Eric Heveron-Smith - Talking Bass, Jazz, and Acoustic Music

Bassist and producer Eric Heveron-Smith (Postmodern Jukebox, Einstein's Dreams) joins Frank to talk about his work in jazz and other acoustic music genres. We get into hearing, monitoring, and other health considerations important for professional musicians to ensure career longevity, and get philosophical about the role of music in the world.

Music heard in this episode features performances by Eric Heveron-Smith with various groups including Moonshine Rhythm Club, The Capitalist Youth, Gunsling Birds, and a sneak peek at the upcoming album "Flight Manifest" by Einstein's Dreams. For more information about Eric's many many projects, visit https://www.eric-hs.com/

Feel free to reach out talkingears@earmarkhc.com to discuss this episode and hearing wellness in general. We look forward to hearing from you!

Michael Lawrence - talking SPL and concert safety

Michael Lawrence (co-host of the Signal To Noise Podcast), joins us to talk about SPL, loudness, and the audio engineer's responsibility when it comes to exposure risk at live sound events. Expressed through his work as a system engineer and senior instructor at Rational Acoustics, he brings humanity to the technical aspects and numbers when balancing a concert's perceived loudness and safety of all involved.

This episode features music by Audiologist and Talking Ears producer, Juan Vasquez and his band The Absolute Threshold.

Sensory Overload: Sound [video]

Frank Wartinger presented on the subject of Sound and Hearing at the 2017 Philadelphia Science Festival event titled "Sensory Overload". The evening featured scientists, researchers, and medical professionals presenting on all five senses. Each topic was masterfully paired with a craft beer sample from the event's gracious host, Yards Brewing Co.

Watch The Video

Presentations and Speakers included:

Sight by Nathan Fried, University of Pennsylvania

Taste by Marcia Pelchat, Monell Chemical Senses Center

Smell by Carlo Siracusa, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine

Touch by Abigail Wolf, Thomas Jefferson University

Science, etc...

It was a joy to represent Earmark, CHOP, and ears in general at this event with such distinguished fellow speakers. For more information about the Philadelphia Science Festival, visit http://www.philasciencefestival.org/

With inquiries regarding speaking engagements, please contact Frank@EarmarkHC.com.

Susan Rogers: From Prince to Ph.D.

Susan Rogers, Ph.D. Photo from TapeOp ISSUE #117 JAN/FEB 2017

Susan Rogers: Sound Hero

TapeOp recently published a fantastic and expansive interview with the great Susan Rogers, Ph.D. She is perhaps best known as Prince's engineer for many years in the mid 80s, as well as her extensive career as a record producer and mixing engineer with diverse groups including David Byrne, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Rusted Root, Barenaked Ladies, Tricky, Geggy Tah, and Michael Penn. But, what sets her apart as a bonafide Sound Hero (my new designation for people like her) is her work in Music Cognition. Currently, she is focusing her studying on the causes of tinnitus and hyperacusis.

"The mechanisms are just now being understood, but at Berklee I can investigate our musician populations to see if some musicians are at a greater risk than others of developing tinnitus. Will it be the horn players, or the drummers, or the electric guitar players? Will it be the vocalists? Think about it, if you're singing in a choir, you're singing next to a sound source that can get really loud. Really, really loud. Who's at the greatest risk?"

Music Cognition

To hear more of Susan Rogers speaking about the discipline of Music Cognition, check out her video explanation of her work with the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory. To hear her speak about music and auditory science, it is clear the connections are deep and endlessly explorable:

The arts and sciences, I discovered, have way more similarities than I ever realized. It's just that the directionality of it is different. In the arts we imagine a condensed ball of dark matter that contains all of humanity, all of human knowledge, and you explode it into billions and billions of individual expressions of the human condition. Paintings, movies, television shows, books, records, and songs. You've got billions of individual ways of describing what it means to be human. Science is the same exact process, in reverse. We look at all the individuals, then we work our way back and try to describe what is universal. How do people hear? How do they think? How do they pay attention? How do they decide? How do they learn? How do they memorize? How do they grow? That's what science does. So it's the same journey, just in a different direction. You can explore record making with the goals of individual expression, or you can explore auditory science with the goal of what we all have in common.

Here is hoping for a continued stream of excellence from Dr. Rogers in helping us understand everything from a solid groove to the cause of the most puzzling auditory disorders, such as tinnitus and hyperacusis. Clearly, a great background in music creation can lead to a great career in music cognition and hearing science.

What is Tinnitus Music?

Composing the Tinnitus Suites: 2016

8PM @ The Rotunda
4014 Walnut Street, Philadelphia

The final installment of Daniel Fishkin's vibrant concert series is tonight. Daniel Fishkin, a Philadelphia-based composer and instrument inventor, is exploring the question "What is Tinnitus Music". The answer may be elusive but the process is captivating and exciting.

In 2008, Daniel Fishkin's ears started ringing, and they never stopped. Composing the Tinnitus Suites: 2016 investigates the aesthetics of hearing damage through a performance series in the Sanctuary of the Rotunda, consisting of experimental music concerts and conversations with other thinkers who confront hearing damage in their own practice and personal lives. The series is anchored by the Lady's Harp: a system of 20-foot long piano wires activated by mixer feedback, using guitar pickups and pressure transducers to coax the strings into vibration, not unlike the cilia that transduce vibrations into electrical impulses for the brain. Fishkin says, "To make 'Tinnitus Music' is not just to compose sounds, but also to compose situations that can break the isolation of its experience." 

Listen to samples of Daniel Fishkin's work

Sound on Mars?

It is hard to be as excited about hearing as we are and not be excited about sound in general. That is why it is with intense curiosity that we are reading about the plans to include a microphone on the Mars 2020 rover vehicle. This represents the first time we will be able to pick up the sounds of Mars directly and transmit them to Earth. As if recording the Martian soundscape isn’t reason enough, the main purpose of the microphone is to serve the SuperCam and the LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) sensor. What does the LIBS do? Glad you asked: it vaporizes rocks with a laser.

Sounds from space, or more accurately sounds derived from the sensor and radar data of space probes, have been circulating the internet for years. They are infinitely inspiring, interesting, strange, and beautiful in their own way. They are also admittedly geeky and densely scientific, so it is understandable if the general public hasn't explored them to their fullest. The great Carl Sagan was perhaps the first to recognize the potential public interest in actual Martian sounds. Sylvestre Maurice, a planetary scientist at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, told Space.com:

"It's science, but it's a little bit different… It's cool, not obscure."  

Army's Smart Earplug Damps Explosive Noise, But Can Enhance Whispers

NPR recently aired an accurate and well produced piece about the Army's newest efforts to address communication and hearing conservation for soldiers.

Similar technology is available for hunters, construction workers, and others in need of situational awareness as well as sound isolation from high intensity impulse sounds... but it tends to look so much cooler when paired with fatigues and worn by a guy who's name is "Sgt. Bacon".

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/03/480173016/armys-smart-earplug-damps-explosive-noise-but-can-enhance-whispers