I Miss Music

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SimplyMints

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Okay, this is getting a little harder now than it was at first. This is an issue I don't think I want professional help on, but I want personal experiences. Now, the doctor did tell me that I have no hearing left, but these past few days, I've been feeling like a really miss listening to music a lot, especially the soft gentle "feel good" music I used to listen to when I needed something to make me smile. Today, I tried a little experiment. I plugged in an amplifier to my TV's audio system and cranked the sound system volume to max, the TV volume to max, and the amp to max, and I sandwiched my head between the two speakers, then I played the end credits for Lord of the Rings (Two Towers). The speakers sure vibrated!!, and I could feel the wind blow from them really well, and I even smelled something or other from them, but there was still no sound. I'm sure that was a stupid thing to do, but I figured I had nothing to lose but good relations with my neighbours. I live on a farm, so there's a good chance they still didn't hear it.

I wonder if there's anybody reading this who lost their hearing around my age who used to enjoy soft/relaxing music. I'd like to know what you've done to cope with it, and I don't wanna hear what a counsellor would say. I wanna hear your own experiences. Of course, anybody who has something to say can say it. I know people who liked music with a heavy beat could just vibrate their chair or whatever, but that doesn't work with the kind of music I'm thinking about.

Another question I had which I think is on this topic is, if you run a sub woofer without speakers, is there still sound? Would I annoy other people in the house if I did that? I'm home alone this weekend, so I'm trying all sorts of experiments with converting music to something I can perceive, lol!

Really, I'm not feeling depressed or anything, and I feel like I'm coping really well, but I just really miss listening to my music.
 
How about finding stuff that converts music to light displays? That might work for people who like colors.
 
I think what I mean actually is I wanna know what you do instead of listen to music. iTunes and Windows Media Player make colourful lines and blobs and shapes sort of dance to the music, but it doesn't replace the music itself by a long shot. I've heard some people attribute their drinking or smoking to using them as a replacement for music when they became deaf, but I don't smoke or drink, and have no intention of starting. There's something unique about music that communicates a flowing stream of ever-changing feeling and emotion without words, without specific objects or actions. It's pure emotion and feeling. It lets your mind create the world out of that music.

Perhaps somebody who has been deaf since birth could tell me what might do those things for you. You've never heard music, so you have no preconcieved notions of what I hope to get out of it.

RedFox - do you mean something massively more advanced than the green circle that jiggles every time a drum sounds? Those things have a good idea, but need a lot more development. It would be quite a task, like reinventing music for video, but making it compatible with the data stream that recreates the original audio version.
 
I too totally miss music. I haven't found anything to replace it or take its place. While at church I can feel the drum beat, but that's all. Seeing the bars go up and down on the media player visualizations doesn't tell me if it was the piano, horns, string instruments or what. The only thing I have found that helps a little, is to read music that is designed for the full orchestra. It helps that I can read music as a lot of people are not able to. Other than that, I rely on memory to remember a song that was very relaxing and I find that if I watch the bars on my media player, I can remember what instrument was what for that song. My son has also taken the time (he's 13), to listen to my music and count the beats out and write out what instrument and puts whether the sound goes up or down. The paper looks like this:

Clarinet: heartbeat time, middle range, up, up, down, softly up loudly down

Something like that. He's been a real trooper with this, but I know he's rather not do it, so I only ask it of my most favorite relaxing songs.
 
KristinaB said:
I too totally miss music. I haven't found anything to replace it or take its place. While at church I can feel the drum beat, but that's all. Seeing the bars go up and down on the media player visualizations doesn't tell me if it was the piano, horns, string instruments or what. The only thing I have found that helps a little, is to read music that is designed for the full orchestra. It helps that I can read music as a lot of people are not able to. Other than that, I rely on memory to remember a song that was very relaxing and I find that if I watch the bars on my media player, I can remember what instrument was what for that song. My son has also taken the time (he's 13), to listen to my music and count the beats out and write out what instrument and puts whether the sound goes up or down. The paper looks like this:

Clarinet: heartbeat time, middle range, up, up, down, softly up loudly down

Something like that. He's been a real trooper with this, but I know he's rather not do it, so I only ask it of my most favorite relaxing songs.
Click to expand...

A similar thought also crossed my mind earlier this week, only it was about how I might enjoy the music I'm playing on my melodica and accordion. I play by following the music and pushing the right buttons at the right time, basically, and keeping time by watching the guitar hand, the violin bow, and my dad's foot as he taps it to keep time. It occurred to me that I think I would enjoy it much more if I had a score of all the instrument parts, and not just my part in front of me.

This gives me an idea. Because I've been reading and playing music all my life, it would mean a lot to me to see the music written out on a staff on music videos, similar to the way captions are written for the words. It would be especially useful if for instance the top half of the screen were devoted to the video (and captions, if applicable), and the bottom half were devoted to the musical scoring. It would be even better if the background colour behind the musical scoring would correspond to the mood of the music. It could even be more complex than just a single colour at any given time, though the colours should fade to different colours as the mood of the music changes, but there could be more than one colour on the screen at once, fluidly fading from one to the other across the screen, but these should all be soft colours in order to facilitate easily reading the music. I wish I had the skills to produce a prototype of this!! I can see it all so clearly in my mind! Unfortunately, I wouldn't even know where to begin! I think the colour programming would have to be done manually for each and every song. But then, so would the scoring, of course! Oh, on the scoring, I don't want just the notes, but every little accent, etcetera. LOL Thanks, now I have something beautiful to imagine at least
4.gif
 
Wait, perhaps I should add that unlike captions, the scoring should scroll fluidly across the screen at the rate the music plays, and perhaps the notes that are being played should glow a colour relative to the live volume the instruments playing them are .. um .. playing .. them (hmm, am I forgetting my English skills already?) =o
 
Oh, I sincerely wish there were enough people out there who would benefit from this that it would warrant some genuine musical and graphical artists taking the time and resources to develop it!
 
SimplyMints said:
I think what I mean actually is I wanna know what you do instead of listen to music. iTunes and Windows Media Player make colourful lines and blobs and shapes sort of dance to the music, but it doesn't replace the music itself by a long shot. I've heard some people attribute their drinking or smoking to using them as a replacement for music when they became deaf, but I don't smoke or drink, and have no intention of starting. There's something unique about music that communicates a flowing stream of ever-changing feeling and emotion without words, without specific objects or actions. It's pure emotion and feeling. It lets your mind create the world out of that music.

Perhaps somebody who has been deaf since birth could tell me what might do those things for you. You've never heard music, so you have no preconcieved notions of what I hope to get out of it.

RedFox - do you mean something massively more advanced than the green circle that jiggles every time a drum sounds? Those things have a good idea, but need a lot more development. It would be quite a task, like reinventing music for video, but making it compatible with the data stream that recreates the original audio version.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of stuff like this:

bomb visual music
 
How about singing in your mind, it doesnt work? I do it often (for example a couple minutes ago I was screaming in my head: Bye bye miss american pie :) I dont know how it got my mind ) . I also sing gibberish , I was doing it more often when I was a kid.. Sometimes outloud, sometimes in my mind.

I know its not like listening music , but still better than smoking or drinking like you said some people do..

-
 
Hermes said:
How about singing in your mind, it doesnt work? I do it often (for example a couple minutes ago I was screaming in my head: Bye bye miss american pie :) I dont know how it got my mind ) . I also sing gibberish , I was doing it more often when I was a kid.. Sometimes outloud, sometimes in my mind.

I know its not like listening music , but still better than smoking or drinking like you said some people do..

-
Click to expand...

Sometimes, some good music comes into my mind and I just listen to it play in my mind, like the other day, the Arwen/Aragorn theme (from Lord of the Rings) came into my head, and it was almost entrancing. When that happens, I enjoy it as long as I can. I don't know what brought it into my head either, but I'm glad it did. I wasn't doing anything to do with Lord of the Ring or anything Elvish or whatever, lol! I think I was vacuuming my bedroom or folding clothes or something mundane like that.
 
Have you tried any amplifications such as a auditory trainer to see if you benefit from it? Have you spoken to an audiologist about this issue?
 
deafbajagal said:
Have you tried any amplifications such as a auditory trainer to see if you benefit from it? Have you spoken to an audiologist about this issue?
Click to expand...

I've had several audiologists over the past 9 years. My current audiologist agrees that my hearing is gone, and I'm beyond technological assistance. I think my little experiment I did on myself on the 14th (first post on this thread) confirmed that fact to my not-so-technical brain.

However, EVERYBODY, I've gotten a lot of help from reading the things everybody has suggested on this thread, and I really appreciate it! I can't thank you enough for all the help you've provided! It didn't come in the form I was hoping for, but help rarely does. I'm feeling very very much better about my situation now than I was when I started this thread, and it's all because of all of you! :)
 
RedFox said:
I was thinking of stuff like this:

bomb visual music
Click to expand...

I forgot to mention, I did try this, but I can't seem to get it to work. It seems to want to draw the music from a microphone or a line-in. I'm playing my music on iTunes, which would route my audio to line-out and headphones.

On the other hand, I'm glad you suggested this because when I was in 9th and 10th grade, I was at a small school with a few old computers in the back of our one classroom that a friend of mine and I used to play around on, mostly programming funky little Qbasic art and games. We came across an old DOS program called Fractile that I took home and installed on my SoftWindows Mac. It worked very much like this program. However, over the years and the inevitable replacements of my computers that followed, I eventually lost that program, especially when newer versions of Windows reduced compatibility with DOS programs until they were useless. It's great to have this back, and yes, I do enjoy colours, haha! For all I know, the old DOS program I had those many years ago was an early stage in the development of this newer one.
 
are you comfortable with singing? I'm really not sure how other deaf people can "hear" their own voices, if at all. But when I belt songs out without my CI on it feels so much better than just thinking about them in your head. I still have a bit of residual hearing in one ear though, I don't know if it applies to you. Of course it's not the same as hearing the actual song, but I find it sort of liberating anyway...
 
kimpossible said:
are you comfortable with singing? I'm really not sure how other deaf people can "hear" their own voices, if at all. But when I belt songs out without my CI on it feels so much better than just thinking about them in your head. I still have a bit of residual hearing in one ear though, I don't know if it applies to you. Of course it's not the same as hearing the actual song, but I find it sort of liberating anyway...
Click to expand...

I can't hear my voice at all, but I can feel the vibration, so sometimes I humm or sing in the car when I'm alone, though I can't hear it. I probably sound horrible, rofl! I just follow the music in my head =D I make no effort to sing on key since there's no way I could have a clue, but it sounds good in my imagination!
 
How large of a speaker are you using? Physically you can get larger (and more dynamic) vibrations out of larger speaker cones. Sometimes I'll set with my back against one of my speakers, which are about three feet tall, and I can feel the vibrations in my chest. It gives you a pretty good feel of the dynamics.
 
aglaeca said:
How large of a speaker are you using? Physically you can get larger (and more dynamic) vibrations out of larger speaker cones. Sometimes I'll set with my back against one of my speakers, which are about three feet tall, and I can feel the vibrations in my chest. It gives you a pretty good feel of the dynamics.
Click to expand...

Haha, I'd love to try that :) but I'm hoping to find a solution that won't annoy the hearing members of my family :)

I had an idea. I have these little headphones that I've tried on, and I can feel a little bit of vibration inside of my nose and mouth. I'm just thinking if I got bigger, more robust headphones, maybe that vibration would be stronger. Hopefully, it doesn't cause a health risk though :hmm:

Oh, the speakers I used were just little ones. I didn't want my neighbours to call the cops on me :giggle:
 
SimplyMints said:
Oh, the speakers I used were just little ones. I didn't want my neighbours to call the cops on me
Click to expand...

One of the advantages of larger speakers is actually that you wouldn't have to crank them up as much. The amount of vibration they put out is physically larger at the same amplitude. One way to think of it is to imagine putting your hand against the paper speaker cones--you'll get more dynamic vibrations out of one the size of your whole hand than one that sits in your palm.

If you can feel the vibrations from a small pair of headphones, I'd definitely give larger headphones a try. They don't have to be particularly expensive--I use a pair of $25 phones from K-Mart, and they're another planet away from earbuds. The only important part is to make sure they're large enough to fit over your ears, rather than in or on them.
 
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