TINNITUS:
AN OCCUPAIIONAL HAZARD
A Casuahy on tbe Battlefield of Noise
I.G. THIRLWELL
TtNNITUS is the perception o{ sound in the
ears or head where
no external
source of sound is present.
The word derives from Latin, meaning "to rinkle or to ring like a bell."
Hence tinnitus is often referred to as "ringing in the ears," although it can
also take the form of hissing, roaring, whistling, chirping, or clicking.
Tinnitus can be intermittent or constant. It can contain single or multiple
tones, and its perceived volume can range from subtle to shattering.
(H) Ear Ring
My tinnitus is connected with my self-induced hearing damage. I incurred
tinnitus by listening ro a remix I was working on with headphones ar
painful levels for an hour or so. Exposure ro loud noise can damage and
even destroy the small hair cells, called cilia, in the cochlea of the ear. Once
they are damaged, the cilia cannot be renewed or replaced. They are not
self-healing. Despite the pain,
I kept
listening, because
I
was too high to
care. I woke up the next day and my ears were ringing and
it hasn't gone
away since. That was in 1990. The tinnitus in my left ear is louder than
the right. It makes me more precious of further damaging that ear. The
sound is perhaps like water running from a faucet, not an old-fashioned
faucet but like an aerated srream.
It is a white
noise hum in the upper-mid
to high frequencies.
When performing live vrith a guitar/bass/drums/keys line-up version of Foetus in the 1990s, I seldom wore hearing protection on stage. I
was singing, and I found wearing earplugs made it difficult to hear the
vocals to pitch myself. we would moniror very loudly on srage as the dmmmer could never hear the other instruments, and everyone had to turn up
around him. This onstage volume exacerbated my condition.My first album
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TINNITUS: AN OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD
was prophetically entitled DEAF.
Resonance
Now when I work with string players I notice how incredibly protective
acoustic players are of their hearing, and the slightest hint of feedback will
cause winces and fingers to immediately go into their ears. Oh, that I had
been so heedful.
As somegne who has suffered hearing damage, I am terrified of
worsening it and making the ringing louder. Now I always wear hearing
protection when I am at concerts. I used to enjoy the pure pov/er of volume
rushing over me like an icy wind, blowing me backward and bathing me
like the guy on those old Maxell commercials. Now I am cautious to the
point of avoiding it, which is saddening. I can appreciate the power of, say,
a Volf Eyes shoq but I would rather listen to the CD at home where I can
attenuate the volume.
Hiss
I compose in my
quiet sampled
I
use
small
studio, as my ears can fatigue quickly. Sometimes
gesrures rhat I modify and re-pitch. These sounds are recorded with room
mikes, and the cumulative effect of the ambience of the rooms where the
audio was recorded and tape hiss can build a compound roar that I often
don't notice for some time over my tinnitus or the ambient noise in my
studio, which is not enclosed. Eventually I have to roll off the hisses accumulated without destroying the timbral character of the composition.
I have learned how to differentiate my tinnitus from this type of
hiss. My brain puts my tinnitus aside as I focus on the sounds' My hearing
is more brittle, and the mid-range frequencies I often favor in my music can
be difficult and fatiguing to listen to for any length of time. Music and
As
a result,
I mn the
speakers in my studio quietly when
diverting focus, but it is transitory and temporal in
tinnitus is the gift that keeps on giving.
sound cfeates
a
nature-
Hwm
plastics factory situated in the floor below
my studio which had a piece of equipment which caused electrical/radio
frequency interference through my mixing desk and monitors. It created
For
a
couple of years there was
a
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TH IRLWELL
buzzes and hums of various volumes, lengths, and pitches. This wasn't too
much of an issue when I was programming with the computer or midi, but
I couldn't record any audio without these buzzes also being recorded on the
track. The factory operated from 8:30-5:OO with abreak at 1'2:30-I:AA {or
lunch, so if I needed to record any audio during the day I waited for their
lunchtime. Once I decided to record the hums on multiple tracks and see
what composition would come about by chance, to create a hum symphohow the chance buzzes would interrelate being built up
over multiple tracks. But those particular hums evoked a resentment in me
as I recognized them as the sounds that inhibited my work, and I couldn't
get any pleasure out of using them as sound sources. It was too jarring.
ny. I wanted to
see
Those accidental frequencies were forever marred with their association of
an interr-uption of my work. Their sound made me want to reach out for the
volume knob and turn the monitors down as often one hugely loudbuzz
would pop thru the occasionally softer tide of hums. Mercifully, that factory
has long since closed, so perhaps I could revisit that abandoned composition and capture that audio snapshot of the plastics factory with a distance.
But really I have no desire to.
Mask
The tinnitus sufferer can use sound to mask or partially cover the tinnitus.
Some masking toois can be white-noise generators, hard drives, fans, the
sounds of roadways, an air purifieq air conditioning, or purring kittens. \7e
for our condition. The hum of traffic over
the Brooklyn Queens Expressway one hundred feet from my house undulates like waves on a distant beach. The roar of the D train over the
Manhaman Bridge rattles a boxy report. The hard drive of my laptop hums
at ayery similar frequency to my tinnitus. These aid me as my white-noise
generators, ambience creators, and blockers. Subtle washes and roars that
surround me in my environment are my allies. I hear fluorescent lights
buzzing in sympathy and in harmony with my head. When I am in my
house, upstairs in my bedroom, I can sdll see the Brooklyn Queens
Expressway, but it is behind a plexiglas window which attenuates and rolls
off the high frequency of its white noise hum. \fhen I am up there in my
bed, the tinnitus is louder. Very loud and then louder as I lie and contemplate my day. The frequencies can envelope my skull like a glass brick. Its
seeming eternity is depressing. Tinnitus is a constant which forms a carpet
seek an ambient electronic match
TINNITUS: AN OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD
between empty space and sound-evenrs and pushes itself to the foreground
when the ambience recedes.
Toop
"The randomness of
white noise allows more possibilities of a very faint sound wave finding
another wave with which it can resonate and so be reinforced'"
I am destined to live with the frequencies in my ear that put me in
so
terror of visits to the country side, as the quietness makes my tinnitus
I
don't
much more audible. Although I have gotten used to it somewhat,
..listening,, to my dnnirus in the same way that I listen to a nuanced
enjoy
chamber
piece of audio or environmental sound. If I'm listening to quiet
tinnitus
music, the tinnitus is very noticeable. when 4'33" isperformed, my
In his book Hawnted'-V/eatber, David Toop
states,
is the main soloist.
Rite
A colleague of mine, Jed Miner,
said that he regarded tinnitus as a rite of
cliterectomy.
passage, that inner-ear scarification was like the modern-day
Another colleague, Franz Pomassl, contends that the ear is a muscle that
must be exercised, as if it could commit great feats of strength.
NYNoise
reach painful levels without asking. In New
york city the screech of the brakes on the c train can reach tangible discomfort levels for me. The ambulance sirens, construction, and car horns
The sounds of New York
city
cr eate adeafening damaging symphony'
Recchion's ExPerience
carecomposer/sound artist Tom Recchion got tinnitus as a side effect of
girr"rt syndrome, looking aftet asick friend' It flares up when he is stressed
jaw or PoP his eardr-um
out. At fifst a consrant ringing, he would stretch his
took him
to get rid of it. It had a doppler effect when he turned his head' It
switch back
a vrhile before he knew what was happening to him. It would
and forth befween one ear and the other'
It was making him crazy because he couldn't
escaPe
it. It was really
261
4
THIRLWELL
impossible to relax.
It got so loud that he couldn't listen to music. He could
"hear" music, but there was pitch and whining throughout everything he
listened to, and the pleasure of listening was gone. Then the sound started
to change quality from a constant piercing noise. At first Tom thought it
was the high pitch of a nerve ending dying. (Some say the pinging highpitched whining that often appears suddenly in one's ear and fade away is a
cell dying, although Jacob Kirkegaard describes the phenomenon of otoacoustic emissions, whereby the cilia actually generate sound, vrhich could
account for this phenomenon.)
Then after a few weeks it changed quality and started to sputter
like a loose connection. He could undershnd how this condition could
drive some people mad. A squeaky undulating popping cracking sound.
It became very difficult to concentrate, and he couldn't be in a quiet
room and had to have a masking source. He would turn on a fan, or turn
a vibrator and leave it on the bed, under the pillow. After about four
or five months his tinnitus suddenly stopped, although it has returned
on
sporadically lately.
Now he finds he can't listen to high-frequency compositions. Tom
says, "Volume had more allure, but loud doesn't interest me as much as
it used to."
Silence
In the "absolute" silence of an anechoic chamber we focus on our circulatory system. John Cage contended there was no such thing as silence. The
sound of our heart pumping, the pulse in our ears, the blood flowing
through our veins, our breath, our tubercular lungs rattling, our bones
creaking and shrinking from osteoporosis. Our hair and skin. Even cells
make a measurable sound. Only outer space, where there is no air, is silent.
But we aren't there to "hear" it. And what about that tree that falls in the
woods? I am a captive "hearer" of my condition.
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