Getting home my wife was excited to see the hearing aids. She thinks I'm going to look cute with them (thanks, not self-conscious at all now). She asked how they were. "I just heard your real voice" Ok, so maybe there was a slightly misty eye in the room, but it's not like one of those cute baby videos, right? Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 09:53
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Keptbroom posted:Have you ever tried playing bass yourself? I've had a noodle on bass, but the notes stop being audible from the A string 5th fret and down, so I had to rely on knowledge of basic power chord shapes. I was also aware that I'd be doing that guitarist thing of approaching bass like the guitar's idiot sibling rather than it's own beast with it's own skillset. I knew (or had been told) that bass worked closely with the drummer and knew I couldn't appreciate it's nuance, so I left it alone. That will change soon (when I get another window at work I'll post my music related change so far) Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 09:56
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Awesome, I too am hype to watch your new bass superpowers unfold! My dumbass didn't even consider all the background noise that occurs in daily life besides just the bass tones. Though I am curious what you will think of your favorite songs when you get up to full speed, whether any will turn out to be radically different from before.
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Oct 31, 2019 02:07
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This being the Musician sub forum, let's talk music! So I'm still running at 70% with the intention of going up to 80% this Friday. Bass is now a thing that exists but I'm still 'training' myself to to hear it. There's a lot of lethargy in how my brain processes sound because it's never known it was ignoring so much. I said I was going to hold off on listening to the best bass tracks until I was at full strength, but obviously you can't avoid the radio or simply not listen to music. The first song I heard (randomly on the radio while driving to work) was Blur's 'Woo Hoo'. Obviously it's a pub banger so I know it well enough, but I never realised how prominent the bass guitar was in it (maybe it's not to normal people). Whereas before I would follow the guitar and drums, I could now hear the clarity of the bass playing and became aware of a whole new track in the mix. Not only could I hear the tone, but I could hear the notes changing. But at first? I found it a little underwhelming. Almost dissapointing  Then I realised that I have to learn how to listen to music from a different angle. It's similar to the spinning ballerina silouhette. If you concentrate and change how you look at it you can make her spin in the other direction. So instead of listening to the song as I would do normally - following vocals, guitars, etc - and expecting a new layer to magically appear, I switched my focus to the beat and let the mid/high stuff take a back seat. As soon as I did that, I started to realise what the bass was doing and could appreciate how it locks in with the song. And as I did that, it became more prominent and noticable. Fatter and playing it's part. ooooOOOOooooh... so THAT'S what a rythmn section does! So the next few songs I listened differently. Obviously some songs have simple bass lines, but I was able to appreciate the difference between a bass simply picking out the beats and following the chords and an actual active bassline weaving it's own layer with the drums. I think I appreciate now why guitarists don't always make good bassists. We tend to focus on 'our' bit and don't take that step back to listen to the picture from the other side. We think of it as "guitar, but lower" instead of "seasoning and spices for drums". Bassists, feel free to slap me down hard on this as I can finally appreciate what you do  Right now I'm still having to listen carefully to find the bass in a song, but this journey is now as much about re-learning to listen as it is a mechanical fix to broken ears. This is me learning to use chopsticks before I gorge on the buffet you awesome people have recommended for me 
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Oct 31, 2019 09:56
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Dog_Meat posted:I think I appreciate now why guitarists don't always make good bassists. We tend to focus on 'our' bit and don't take that step back to listen to the picture from the other side. We think of it as "guitar, but lower" instead of "seasoning and spices for drums". Bassists, feel free to slap me down hard on this as I can finally appreciate what you do I never considered that you would have to retrain your brain. Thanks for sharing with us, this is super interesting.
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Oct 31, 2019 12:05
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Dog_Meat posted:ooooOOOOooooh... so THAT'S what a rythmn section does! The thing about really good bass playing is that it's just as much a musical job as any other instrument: it's all in service of the song. So you take a simplistic, minimalist player like Adam Clayton from U2, who is very much a roots-on-the-eighth-notes sort of player, and he's still one of the most underrated parts of the band because the harmonic content is missing entirely without him. Compared with a band like Type O Negative, which is already a band that is very bass-frequency heavy (Peter Steele had a supremely low voice, their keyboards were really dense, guitar and bass were both tuned down to B standard), and the bass becomes more of a lead instrument because it had less to do with harmonic content and most of the rhythm is carried by the drums and guitar. So I never rip on players that "just" do simple stuff or "just" double the guitar, because there's usually a reason for it (be it genre-related like in thrash metal or country, or band-specific like the aforementioned or, like, Tool.) I love it when someone can just cut loose, like, Les Claypool or Esperanza Spalding, but knowing what's needed and when is the most important part. And of course Claypool and Spalding are great because they can sit back and chill when needed. In any case, there's a whole universe of rad low end out there.
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Oct 31, 2019 21:50
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Song 2 by Blur is a bit off an odd example for bass because it’s a song where the part which people think is guitar (the fuzzy riff in the chorus) is actually super distorted bass.
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Nov 1, 2019 01:45
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I have to admit I don't understand how this affliction could have happened? What exactly was wrong with your ears that you couldn't hear bass?
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Nov 1, 2019 15:38
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H13 posted:I have to admit I don't understand how this affliction could have happened? Quick post - You have three small bones in your ears that help pass the lower frequencies across to the eardrum (there's an audiologist in the thread somewhere so they can probably explain better). Mine are essentially malformed so bass registers simply can't reach the hearing part of my ear with any power. Some people have a similar thing when they get gunk build up that clogs these bones. Mine are somply almost fused together I could feel bass and sometimes I'd rest the heel of may hand against the underside of my jaw and inadvertently create a bone conduction amplifier, but the small bones of the ear simply souldn't resonate to carry the lower, slower frequencies to where they needed to go. rickiep00h posted:The thing about really good bass playing is that it's just as much a musical job as any other instrument: it's all in service of the song. This is something I can appreciate now. One of my favourite Pink Floyd songs is Comfortably Numb and the bass line is as simple as it gets, but without it it's simply not Comfortably Numb. Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 16:44
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H13 posted:I have to admit I don't understand how this affliction could have happened? Tons and tons of people have partial deafness, because the human ear is not built in such a way that it either hears everything or nothing. Everyone hears things differently right out of the gate, some are more extreme than others, and there are lots and lots of reasons why. Add to that the fact that most people naturally lose parts of their hearing range as they age (typically the higher end) and millions of people who have lost portions of their hearing from working around loud equipment or listening to/performing music too loud, and it turns out partial hearing loss is actually really common. It just turns out most people either don't know they're missing it or just chalk it up to general old age. It's no different, really, from colorblindness: you can see, just not the full spectrum humans are typically capable of. Or near-/far-sightedness. Or literally any other physical condition. In any case, I don't think I'd jump to "affliction" as the word to use here. Obviously Dog_Meat is happy to talk about how their hearing has been affected (hence the thread), but it's pretty rude to say "hey what's wrong with you that you're not normal?" to someone regardless. It's not wrong; it's different.
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Nov 1, 2019 17:15
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Sounds like Dog_Meat has otosclerosis, a condition where bones will go between phases of being spongie and hardening, which will cause them to fuse. Many examples of the disease doesn't do much, but when it affects the bones responsible for hearing then it starts being impactful. This can be from birth or developed over time and does have a genetic component. Or there could have been malformed bones for the ears. I don't know the results of the tests, so I'm guessing a little. Regardless, a mechanical disruption of the ear will often make it harder for low frequencies to be detected. If you want to get into the more technical aspects of it, think about it how different things have different resonant frequencies. So some things have an easier time transmitting some frequencies, but not others. The fusion of the bones affects the stiffness and mass properties of the hearing system and it changes the resonant frequency. I just can't imagine playing to music without really hearing the kick drum.
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Nov 1, 2019 20:09
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Rifter17 posted:I just can't imagine playing to music without really hearing the kick drum. There's really two parts to a kick sound, the upper transient part is usually in the 1000Hz range, and the actual fundamental resonant tone is usually 120Hz and below. That's how you get really tight, clicky double bass in metal, really bring out that beater sound. (Listen to literally any Pantera and most anything else produced by Terry Date to hear it.) Also, as D_M said, you can FEEL a lot of bass, and a strong drummer on a small stage gets you a shitload of felt kick, especially if the resonant head is ported. It's probably less prominent in jazz, where the kick is often more of an embellishment than timekeeper. (Usually you're looking for the ride cymbal or a pedal hi-hat for timing there.)
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Nov 1, 2019 20:15
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rickiep00h posted:There's really two parts to a kick sound, the upper transient part is usually in the 1000Hz range, and the actual fundamental resonant tone is usually 120Hz and below. That's how you get really tight, clicky double bass in metal, really bring out that beater sound. (Listen to literally any Pantera and most anything else produced by Terry Date to hear it.) Lol I sorta blame Terry Date for championing the clicky kick way back when.
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Nov 1, 2019 20:29
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rickiep00h posted:There's really two parts to a kick sound, the upper transient part is usually in the 1000Hz range, and the actual fundamental resonant tone is usually 120Hz and below. That's how you get really tight, clicky double bass in metal, really bring out that beater sound. (Listen to literally any Pantera and most anything else produced by Terry Date to hear it.) It's intersting that you mention the two parts of the bass drum as I always followed that click. It's only now that I apprecicate that the bass drum contains... bass  The funny part is, I'm actually a (self taught) drummer. Being self taught I'm obviously flawed in the fundamentals, but my instinct kind of locks into the snare more than the kick. I've always been fine laying down proper kick drum lines, but now I appreciate there's a lot more going on. I also never really used the toms apart from fills, so now I'm seeing the nuances in 'proper' drumming and the new ways of playing opening up. In short, I stopped being a guitar diva and learnt to appreciate the rythmn section as more than a backing track rickiep00h posted:
Funny you should mention this as I'm obviously fine with the whole thing, but the deaf community that I know through friends are very sensitive at times. For me I see it like fixing something that wasn't life threatening but makes a huge difference. Like wearing glasses or getting a prosthetic limb. I wonder if I need to be careful around people who are genuinely life-affecting deaf as I may come across as a little blase as I talk about hearing as "cool, I can watch Jurassic Park" instead of the real gift that it is to "proper" deaf people. massive spider posted:Song 2 by Blur is a bit off an odd example for bass because it’s a song where the part which people think is guitar (the fuzzy riff in the chorus) is actually super distorted bass. Again, that's interesting to me because I was able to hear distorted bass before, but I couldn't differentiate the notes below a certain point. Motorhead was obvious given Lemmy's sound and way of playing, and Metallica's For Whom The Bell Tolls had that distorted wah-bass intro, but that also played higher up the fretboard. I was never able to get on with the later, heavier drop tuned metal bands because the bass became 'clicky' as strings rattled about and guitars descended into the soup that I couldn't separate Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 2, 2019 15:57
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Dog_Meat posted:Funny you should mention this as I'm obviously fine with the whole thing, but the deaf community that I know through friends are very sensitive at times. For me I see it like fixing something that wasn't life threatening but makes a huge difference. Like wearing glasses or getting a prosthetic limb. I wonder if I need to be careful around people who are genuinely life-affecting deaf as I may come across as a little blase as I talk about hearing as "cool, I can watch Jurassic Park" instead of the real gift that it is to "proper" deaf people. The only thing I want to mention here (because I feel like I'm derailing) is that a lot of the rhetoric around, for example, cochlear implants tends to be really ableist and/or inspiration-porn. My partner works at a state school for the deaf and blind and the way some audiologists prey on d/Deaf kids is gross. They promise devices that will be miraculous and let them enter "normal" school and whatever, but the odds are much better that their hearing will still be incomplete and they'll still need to lip read and/or sign anyway. Hearing loss, be it genetic or environmental, or whatever, is pretty common and, as you say, working with it is not that much different from glasses or a cane or insulin management. There's a lot of stigma attached to deafness specifically for some reason, though. It doesn't make it any less rad when someone gets to experience a new part of life, but I hesitate to either pathologize or make miraculous anything related to biological living conditions. I'd love to instantly have a brain that makes enough serotonin, for example, and I know plenty of arthritic friends who would love for their joints to never hurt again, and I'm always hoping something comes along that makes life easier or more interesting for anyone. Okay. Done with my soapboxing. Do you know when you're going up to 100%? Are you still planning on going week-to-week? Cuz I have some pretty deep electronic bass stuff to suggest. 
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Nov 2, 2019 18:21
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H13 posted:I have to admit I don't understand how this affliction could have happened? As I understand it the ear canal is shaped like a trumpet and all the high frequency sensing hairs are at the front and the low frequency sensing bits are at the back. So while I don’t understand the nuances of Dog_Meats condition it makes sense to me that some people’s ears it just doesn’t reach. This is useful information to know for anyone who works with sound: it takes a lot more energy for a bass frequency to register with any fidelity to the ears. This is why a guitar sound that sounds great at low volumes can suddenly sound like a muddy mess at gig volumes- there are low frequencies in it you weren’t able to notice until it got loud. Also the key mixing a good bass instrument sound is to focus on the high frequencies, a sound system like say, a laptops built in speakers can’t reproduce lows for poo poo, but if the ear hears the upper harmonics of a bass (as Dog Meat mentions, distorted bass was audible to him) its more capable of guessing “oh, I suppose there’s a bass down there somewhere” and filling in the blanks, adding an impression of a bass guitars presence if there isnt really much low end happening atm. Except, I imagine for him it wouldn’t have fill in the blanks so well since his ear/brain has less frame of reference for what low end ought to be there.
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Nov 2, 2019 18:55
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Yeah it's called the missing fundamental, basically your brain is tuned to detect pitch based off of the harmonic series produced by the instrument. This is like playing an open A on a guitar string (usually tuned to 220 Hz) and putting a high pass filter where 220 Hz is completely out of the signal. You still recognize the note as an A in the correct octave. However, the sound quality is still different. As for the organization of the cochlea (the organ that gets all the sound ready for the brain), there are different regions that are sensitive to specific frequencies. This is called tonotopic organization. A sound will travel across the whole cochlea, but wither or not the sensory cells will pick it up is another question. And yes, cochlear implants are not a panacea for severe hearing loss. With any kind of intervention having to convey realistic expectations is extremely important. That being said, I don't think people should feel guilty about their individual outcomes. If you're excited about movie sound effects, then be excited!
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Nov 2, 2019 20:45
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Okay so. There's three main parts to the ear: outer, middle, inner. The outer part is what you see. That big chunk of cartilage on the side of your head and the hole. That funnels sound waves into and onto the eardrum, which is the connection to the middle ear, the three little bones that act as levers to turn the movement of the air into biomechanical movement. Those, then connect to your fluid-filled inner ear, called the cochlea, which is shaped like spiral/seashell. Inside it are tiny little hairs called cilia that are effectively directly attached to nerves, which then travel to your brain. There are particular cilia associated to particular sound frequencies, and when they're stimulated by the mechanical parts of the ear, they tell you you're hearing a sound of that frequency. The frequency response of everyone's ear, therefore, is different, but most people hear from a low end of about 20Hz, to a high end around 20,000Hz. Damage or malformations at any point in that very delicate biomechanical chain will necessarily change one's ability to hear. (Tinnitus, for example, is caused by the cilia being damaged and permanently stuck "on" so it tells your brain you're *always* hearing a particular frequency. Partial hearing loss is usually caused by exposure to a particular frequency at too high a level. this is why I'm missing a bit of my high-mid hearing: too much standing in front of a cranked Mesa-Boogie at a Strapping Young Lad show. Listening to anything, be it music or environmental noise or power tools or ANYTHING, at too high a level for too long will cause hearing loss. Some people have congenital cochlea problems that cause deafness. Some people, like D_M, have bone structure problems. Some people have punctured ear drums. Some people have degenerative diseases like measles (or whatever that childhood illness is that causes deafness.) And that's before processing problems in nervous system. It's all personal. Most humans with a "normal" hearing response don't have "flat" hearing response, as mentioned above. The human ear is mostly tuned to the mid-range where most speech happens. So the extreme high end and extreme low end don't really flatten out until you reach much higher sound pressure levels (volume), where the chance for physical damage is much greater. That's why, for example, records in the 60s and 70s sounded like poo poo unless you turned them up: when they mixed them, they were listening at a level way beyond comfort levels. (This phenomenon, incidentally, is illustrated by what are called Fletcher-Munson or equal-loudness curves.) Edit: removed a paragraph of stupidity here. So anyway, the answer is that it's actually really common to just... not hear parts of the world, because it's a super fiddly biomechanical system, plus physics plus psychology. And properly-trained audio producers, even those with naturally gifted ears, still spend a lot of time learning how to do things "right" when it comes to listening. A lot of the things they'll pick up most people never even notice, even with "normal" hearing. Hearing is a really bizarre sense from the get-go. rickiep00h fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 2, 2019 21:44
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as we're talking (or we were) about bass drums, you should also add songs with great double-kick parts to your list of stuff to hear/rehear---at the very least, stargazer by rainbow
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Nov 3, 2019 09:18
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Wait until you hear a mosquito buzzing by your ear. You're gonna hit the ground like you're being swooped on by a fighter plane. I'm so happy for you OP. This is a great thread. rickiep00h posted:Fletcher-Munson or equal-loudness curves Incidentally, while we don't ever have "flat" hearing response, the flattest (least perceivable difference in volume across the frequency spectrum) occurs at about 80dB. vez veces fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Nov 4, 2019 |
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Nov 4, 2019 15:21
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massive spider posted:As I understand it the ear canal is shaped like a trumpet and all the high frequency sensing hairs are at the front and the low frequency sensing bits are at the back. So while I don’t understand the nuances of Dog_Meats condition it makes sense to me that some people’s ears it just doesn’t reach. This is interesting to me because there are some areas where I'm thinking "well where is this bass then?" and it's because I'm not playing tracks through a suitable system. I'm slowly learning what to look for, but it's a learning curve. You've also just explained why my lovely bedroom-level effect patches always sounded like rear end when I cranked them up for a jam as a kid. I think this is common among bedroom guitarists and not just people with janky ears tho  rickiep00h posted:
I went in again this weekend just gone and we jumped from 70% to 90% due to the positive results so far. Unfortunately I feel I'm actually worse off now. At 70% I seemed to be able to tune out interference (rustling packets, running water, rain) and hear with clarity. Now I seem to have my old hearing back, but louder. As far as I know the aids are still using the same bass correcting profile, so I need to go back and investigate why I'm suddenly worse off at the moment than I was before. It's a shame because it feels like I've been derailed, but I was warned it would be a try-and-see process with lots of alterations. I'm also leaving it for this week to ensure it's not my brain having to learn more skills, but right now I've lost a little of the progress I was making. I also have a strange drainpipe effect to everything now. Apparently this can be a side effected of the closed cups I wear in my ear canal. Initially some of it was me getting used to the echo that accompanies everything, but there's a distinct "hyoooooo" sound over everything that clashes now. Like when you go into a tunnel. Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Nov 4, 2019 |
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Nov 4, 2019 15:28
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Double post, but hey. So the hearing aid was simply too overwhelming at 90%. I had an emergency appointment and went down to 80% to see if it made any difference. I left it for a week, but unfortunately I found it was just magnifying background too much and I was struggling to pick out speech even in a quiet room. Apparently a lot of patients don't always go all the way up to 100% as they're used to their overall hearing being quiet. In my case, 70% seems to be the sweet spot as it gives me the bottom end of my hearing so I get clarity but matches the volume level of my normal hearing. When the overall level is upped I find myself getting hammered by the registers I could already hear ramped up to unnaturally high levels, so my new bass registers are simply wiped out by general background noise. Back to 70% for a while and let my brain train itself. I can always go up a level later if I want to. Back to music stuff - I played at an open mic last night and had someone jump on with me to play bass. Normally I just let them get on with it and trust that they know what they're doing, but this time I could actually hear what was going on. Before I might be aware he was playing and feel the vibrations, but now I could make out that there was an actual note there and how he was picking notes to bridge the changes, etc. I'm a long way from being able to truly follow it (lack of music ear training), but holy crap what a difference. Another pleasant side effect is that I don't struggle to hear myself over background pub noise now. This has freed me up to do my more technical looping numbers which until now sounded great in the practice room but always went off kilter when I did them live because my headvoice mixed with audience talk killed any ability to keep track of where I was. Snowy posted:You could have a whole thread about bass discoveries! It’s so exciting Going back to this now. Before I saw a girl miming on a pretend guitar until the music kicked in (there was a slight 'wub' noise occasionally). This time? drat, I heard that opening phrase, heard the key she was setting and then the whole song changed. I was 'vieweing' it with her leading it as that was my focus and the whole shape of the piece was different. I have to admit, if she hadn't have played the intro bar I may have struggled to pick her out due to my lack of musical ear training and the other instruments being dominant, but her intro set the pace and transformed the whole feel of the thing for me. I literally heard a different song this time round. This is what this thread is about, people. Discovering music all over again
Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 12:23
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i'm a little bit late on this, but this is a really cool thread! thanks for sharing your journey, it's awesome seeing someone get to experience something they love differently than they ever have before.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:39
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As a lifelong tuba and bass player I cannot fathom a life without the bottom end. Fascinated by your story and wishing you the very best in your discovery. Speaking of tuba, I'd be curious to know if you're catching any of these vibes yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ynOJjufco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHAtjEtZc58 Stay in touch buddy. 
the numa numa song fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 06:28
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Quick update. I stopped updating as the thread was a little dead and life has a habit of getting in the way of music things sometimes. So currently I have the settings at 80% but with the gain turned down. Apparently the settings can only change in 10% increments. My brain has slowly adapted to the settings so I actually seem to be hearing less now, but this is simply because brain is filtering out sounds I don't need. I'm still finding I'm back to being "wiped out" but conflicting sounds like rustling wrappers or running water, but overall the improvement is still there. I'll decide at my next appointment if I want to simply keep it at 70% with the hearing correction rather than pushing to raise my overall levels. Music talk So this morning I randomly heard the sound track for Crocodile Dundee. Some radio station was talking about 80s films and it got brought up. Someone mentioned the didgeridoo playing under the score. Now I knew what sound a didgeridoo made but I only knew it as a single drone. Again, nothing ground breaking, but the fact that I could now pick out this layer was a reminder that something has been fixed. I was at an open mic and ended up playing a cahon for a few acts. One of them was a husband and wife - she sings and he plays bass. That's it. No guitar. Just bassist and vocalist. Normally I'd have to say "uh... sorry, but... I can't play with you because you don't exist and your instrument is make-believe". But this time I felt brave enough to give it a go. They actually knew about my new ears, so they were kind of curious themselves to see how it went. I still need to train my ears from a musical perspective to pick out basslines in a mix, but now I could actually hear what he was doing and come in on my cue. I probably had to concentrate a lot harder than someone else, but now there were chord changes and phrases. I sat out for a bar or two to get a feel for it, then came in and for the first time in my life played WITH a bassist instead of alongside one Another unexpected side effect - my vocals have improved a lot. I didn't realise before how much CPU I was using trying to follow everything and not getting drowned out by my head voice. Now I can cut loose with a bit more confidence and still hear my guitar without drifting off. I'm also more aware of timbre and 'wobble' and generally able to correct myself on the fly better. I'm by no means a particularly good singer, but a few people have noted the difference. I'm also trying to teach my voice to go lower as I've always had a higher pitched voice. It's not like I could ever sing at the bass levels I couldn't hear, but now I have more clarity I'm realising I can go lower than I thought and keep tune better now. Oh, I had someone join me on a song playing a cello. That was a great moment for me
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Dec 17, 2019 11:29
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Ahhhhh this is all so rad. Actually hearing a cello for the first time had to be a treat. By far my favorite orchestral instrument. And hooray for trying new poo poo!
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Dec 17, 2019 18:13
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Only just found this thread but it's fascinating. The idea of not being able to hear bass is wild because it's the most natural frequency in the world, the sound of distant thunder, the deep rumble of a waterfall, poo poo, even just hearing someone's heartbeat... It's even weirder because a lot of the music I listen to tends to have big deep basslines and now I'm wondering quite how good your hearing aids are and whether they've basically 'fixed' your problem and you can hear as clearly as everyone else can. Like to me, hearing a big lush soundsystem is immense and I'm wondering if the fact you've got other bits of kit between your hearing and that kit whether you can discern quality of sound in relation to bass. Have you ever been to a gig and felt the drum kick you square in the chest from the subs? Sorry for the weird questions! massive spider posted:Listen to Massive Attacks album Mezzanine. The whole album is just walls of thick dark menacing bass that I imagine wouldn't sound like anything if you were unable to hear it. Also this album is timeless, it's still incredible and yes it sounds fantastic on a big set of speakers due to the unholy amount of bass contained in most of the tracks. Definite system tester. Olympic Mathlete fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 15:45
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Olympic Mathlete posted:Only just found this thread but it's fascinating. The idea of not being able to hear bass is wild because it's the most natural frequency in the world, the sound of distant thunder, the deep rumble of a waterfall, poo poo, even just hearing someone's heartbeat... That's one of the strange things. I've heard these things before (heartbeat not so much), but never in their full glory. I've been next to a huge waterfall and had the roar of the water drown out everything else, but I only heard the mids and treble so while I could feel the rumble through the floor and was aware of the power of it, I didn't get the full 'audio picture'. Keep in mind that this didn't feel like a loss as i'd simply never heard it before, so it would be like a dog trying to explain how weird they find it that you can't hear all the sounds they do. A waterfall to me was like very loud TV static. Thunder was a clap and a rumble, but I didn't hear it for as long as others and quite often I'd miss the beginning and end of a storm because it was all bass in the distance. Olympic Mathlete posted:Like to me, hearing a big lush soundsystem is immense and I'm wondering if the fact you've got other bits of kit between your hearing and that kit whether you can discern quality of sound in relation to bass. Have you ever been to a gig and felt the drum kick you square in the chest from the subs? I have wondered if there's a bottleneck effect with relying on technology to bridge the gap for me, and the frustrating part is that I'll never truly know as I have no frame of reference. If you were to lose your hearing you would have a baseline (lol) to compare against. I don't have that. That being said, keep in mind that the natural components of your ear are tiny and really can't compete with modern technology for transferring sound. The closed cup piece of my hearing aid goes down into my ear canal and forms a seal (with enough leeway to allow ventilation). This actually creates a cleaner transfer, so in some ways it may actually be better. The sticking point is my brain which is unsure on how to deal with the new sounds. At first it was overpowering and rich, but now I'm having to deal with my brain trying to 'correct' the new sound and I'm losing bits again. I've been at venues where I've felt the physical thump of a massive bass speaker, but I've never had the disorientation or sickness that goes with it. Funnily enough, I was at an work event where an early version of a crowd control sound cannon was being demonstrated. While the bass still had the same pants-making GBS threads, rear end in a top hat-twitching organ rearranging effect, I didn't get the same disorientation impact as the other people in the room. Olympic Mathlete posted:Sorry for the weird questions! This is the audio version of a someone previously colour blind trying to explain seeing in colour and having the "do we all see colour the same?" conversation. There are NO dumb questions on this journey. Apart from "did the bass guitar always do that?". I've actually had horrendous death-flu over the last couple of weeks, so that has had an effect on the pressure in my ears, blockages, etc. It's been hard to gauge where I am with this interference. At the moment I feel like I still need to go back down to the original settings as I seem to be getting wiped out by things like running water and rustling packets again. Not sure if it's my brain rejecting the louder settings or something I need to work on with the audiologist. The problem is that we keep making changes in a quiet office and then throwing me out into the world with the instructions to "let yourself adjust". I want that clarity back that I had right at the start. Apparently it's not uncommon for people overall hearing loss to just want the EQ correction for clarity but not bring the overall volume up as it can be overwhelming. I really don't want to hold myself back, but if having these things set to 80% is basically giving me my old hearing but louder, there's no much point  Speaking of hearing fail stories - one time I was waiting outside a lovely night club talking to someone while there was a drama going on down the line. I heard what I thought was coughing and something crumbling. I looked up and everyone was lying on the ground. Turns out someone had a crappy reactivated gun (this was the UK in the late 90s) and some dodgy damp ammo and decided to attempt the most inept drive by shooting ever. The cough was the gun firing and the crumble was the brickwork being hit, My brain didn't process the sound and I had no idea it was even happening. Of course, the version of the story that went round was that I was some stoic badass, but in reality I was a deaf, clueless idiot * Edited for spelling and grammar because holy poo poo, that was bad... Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jan 9, 2020 |
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Jan 8, 2020 19:43
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I'm curious what the experience of super deep bass that you can *feel* was like to you. Was it just literally a vibration but didn't "sound" like anything?
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Feb 17, 2020 04:15
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echinopsis posted:I'm curious what the experience of super deep bass that you can *feel* was like to you. Was it just literally a vibration but didn't "sound" like anything? Pretty much exactly that. It had to get to the point of something shaking to draw attention to it before I'd notice. I've had moments when a deep bass feedback loop has started and people are shouting at me to sort it but I've looked at them blankly for the seconds it took for it to build to room shaking levels.
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Feb 21, 2020 14:40
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I am super excited for you! I have 2 hearing aids and I remember the day I got them so clearly, I would open a packet of biscuits and then just stop in my tracks rustling the packet, listening to it. That noise your jeans make when you walk, man, I hadn't heard that in 15 years and it was like a time machine, just simple things like that stopped me in my tracks. I must must must recommend something to you, these are made for gaming and films but fuuuuck me if you want to hear bass as a hard of hearing person please get one of these: https://thebuttkicker.com/buttkicker-gamer2-playseat-edition/ They are not super cheap but will honestly change your life all over again. Hearing aids rock, but having one of these is another level entirely, I cannot stress how much a difference this thing makes to me. I suffer a lot from not hearing bass, I am actually due to go in for an operation soon to have BAHA hearing aids https://www.healthyhearing.com/help/hearing-aids/bone-anchored I have had multiple operations over the years and am a sufferer of 25 years now, if you want to PM feel free, I may have some insights or tips, I dunno, it's just nice to come across someone with a similar set off challenges as me
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Feb 28, 2020 14:46
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Sounds like your hearing loss is a bit more severe than mine, but I can definitely relate to all the things you said. Just talking in a small room and hearing the tight echo was utterly unexpected. The weird thing is that rustling papers and running water sound totally different now, but having the extra range means that those noises don't wipe me out anymore and I can still hear someone talking. I am starting to get annoyed with some pople who's speech seems to fall exactly on the EQ range that gets drowned in day to day noise tho. then there's that one guy who talks at normal volume but you hear him across the room drowning out everything. I had a weird one recently though. My hearing aids try to be clever and switch to various profiles as they adapt to the surroundings. Things like running water or loud engines will gradually reduce while speach registers are brought up (it doesn't do this with music tho), they'll compensate for echo, etc. I was in an auditorium which has acoustics designed to allow the speaker at the front to be heard up at the back. In between briefings everyone was milling around talking and the weird reflections were confusing the intelligence in my hearing aids. There was a conversation taking place on the other side of the room, and thanks to weird reflection and my robo-ears trying to track it I suddenly got what felt like the loudest, clearest whispering right next to my head. I spun round thinking "WTF?!". Some of the magic is wearing off a little now as my brain is adapting and no longer magnifying new sounds. Part of me wonders if I should go back and have them turned up again, but the whole point was to get clarity rather than volume, and when I go to "normal" hearing levels everything clashes again and I seem to be worse off than before.
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Mar 11, 2020 14:49
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