Music Can Help Understanding Speech in Noisy Environments?

Many older adults will say, 'I can hear what you're saying, but I don't understand you,' especially in a location where there is background noise (such as a restaurant) leading to frustration and social isolation. However, new research is offering tantalizing clues to prevent this from happening through music training.

Musical training makes musicians really good at picking out melodies, such as the treble line or the sound of their own instruments, from surrounding complex sounds. This improved perception in noise in musicians was linked with better working memory and tone discrimination ability. The results imply that musical training enhances the ability to hear speech in challenging listening environments by strengthening auditory memory and the representation of important acoustic features

Thirty-one study participants, with normal hearing and a mean age of 23, were divided into one group with music experience and another without it. They had to listen to sentences presented in increasingly noisy conditions and repeat back what they heard. The music group did significantly better.

The study does suggest that by reinforcing the pervasive effects that musical experience has on sound-processing abilities, better speech understanding can be obtained in noisy environments and underscores the importance of music education being more accessible to the general population

Read the story here.

Reference:
Alexandra Parbery-Clark, Erika Skoe, Carrie Lam and Nina Kraus. Musician Enhancement for Speech-in-Noise. Ear and Hearing, (in press)

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Washington Post: Perfect Pitch CAN Be Taught?!!

There is a fascinating article in the July 27, 2009 edition of the Wasington Post on page A8 entitled "An Elusive Musical Gift Could Be at Children's Fingertips." This article elucidates a technique to teach any child to have perfect pitch, the ability to identify a note simply by hearing it. The technique is called "Eguchi Method" and developed by Kazuko Eguchi who developed it 40 years ago in Japan.

In essence, the technique, in order to be successful, must start before the age of 4 years old and uses colored flags (or any other object) to musical chords. Over time, more colored flags linked to different chords are added. Frequency of practice is more important than duration.

To read more about this, click here.

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iPods & Other Music Devices Can Cause Permanent Hearing Loss!

The Washington Post wrote up a nice article regarding the increased risk of permanent hearing loss kids these days may suffer due to listening to music devices too loudly. Such noise-induced hearing loss also increases the risk of tinnitus (ringing of the ears). The key things to easily remember to ensure proper music volume is:

1) If people around you can hear the music you are listening to, it's too loud.
2) If you can't hear what people are saying while listening to music, it's too loud.

Every year, we see kids in the upper teens and young 20s with hearing equivalent to someone who is in their 80s. Sad but true, and as kids continue to listen to music too loudly, we expect this trend to increase.

Click here to read the Washington Post article.

If you are concerned that you may be suffering from hearing loss, contact us for an appointment!

Remember, if you suddenly lose your hearing, there is a window of opportunity of 10-30 days where medications may help reverse this hearing loss after which nothing more can be done. Contact your local ENT as soon as possible if this happens to you!

Watch a video of Dr. Sanjay Gupta talking about these dangers on CNN.

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Voice On-Hold for Cheap!

I recently struggled with an un-named company to try and get a voice on-hold system working in our office. For those who don't know, a voice on-hold system allows there to be background music or service/product announcements to be made over the phone while a person is put on-hold. It is a captive audience good for marketing purposes.

With this un-named company, we had to pay $499 to get it set up followed by a subscription of $89 per month thereafter to use a pre-recorded script made professionally by the company. There were several problems which I won't get into, but in the end, we cancelled the service.

Instead, we pursued a cheaper and just as good an option that works for a total one-time cost of only about $300!!!

Step 1: Get the equipment
Equipment needed are:
1) iPod nano off eBay for cost of $100.
2) iPod USB charger for cost of $40.
3) Audio cable from Radio Shack for cost of $5. It's the same cable used in cars to plug your portable music player into the car's radio system.

Step 2: Get professional recording of script you want people to hear when put on-hold
1) Goto www.Voice123.com
2) Hire someone from this website to do the recording and email you the .mp3 of the finished product. I paid about $150 for this job.

Click here to listen to the first 20 seconds of what this sounds like (without the music added yet). If you like her voice, please email her at aflosnik[at]hotmail[dot]com

Step 3: Add music to recorded script
1) Goto www.royaltyfreemusic.com and find music you like to add in the background to the recorded script. Or you can use your own music from iTunes (but make sure no copyright infringement).
2) Given I use a Mac, I used their free software, iMovie, that is included on all Macs. Using this program, I imported the recorded script. Than to a second track, I added the (royalty-free) music.
3) I duplicated this three times back to back to create a single "song" that lasted 12 minutes.
4) I exported this file as a .wav

Click here to listen to the first 20 seconds of the recording now with music. Pretty nice, eh?

Step 4: Import song into iPod
1) On my office computer I never use to download music, I installed iTunes (which is free from apple.com) and imported the .wav file.
2) I synchronized this one song into the iPod.
3) Under settings, I set the iPod to "repeat" the "song" indefinitely.
4) Hit play and the song which is the scipted file starts playing over and over and over again indefinitely.

Step 5: Connect iPod to your office phone system
1) Look for the Audio-In jack on your phone system's central hub. I included a picture below showing this as "EXT. MUSIC" which is what our office's system looks like.
2) Connect an audio cable from your iPod to this Audio-In jack on the phone system hub.
3) Plug the iPod to the USB charger so it will play forever (as long as there is power).

See Zoomed-Out picture with everything installed.

Make sure the iPod is playing in a loop and test it out!

That's it!!!

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