Tag Archives: cochlear implant and music

Vinyl on my nostalgic belt-drive: “I’ll find myself some wings”

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Listening to the music was different with my new cochlear-implant hearing system, but I had learned that familiar music was easier. Between my memory, the new cochlear system in my right ear, and a hearing aid in my left, I could start to understand and enjoy music again.

Tucked away in our basement were several hundred record albums from my youth. I had taken them out of those heavy-duty plastic milk crates and stuffed them into the bottom shelves of a bookcase. Once in awhile I would gaze at them longingly.

My 33-RPM vinyl albums definitely qualified as familiar music. I must have listened to some of them hundreds of times as a teen in my basement bedroom in Don Mills. I recall playing air guitar to George Harrison’s Still My Guitar Gently Weeps with the door closed. The posters that came tucked into the cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album had been proudly taped to my paneled bedroom wall.

Seeking a new “record player”

Forty years on, the layer of dust on my old albums was accumulating even faster as components of my old stereo system broke down. The receiver/amp had been a nice model in its day, but now only offered mono sound through a wonky volume control. One of my speakers produced an annoying static sound. My Sony turntable, acquired long ago from my friend Scott, worked like a charm but could not produce sound without and amp and speakers.

I had spied a nice “all-in-one’ turntable while visiting our daughter Alison and her boyfriend Jared in Scotland. Her stereo unit was compact and looked like what I would have called a “record player” back in the 1970s. Turntable, amp and speakers were built in.

With the coronavirus phase 2 in full swing in Toronto, I needed some music to brighten up the winter months ahead. I drove our minivan to Best Buy, donned my mask, and spoke to a customer service person there. She did not have the model in stock, but could source a nice “all-in-one” turntable for me the next day. Besides the amp and speakers, it also had capability for CD, cassette, radio and bluetooth. Gah: I would be catching a hi-fi wave, if not going ahead of the technology curve. Sold!

I showed up the following day to pick up my made-in-China Victrola “Nostalgic Belt Drive Turntable.” Probably not built to last, but it looked nice. If I could get a year or two out of it to play my albums, I would be happy.

I mined my record collection and quickly dug up a treasure. The Guess Who’s American Woman was one of the first albums I bought in the 1970s. Its dreamy cover blends the image of a woman’s face with the group portrait of four members of a band out of Winnipeg who were stepping onto the world stage with hits like No Time, No Sugar Tonight, and the gritty, churning rock anthem: American Woman.

I plugged in my new Victrola, turned the option dial to Phono, opened the cover, and placed the album on the turntable. I still had Scott’s old record-cleaning brush, so used it to dust the vinyl first. American Woman opens with Burton Cummings scatting vocals atop Randy Bachman’s bluesy guitar. Then it explodes with Bachman’s 4/4 rock guitar riff, anchored by Jim Kale on bass guitar and Gary Peterson on drums.

Putting the pieces together

To my ears, the song sounded beautiful. Cummings’ vocal was strong and clear. The drum part sounded crisp. The song sounded different and I couldn’t quite place why. I think I could not hear some of the musical mix. I could pick up most of Bachman’s melodic guitar solo but it sounded slightly muted by the overall mix. But if I closed my eyes, my memory could fill in some of those pieces. Wow.

As a drummer, I had always admired Gary Peterson’s crisp, clear style. No bells and whistles. His drum beat sets the pace for “No Time,” a song about a person moving on: “No time left for you… I’ll find myself some wings.” Randy Bachman’s lead guitar joins in, followed by Cumming’s vocal on the first verse.

Listening to an album means setting down the needle on the vinyl, sitting back and taking in a series of songs. There is no remote. It is an act of peace and discipline in our fragmented world. You take in the album and its songs as a whole. For every monster hit like No Time, you listen to some counterpoint, like the strange, poetic minor-key Talisman.

While enjoying my album, the only thing I needed to remember was to pick up the needle arm after side A finished. My fancy-schmancy new turntable did not have automatic return.

Kicking the tires on the Rogers drum kit

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It was getting crowded in Ali’s old bedroom, with the alien green walls. The vintage Rogers drum kit I had bought from minivan dude’s storage locker was coming together, filling the space. Now I had to squeeze between a tom-tom and Ali’s desk to get to my seat.

After practicing some classic snare drum solos, adding in the hi-hat, bass drum, and ride cymbal, I dusted off the rest of the kit: a crash cymbal and two toms.  I was still short a drummer’s throne, so had to park my rear on the soft single bed.

rogers kit

I had a rock groove going in my mind and my hands and feet were doing their best to follow on the drum kit. The hands felt sharp and coordinated on the snare and hi-hat.  My bass drum foot felt clumsy — it was better on off-beats but lacked full confidence carrying the rhythm. But that evened out when I switched my right hand to ride cymbal.

The rust comes off

I messed around with some rock beats, trying to carry a theme and adding in a fill on the toms.

The rust was coming off. Outside, the drilling and hammering noises from the construction next door competed with the percussion sounds inside.

I was no drumming king, but perhaps I had earned a “throne” for my drum kit — by at least trying to make my comeback.

I made a mental note to swing by Long & McQuade with my mask to pick up a throne (also known as drum seat or stool) and maybe one nice pair of wood sticks without the plastic tips.

Back in Black

Drummers are like back-up goalies — they are sometimes in short supply and needed urgently. For example, a couple of years ago, AC/DC put out the word for a substitute drummer after their go-to guy got implicated in a murder-for-hire plot. And as we saw in the classic movie Spinal Tap, bands need to replace rock drummers after they die suddenly by spontaneous combustion or more gruesome means.

If an AC/DC tribute band desperately needed a drummer for a gig at a seedy Ontario roadhouse, would I have the stamina and timing to get through a thunderous song like Back in Black?

I had got back to sight-reading some snare solos. Cold I hack my way through a Woody Herman big-band chart?

I was still worried about how my cochlear implant and hearing aid would withstand a full band sound. Too many different sounds can be overwhelming. But maybe the right parts of the mix would cut through so that I could play. I recalled the feeling of joy and ease that came with playing music when it was a bigger part of my life.

I would need to be patient and keep practicing.

 

Dusting off my snare drum

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As winter approached, I set a goal of relearning some classic snare drum solos. But my grand plan to practice each night got pre-empted by Netflix. Dreams of drumming were shot down by the Tiger King and a dark Spanish drama: The Grand Hotel. Exacerbating this dilemma was the coronavirus lockdown — TV series and movies were a necessary diversion.

drum and stand

The snare drum beckoned, though. This instrument spans musical genres ranging from a military march to the backbeat in a rock song to a passage in classical music. I learned to play it starting in Grade 6, when my Mom Sheila spotted an advertisement for drum lessons in the Don Mills Mirror newspaper. She encouraged me to give the drums a try.

Rudiments and inspiration

My new music teacher, Glenn Price, started me off with the rudiments of snare drum playing. A rudiment is a musical building block. It can be simple, like a “flam” with its softer grace note preceding the louder strike on the beat. Or more complex, like a drum roll, in which each hand plays two beats that alternate into a buzz ranging from a whisper to a roar.

Flams, rolls, paradiddles, ruffs — these were some of the required rudiments of snare drumming I had to learn before tackling a piece of snare drum music.

I obtained a Remo practice pad to use at home. I beat the hell out of it for an hour each day after school, and got better at reading, and sight-reading, drum scores. The snare drum technique was a foundation for subsequent lessons on drum set and a variety of percussion instruments from timbales to the marimba.

One weekend, Glenn drove me to Long and McQuade’s music store in downtown Toronto to get my first drum kit. It was a beat-up but well-made dark-green-sparkle German Sonor Kit with a cracked Zildjian ride cymbal — the works for $175. I was thrilled.

I studied with Glenn through junior high and high school in the 1970s. In my one-hour lessons, he would push hard on percussion fundamentals and we would work on “independence” of the two hands and two feet on drum set. Then he would play a record album and we would listen and decode the drum part. I recall being mesmerized by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson and other bands in his record collection.

Stepping stones

All these years later, I was dealing with a very different hearing system. My brain had to interpret signals from the cochlear implant in my right ear, and a conventional hearing aid in the left. These high-tech devices had helped restore hearing lost to an inner-ear condition called Meniere’s disease.

Understanding human speech was much easier, but hearing or playing music was still challenging. Percussion generally sounded crisp, though.

Perhaps the snare drum could be a stepping stone to get back into some music fundamentals.

In my 58th year, I hauled out my old snare drum and stand from the basement and set it up in my daughter’s room upstairs. In a hopeful touch, I placed a music stand behind it, and a pair of sticks on top of the drum.

Before I could dig into my first snare solo, I reacquainted myself with the drum.

My snare drum is not a purist’s dream. It is not worth much more than a few lattes at Starbucks. But it is solid and has a rich sound.

It is a CB Model, made in Taiwan, likely in the 1980s, in an era when the traditional U.S. drum manufacturers had come under heavy competition from offshore drums.  These knockoffs were not necessarily inferior instruments, but they were much cheaper. I believe CB is a cheaper model once made in Taiwan by the Pearl drum company based out of Japan. (This particular drum is actually my back-up snare. How I acquired it would be a story for another day.)

Deconstructing the snare drum

I took a closer look at my CB:

Its shell is deep and heavy, surfaced with what looks like a thick chrome plate. The heads are good-quality U.S.-made Remo and Evans.

The snares themselves are a cluster of thin wires stretched along the bottom head of the drum. When the top (or batter) head of the drum is struck, the wires resonate, sounding like buzzing wasps, against the lower (or snare) head.

snares

A snare control mechanism called a strainer allows me to engage the snare wires, or to disengage them from the bottom drum head, and to adjust tension in both on and off settings. When the snares are turned off, the drum sounds very different — hollower, minus the buzzing wasps.

snare mechanism

We don’t usually think of musical pitch in a snare drum, but the drummer can use a key to tighten or loosen the lugs and rims that hold both heads, changing the pitch and fullness of the sound. A circular mute knob can also dampen the top head for a flatter sound.

lug

A tiny air hole plays a huge role — it allows air to escape and the drum to resonate when it is struck. On this drum, the air hole sits just underneath the funky CB “Percussion Internationale” badge.

CB logo

The stand holding the drum has three adjusters to ensure the snare drum is tightly gripped, tilted according to the musician’s wish, and at the correct height.

My stand is designed for a seated drummer playing a set, so cannot be raised high enough to play standing. To learn a snare passage, I would have to sit on the bed in my daughter’s old room. Luckily, both our daughters would not have to plug their ears — they have left the nest for Scotland and the U.S., respectively.

stand

And finally, a pair of sticks.  A hardwood, like hickory, holds up to drumming demands. The 5B marking connotes a mid-sized thickness and heft.

sticks

The sticks strike the snare drum head but can also be used on the drum’s rim for a tinnier sound. Combining those two options is a “rimshot,” when the stick strikes the rim and head simultaneously. The sticks also have some resonance themselves — you can feel their vibrations in your hands when you play.

Enough talk

After dusting off my old snare drum and reacquainting myself with its components, I made a pilgrimage back to Long and McQuade’s on Toronto’s Bloor Street West. I wandered into the drum section and ogled some vintage kits as well as new electronic drums.

But my real mission was to find sheet music. Upstairs, I flipped through percussion sheet music and came upon a familiar music book of 50 drum solos that my teacher had introduced me to years ago. The wheels were turning.

My CB snare drum had been dusted — its chrome sparkled.

It was time to walk the talk.

 

 

Facing the music

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As I relearned how to hear human speech through the combo of a cochlear implant and conventional hearing aid, the ability to hear music was also slowly coming back.  Especially with familiar music, my brain could bridge my memories of how music should sound, with the reality of my new sonic inputs.

hearing and music image

In speaking to some friends who had also gone through the cochlear implant (CI) journey, I knew that ability to appreciate music varied wildly.

John, a management consultant, had learned how to play piano in a new way after he received his CI, relying on sound as well as touch, intuition, kinetics and sight. John also placed more focus on rhythm and dynamics, since the ability to distinguish pitch was sometimes difficult. This reminded me of Scots percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who is deaf and uses multiple senses to perceive music and perform at an international level.

Shelly, a retiree, was starting to enjoy live classical performances again after many years of not attending due to hearing trouble. Suzanne, a health researcher, was still struggling with how bad music often sounded.

“Music is a much larger part of our life than anyone realizes, until they lose the ability to hear it,” Suzanne* told me. She switched from a direct-care role to research after her hearing loss caused increasing difficulty in communicating with patients. She had a cochlear implant (CI) several years ago.

Music language and loss

“Music is a universal language — it can affect your mood, your emotions, your overall well being,” she said. “I cannot express the enormity of losing music.”

Her cochlear implant assists with speech but listening to music can feel unbearable. Occasionally, Suzanne enjoys a music memory, replaying a song in her mind from her youth, from the time when her older sister had all the Beatles’ albums.

Neil Hockley, an Audiologist in hearing aid development at Swiss-based Bernafon, said: “the real key to music and CI/hearing aids is that while there are guidelines to help, there are no rules. So it is really important that clinicians work with their clients to find out what sounds best.”

Conveniently for me, audiologist Neil is married to my cousin Jennifer. She also works at Bernafon — a world leader in hearing technology — in its marketing department. At a family event some years ago, I noticed Neil in my peripheral vision, to my left. I turned to that side and caught him peering at my left ear. Once he had had a good look, Neil declared: “Oh sorry, I’m always curious — I worked on the program for your hearing aid!”

Thanks Neil!

Perception is personal

On the question of music, Neil believes that “perception is incredibly personal. What works for one individual might not work for another, even it their favorite instrument is the same and their hearing loss is the same.” He notes that human speech patterns fall into a more defined band, while music patterns have a wider sonic range and much greater segments of intensity.

In an interview with Live Sound, a magazine for sound engineers, Neil noted that noise reduction applications on hearing aids may help to understand speech but interfere with hearing music.

His audiology colleague in Toronto, Dr. Marshall Chasin, has worked to create special music-hearing options on hearing aids. These customize music hearing by disabling sound reduction and feedback reduction while also enhancing certain frequencies and sound directions. Dr. Chasin has spearheaded the discussion of music in the hearing aid industry. Audiologists continue to investigate how digital hearing aids can better handle the intense inputs of music.

Medel

I went online to the website of Medel, the manufacturer of my cochlear implant, and learned a few encouraging things about CIs and music:

— Young children with cochlear implants have huge potential to play and enjoy music as they learn the new hearing pattern

—  Some former musicians who regained lost hearing through a cochlear implant are now playing again, even though the sound they now hear is quite different; this is the case of my friend John, who has played piano since childhood

— It is important to actively engage with music in some way, to work at listening and/or playing, to engage with the different elements of music.

At Sunnybrook Hospital, where I received my CI surgery in 2017, I agreed to be the guinea pig in a new study in collaboration with the University of Toronto. It explores how the brain sorts out different musical sounds heard through a cochlear implant.

After researchers attached about 50 electrodes to my head, I listened to duets of two different instruments — such as guitar and a flute. My task was to focus in on one of the sounds, as they tried to map how my brain was responding. I was reasonably successful at isolating a single instrument, but I found it painful how bad the instruments sounded. With practice, would the music sound better? I came away disheartened. I could empathize with Suzanne’s comments about music feeling unbearable.

Ian with electrodes

Neil pointed me to the work of Scientist Charles Limb. Dr. Limb, who is also an ENT surgeon, has studied how the brain flexes to generate creativity in musical forms such as jazz and rap. You can find his fascinating lecture on TED Talks.

During creative musical expression, the brain’s energy is refocused. Certain parts of the brain are able to disassociate, allowing spontaneity and creativity.  Limb mentions the jazz tradition of “trading fours.” This is meaningful to me because I used to get a chance to improvise on the drums on four-bar segments while playing with Barry Cartwright’s jazz band.

Creativity in “trading fours”

Likewise, when I was a percussion student, my teacher Glenn Price and I would trade fours on two drum sets, face to face. One of us would keep a structured beat while the other improvised, then we would switch. The improvised segments involved a different mindset than keeping the beat. Improvisation required fluidity, and an ability to respond creatively to another musician’s improvised theme. Finally, trading fours fostered inspiration to create and develop a musical theme.

My thinking on how to relearn musical appreciation and performance was moving in a new direction. I had been focused on what I called a holy trinity — consisting of two quite different sonic inputs (hearing aid and CI) plus my memory. My brain blended the three.

As I learned more from friends, and experts, I felt I had to add three key factors: 1) music engagement, 2) creativity and 3) the use of multiple senses.

I was facing the music: my holy trinity of hearing had become a holy sextet.

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For more info:

Interview with Neil Hockley and Marshall Chasin in Live Sound:

http://digital.livesoundint.com/publication/?m=24712&i=548311&p=26

Dr. Marshall Chasin website: http://marshallchasinassociates.ca/

Dr. Charles Limb TedTalk:

 

*Suzanne asked to be anonymous for this article — her name is changed.