I’m kind of kicking the dust off and getting back into daily practice on my flute. I’m turning having forgotten so many tunes into an advantage as best I can and learning or re-learning tunes by ear. This time around I’m doing something I always thought I should do before, which is wearing earplugs! Or more accurately -an- earplug, in my right ear, where the flute sound is loud enough to cause ringing in the ears after just 10 minutes or so of play. The left ear seems fine.
I picked out some foam earplugs at CVS that mention concerts and show reasonably even attenuation across the spectrum, and I guess it works okay.
Still, I find sometimes when I forget to put my earplug in that I can just pick out much more sound from the recordings with both ears fully open.
Anyway, I’m just wondering if anyone else uses earplugs, and if you have any hints on how to do so or what kind to use. I gathered from other players back when I was playing before that most people just live with the fact that they’re destroying their hearing but that doesn’t seem like a great idea to me.
(fwiw, I used to be on these forums under maybe this name or maybe as AnotherChris … or AnotherChrisA. or something. That was long ago though.)
I’ve tried earplugs in the past but found them uncomfortable and they seem to reduce volume too much, so I now sometimes scrunch up a small amount of tissue paper and shove that in me lugholes.
Playing flute in the bottom two octaves as loud and for as long and as frequently as you possibly can is highly unlikely to harm your hearing (unless maybe you have other problems with it) unless it causes your partner, children or neighbour to run a skewer through them.
A significant amount of 3rd 8ve stuff or a lot of high register fife or piccolo playing is different story. Musicians who need to/benefit from wearing earplugs are generally playing in a much louder and with more extremes of frequencies environment (rock band, orchestra sat in front of brass section, etc.). Playing low and mid register flute solo isn’t a significant risk.
SomeCallMeChris wrote " Or more accurately -an- earplug, in my right ear, where the flute sound is loud enough to cause ringing in the ears after just 10 minutes or so of play. The left ear seems fine."
This would suggest a trip to the Doctor or Ear/Hearing Specialist is in order. As Jem so correctly pointed out, playing playing Irish Flute for protracted periods of time in isolation should not generate enough volume or high pitched frequencies to do any harm.
Clear evidence for this is borne out by the fact that only one ear seems to be affected. If there was any real danger, then it would surely affect both.
I have personally never understood, unless in circumstances described above ( Brassy Orchestra/ Death Metal Band/ Medical Reasons ), why anyone should feel the need to put any barrier whatsoever between themselves and the music they are making - it seems so utterly self defeating. Unless of course you sound like me
How many here play whistles into the 3rd 8ve above E, if that far? If you do so regularly, sure, there’s an issue. Very few even huge, noisy sessions are likely to pose a risk of damage to normal, healthy ears. Even in multiple combination, all the instruments we normally use are not all that loud and the pitch range in which we play is not a risk. If you stuck your head between two close range piano accordions pumping for all they were worth, I doubt it’d hurt (physically), not that I’m advocating it!
Besides which, the OP was specifically about playing flute, and alone at home at that. However, he also said playing flute normally hurt his ears. I think that is a very unusual experience which merits proper medical examination. I have yet to meet any flute players (any type or genre) who have suffered aural injury from their own playing, or, for that matter, any trad sessioneers whose hearing was damaged by acoustic sessions with the normal selection of trad instruments. Regular gigging trad players frequently exposed to high amplification, yes. But that’s very few of us.
Years ago I developed a weird sort of feedback in my ears where playing in the second octave on the whistle or flute would cause a loud scratching sound in my ears. It wasn’t tinnitus, I went to an ear doctor and an audiologist who concluded that a nerve was firing prematurely or something like that. The audiologist made me a pair of custom-fitted earplugs that were designed specifically for musicians: the earplugs screened out just the highest frequencies. I tried using them for a while, but the flute just sounded too muffled to me and made playing an unsatisfactory experience. Eventually the problem went away. I still have those earplugs but they no longer fit, which is interesting: I didn’t realize our ears change shape so dramatically as we age but now I have the evidence.
I have the custom ones too. FWIW, in my experience, the cvs foam jobbies are better, cheaper (of course) and it doesn’t matter if your ears change shape.
I’ve had lots of experience, cause I’ve had multiple surgeries on my ears and need plugs, and I’ve tried lots of different plugs.
Well, I’m obviously no expert on hearing damage but my flute is definitely louder than the point at which my smartphone’s audio player warns me about turning the volume higher. Then again they may be being paranoid with their settings. Just that it leaves me with ringing in my ear suggests to me that there is a risk of damage. (I vaguely recall hearing that stated as a fact but I couldn’t possibly cite a source.)
It -does- take an hour or more of play to start ringing, and that ringing is -nothing- compared to the day after attending a rock concert without earplugs of course, it’ll fade within just a few hours. But still. My hearing right now is pretty good and I’d like to keep it that way.
As far as it affecting my ears unequally, I don’t think it does. I’m specifically talking about flute here, which I hold in the usual right-handed grip, so all the holes that the sound is coming out of are toward my right side. My own head is shielding my left ear to a certain extent. And a little bit of distance, not a lot but still, we’re not talking any large distances here so it’s proportionally significant. Anyway, equally distributed sounds (like from speakers or playing the whistle) seem to affect my ears equally.
Thanks, jim stone, for your advice. It’s good to know, although I was kind of hoping to hear that there were better options. Ah well!
They sound great – took the edge off, especially the high-frequency “chill” that can be so godawful, without compromising clarity. These things have allowed me to sit in a very loud musical environment (amplified synthpop) and hear what people sitting next to me have said that would otherwise have been entirely inaudible. (Sadly, my conversational partner was not wearing any, and hence she couldn’t hear me.)
Ive been playing flutes and whistles for 20 years now. I remember my ears hurt when playing in the higher register when I first started, they don’t at all anymore. I must have some hearing loss!
Kick back, relax and relearn your flute. Treat each note in that thing like it it is a sweet beautiful thing and the softer you make it the better it becomes. Forcing octaves sounds like force, not like expression, music, or emotion. Learn to play as quietly as possible, and when you need power, it will be there.
Just a small point - the sound isn’t produced at the tone holes; it’s produced at the embouchure hole. So, holding the flute right-handed or left-handed both ears will get the sound.
It’s such a pity that famous late 19th. Century French performer Joseph Pujol is no longer with us as I’m sure he would have some handy tips for those flute players who find their ears just that little too close to their mouths. Evidently, he gave well received and nigh on miraculous performances of; " O Sole Mio " and " La Marseillaise " with just a length of rubber hose and an Ocarina.
If you have a computer rigged up to record sounds try this.
Plug a pair of ‘open’ headphones into the microphone socket, put them on and play a long loud G on the flute. Look at the recording levels. Put the headphones on the other way round and do it again (in case the innards on the two sides are not identical). Do it with a C# and D (all holes closed). If you have a whistle try it with that.
Also (without the headphones) try blowing the flute normally then see if you can get a sound out of it left handed (if you are right handed). Does source of the sound seem to move?
FWIW I conclude that the sound does come from the embouchure (as Ben said above), that the way I blow (asymetrically) throws a little more sound to my right ear - and that my ears might not be quite the same.
