My Background in the music industry
I grew up as a hard rock drummer during the glamorous 80 melodic hard rock scene. We rehearsed and recorded with our local bands in small concrete basement rehearsal rooms with terrible acoustics.
My first recording studio
1990 I established my first professional recording studio, located in Avesta in Sweden. Recording and production was my main interest. It was a small 8-track reel-to-reel studio the old-fashioned way, synchronized with SMTPE to a Mac Classic running Cubase 1.1
Live sound engineer
During year of 2000 I started working more at live venues as a live sound engineer, in combination with my passion for composing music and sound art.
Composer, musician & Sound artist
Composing and performing music has always been my great passion and the meaning of my life. My sound engineer career has been an important part to develop my expert skills in music and sound production. And even though sound engineering and music composer and creator seems like 2 different careers, I have so much use of them both in combination through my working life.
Just like many of my colleagues, I developed tinnitus and a small hearing loss dip around 4Khz in my hearing. Strangely enough to accept tinnitus seems to be the normal state for us people spending our adult life working with music. That alone is just crazy – that we in the music industry accept tinnitus as a normal state of what we do.
That first tinnitus was a big wake up call for me and I decided I did not want my hearing to get any worse than what it was. I decided that I needed to start protecting my ears during jobs and concert’s that where to loud. I invested in a pair of Bellman & Symfon earplugs, custom molded after my ear canals shape, and i started using them to protect my ears for further damage.
Custom molded earplugs
Molded earplugs are not cheap, around 250 €, but it is one of the best spent investment I have ever done. As you probably know, the big difference with custom molded earplugs are that they will bring down the sound level with a pretty much close to flat frequency response. They come with different filters, so that you can switch how much sound you want them to bring down the sound volume.
It is not only in music situations they are useful. They are just awesome in any noisy environment where it might be difficult to hear what other people are saying. Try them at a noisy restaurant and you will discover that you will start hearing the voices of your friends at the table so much better than without the earplugs.
If you decide that you are going to invest in custom molded ear plugs, which I really recommend you to, there is one thing to keep in mind.
If you are a vocalist, you will want to make sure that they make the molds as deep as possible in to the ear canal. That will prevent the occlusion effect from becoming to strong.
The occlusion effect is sensation of increased loudness, and it sounds like you hear your voice through the vibration of your own skull bone, when the ear drum is blocked. Try to put your fingers in your ear and talk (or sing) and you will hear how the lower frequencies will resonate and sounds stronger.
If you create molded ear plugs that goes deeper in to the ear canal, the occlusion effect gets so much less prominent, and it gets a lot easier to sing.
This is also true if you are ordering in-ear monitors to use on stage. And yes – if you are planning on getting in-ear monitors, than custom molded ear pieces is the only way to go. Don’t use these cheap ones that comes without extra cost with the wireless transmitters, these are in most cases total crap. Think of in-ear monitors like studio monitors – you really want’s to buy the best ones you can, and they will stick with you for many many years. Performing with bad in-ear monitors is an awful experience, and does not makes performing a fun experience any more.
Most people that complains about that they don’t like in-ear monitors most of the times has only tried these cheap ones, in combination that they did not take the time to create a great mix in the the pre-production/rehearsal situation. In-ear montiors cant be tried for the first time on a stage in a live situation, you need time to prepare for that. I think I will be getting back to this topic since there is very much to talk about.