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Re: Playing with Hearing Aids

Author: Ken Lagace
Date: 2018-03-03 22:34

When I got my first hearing aids and heard my sound, I wanted to quit clarinet altogether. It was so screeching, because I needed high frequencies to hear speech better. I spent big bucks at a Miracle Ear place and after 5 years, threw them away and went to an audiologist who has worked with Baltimore Symphony musicians. She was very patient with me and worked many sessions tweaking a Phonak system. The best results I had were by guessing at few settings, then playing for some clarinet players I respected testing the guessed programs against what the clarinet players heard, and trying to memorize the sound they liked that I was hearing, then back for another session with the audiologist. The end result is that you have to relearn a new sound that is the one you want listeners to hear. I work in a community band and some older players who don't use their hearing aids sound really terrible, recreating the higher frequencies in their sound that they need to hear without their HA's. My audiologist said that clarinet players are particularly difficult to please. Maybe it is the odd overtones we work with?

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