Music & Hearing

by K. Rajalakshmi

India is a country with a huge diversity in culture and language. Indian music is one of the oldest types of music and is rich in its content and variation. Researching any one variety of music or mastering it is a lifetime task. It is very interesting to study and understand how music learning facilitate the enhanced auditory processing in musicians. A more interesting field of study would be how long term exposure to loud music could lead to deterioration in hearing. The topics covered will include how musical sounds are coded by the ear. Hearing is one of the important senses which builds bridges between what we hear and how we speak. Hearing plays a vital role in learning and performing music. Musicians spend a lot of time fine tuning their musical skills through hearing. If this training begins at an early age, their auditory processing gets enhanced owing to the fact that their listening training is continuously becoming complex with every new lesson in music. There are plenty of studies and research on speech perception but the research on music perception and hearing in musicians is scarce.When it comes to the Indian context, the research on music and hearing is still in its infancy. Over the past few years, as a faculty in audiology, the author discovered that music perception, understanding the hearing sense of musicians, auditory processing in musicians and prolonged exposure to music will cause deterioration in hearing in musicians. This book will contribute a lot to the understanding of normal hearing behavior. With this notion in mind, different studies were taken up to understand how musicians are different from non-musicians. These studies have opened up a lot of avenues to study the auditory behavior of musicians. Consequently, the author has added valuable research in this single compilation for the benefit of beginners in the field of audiology, music and those interested in the research of music. This book would be useful for the students of audiology, physics, music and other allied professionals interested in music and hearing.