I happen to see one of the post reply saying piccolo hurts your ears.
Is it true that if you play a piccolo for a long time or something your ears get affected ?


I am playing flute and I was thinking of buying a piccolo to practice on it.
If I am getting one, is plastic okay? I have a tight budget,

There was (as is becoming usual) a rich thread on this issue, only that it is so difficult to find older threads that I would not even try it.

I remember the conclusions were mostly "yes, it can damage" your hearing". If you can, practise with ear plugs.

My teacher (a young person) plays the piccolo and she complains of hearing problems, such as hearing whistles after a performance.

My flute teacher not only strongly recommends wearing ear plugs when playing piccolo, but to also practice high notes in a room that is not acoustically live. High notes can and will damage your hearing without proper protection. I also find them to be physically painful, and I don't understand how or why people play high notes without an ear plug in their right ear. It does make intonation more difficult on an already beastly instrument, but intonation will be even more difficult after you've permanently damaged your hearing.

In short, play with a plug in your right ear if you value your hearing.

The problem with the piccolo is that it is very easy to play too loudly. The average beginner on the instrument begins with much of their flute capability in place and as a result they feel that they can get the high notes out. Their problem is generally that they have learned most of what is necessary to get these notes out on a piccolo but they don't have great piccolo embouchure control and so they play too loudly. This may also be because their performance situation demands that they participate in performance before they have studied their piccolo embouchure well enough. IF a person is going to get their Piccolo tone under control, I believe that they need to approach their study of the instrument like that of the flute. -With a gradual increase in the range ....but through careful and diligent embouchure study (long tones) in a way that doesn't cause hearing damage.

~bilbo
N.E. Ohio

Yes! It does cause hearing problems. It has happened to me and now I am having to sell my piccolo.

<Added>

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so rash. What I should have said that it most likely CAN cause hearing problems especially if you don't protect your ears with good ears plugs when practicing.

Awww, I always thought it was a lovely instrument to play on.
Now that I know it cause hearing problem, I think I am going to stick to playing flute.

I am going to give up saving money for a piccolo

Oh how sad! I've been so curious about the piccolo, and wanted to try. But I guess I'll just forget it now. I already have a slight hearing loss, so I am careful about not damaging my hearing.

Ok, so what about playing alto or bass flute instead? Are they common? Does anyone here play them? Is it fun, or maybe just unuseful?

Daveandkateplus1, I'm so sorry the piccolo affected your hearing. Hope it doesn't cause any problems with your regular flute playing.

The presumed fact that it can affect your hearing does not mean that it will inevitably affect your ear.

Many, many things around us have the same effect. Most dangerous are the mp3 players now, and as worst before, those walkmans and diskmans that had no volume limits.

But spending a few hours at a disco at 110+ dB will probably affect your ear more than the piccolo in a 4 hour Wagner Opera.

This said, one should protect our hearing as much as possible, considering that musicians use this sense as a working tool and it is absolutely necessary for us.

I believe the piccolo is more traumatic to the ear than C flutes and even more than Alto or bass flutes as I posted some time ago, in part because the higher frequencies involved carry more sound energy than lower frequency notes.

But Piccolo parts are normally shorter in Symphonic music than other Winds parts in general. One reason is that it can be heard always so distinctively that would take a too much principal role in a Works, which normally is not the composer idea. (I am not referring to Works specially composed for the piccolo, of course).

Note that in an orchestra you will be sitting in front of very powerful metals as trumpets and trombones, this also has the potential to damage your ear and there is no much to be done to avoid this.

But I think the main problem is mostly while learning and practising. As Bilbo commented in a previous post, it is the lack of control on the sound and its volume, added to the fact that it must be practised in closed, often brilliant rooms (or your neighbours would call the police) that makes this instrument somewhat more dangerous for beginners.

I mentioned my teacher complains of hearing whistles after a piccolo performance. This is due to acoustic trauma, but if limited in time, it is usually reversible.

I insist in my initial suggestion: use ear plugs when practising. You cannot do that at a performance, but all the acoustic trauma you avoid during practice is like an investment you save for the moments you have to pay the price of playing this most brilliant and beautifully sounding instrument.

This a peculiarity of acoustic trauma, it is the combination of sound level plus the exposure time plus the repetition rate of the exposures that produce the bad effects on the hearing system.

This is my personal experience, in case you are interested. Otherwise you can skip it, is not related to Piccolo:

I suffered this acoustic trauma as an engineer, after working one year in a big room where several hundreds of small fans (the type of big computers have) were operating permanently. I believe now that the air they made circulate through small slots and cavities produced a lot of ultrasonic noise, that could not be heard but had the potential of causing harm.

I now hear permanent whistles in both ears and have a moderate hearing loss. When I discovered that the noise at my work was causing me problems, I obtained a pair of Braniff ear caps (the type that are used on airport tarmacs) and wore that during working hours. Extremely uncomfortable, yes. I also worked with big diesel generators but there I always used collapsible ear plugs as the noise produced was so evident and unbearable.

But probably it was too late or the protection was not enough, so it became irreversible. And I was young at that time, being in my early 30's.

It does effect my playing now on the flute sometimes. If I play for more than an hour and when I get into the third register my left ear starts buzzing and gets all muffled and I can't hear out of it. I should have protected my ears better through out the 18 years that I did play piccolo. I am so sorry though, I certainly never meant to put a damper on anyone's excitement about playing the piccolo. Just protect your ears better than I did and you will probably be okay. Get a good set of ears plugs when practicing, it will help. Piccolo is so much fun to play and I encourage you to try it

An audiologist once told me that if you have ringing in your ears following loud sounds, then damage has been done. It may be very slight, but it is all cumulative.

Thanks Micron for your comments.
I also very much agree with what I've quoted from your message. Any ringing in the ears or muffled hearing is some level of hearing damage and it can accumulate with time. This not only comes from the practice of musical instruments (Such as Piccolo) but from other sources such as listening to music (Esp. with earbuds or head phones turned up high), unprotected gunfire, and other ambient sounds. Our hearing generally recovers with time but it recovers less and less with age. You can experience an example of this damage/recovery when you leave your automobile stereo on overnight and then turn on the car in the morning to notice that it appears to sound louder than the night before.
The problems with piccolo are mostly what I've stated above but I should add that our hearing becomes less sensitive at the ends of the spectrum (Lows and Highs) as a result we tend to not hear these higher frequencies as well even though they may actually be louder in sound pressure levels than sounds that are in our typically more sensitive voice range of hearing.
Relative to this, I can say that playing the flute can also cause hearing damage as well. Anybody who has spent any measure of time on the high notes of the Daniel S. Wood Studies or the Moyse 480 Scales and arpeggios can attest to this. One of my most damaging experiences is being placed in front of trumpet players in a concert band who were competing for loudness. Another more recent experience was at a R&R Concert (Journey was the band). Their music was beyond loud enough and their added stadium-resounding reverb made the quality of the concert a painful, inferior and disappointing experience.
So, the thing about the hearing issue is that as a musician it is part of the job to be aware of it, how we can get damage and how to avoid it. Also, using ear protection can cause one to misinterpret the tone quality of their flute/piccolo playing. There are good ear protection brands which tends to filter out the higher decibel sounds while letting through lesser sounds and I'd recommend that over the more simple foam plugs.

~bilbo
N.E. Ohio

Very interesting and thoughtful comments.

As for me I'm not often in noisy environments, and I don't often listen to mp3-players since I wear hearing aids and it's a hassle to take them of to listen. (My hearing loss is apparently inherited but I didn't realize it until a few years ago when finishing my undergraduate studies.)

However, as I get better on the flute I'll play in more and more potentially harmful environments, and I'm not really sure how I could protect myself. I always practice with hearing aids since I lose too much of the sound otherwise. That means I can't wear ear plugs at the same time. This is not a problem for flute practising as I see it (but could of cource be be different once I play the things you mentioned on a more powerful flute, or tried to learn piccolo). The main problem would be orchestra playing. I can't really wear earplugs at rehersal, since I would not hear teachers'/conductors' explanations and comments without hearing aids (an inherited hearing loss affects the frequencies where speach usually is). And it would be difficult to assess my own sound well.

Thankfully there are no trumpets in the musc school orchetsra , which is starting up again. But in general I find it's not easy to protect myself. I can't for example say "wait a minute, just need to put my earplugs on" when my teacher wants to play a duet and is standing a bit to close for comfortable sound levels. I don't really have a problem today, since it, so far, is easy to move away from too loud instruments. But if I continue to play it might become harder and harder.

I really love playing, so I'll just do my best as everyone else here to protect my hearing.

Dear CessiMary,

Your case is more complicated because wearing hearing aids normally requires medical counselling. I could only say that many modern type hearing aids (what are called "digital") can be adjusted for different amplifications versus frequencies. Maybe you could get the technician set yours so that the higher frequencies are more attenuated.

But you may have an advantage over the rest of us; the hearing aids maybe protecting you already, as (at least those that I know) they completely seal the auditive conduct, which is necessary to avoid acoustic feedback to the device's microphone. Therefore the sounds you hear and that could be potentially harmful could be filtered or otherwise managed by the hearing aid device.
Anyway I suggest you consult your case with the specialist.

Thanks, yes it would be possible to adjust frequency aplification and store it as a setting. And the hearing aids are set to filter out any high volumes of any frequency, which is good. However, they might damper the surrounding sound a little but do not shut it out completely.

Unfortunately the medical staff is usually not very good at, sorry - really bad at, specific musician issues. The standard responce is to use ear plugs to protect the ears. I will look into it more next time I have a appointment. Right now everything is actually working ok, so I would be very happy as long as nothing changes for worse.

I only have the experience of my mother, who used hearing aids in her last years. The ones I have seen, consist of a silicon-like part that is moulded exactly to the most external part of your ear conduct and therefore fits in it very tightly. Most probably it does not allow most of the surrounding sounds to enter the ear directly. This cast piece is connected to the hearing aid device through a plastic, flexible tube and the hearing aid device is placed between the ear upper part and the head. The amplified sound is transmitted through this tube, from the external device electronics to the cast silicon part and from there into the ear conduct.

You may be using different type, such as a fully in-ear device. If this is the case, although it may be an impractical idea and probably an expensive one, perhaps you could consider changing them to the type I described, at least for you music activity.

Oh, now we have really taken this thread off-topic. Sorry for that, Okra.

I am using a behind the ear model, and agree they are a good choice. The earmold is unfortunately not created to block noise out. It does block some unwanted sound to reduce the acoustic feedback to the microphone, but is not good enough to actually block out noise. There usually is a ventilation hole, and there is more leaking around the earmold even when it's well fit compared to ear plugs.

I found this rather academic paper on the topic. (It's written by a company so it might be biased):
http://www.e-a-r.com/pdf/hearingcons/earlog18.pdf

I hope to upgrade hearing aids sometime next year, so I will definitly discuss this with the audiologist. Maybe there is a choice between different materials for the earmold, and then I would like one that is good at blocking noise.

Thanks for caring!