Category: Testimonials

Mark Glentworth – composer & performer

I first noticed my hearing loss as a child but more significantly about 8 years ago.

I was always asking people to repeat themselves when in groups or in busy places and having to turn up the radio or TV.

 I found out about Harley Street Hearing through Help Musicians’ UK.

Wearing hearing aids has made a great difference as I can now hear everything and everyone. I can also turn them down in busy noisy places or when playing music.

My advice for anyone who is experiencing difficulties with their hearing is don’t be embarrassed about wearing hearing aids, they are discrete, and they will make such a difference to your life.

The team at Harley Street Hearing are amazing, very professional, I would highly recommend them.

Mark is a composer and performer and his recent new musical ‘seven and a half years’ is a true story of a man’s journey from success to despair and isolation back to a final rejuvenation, portrayed through the power of Music and Words. 

For details on Seven and a half years the musical click here

To contact Mark Glentworth click here

Eats Everything Music

My name is Eats Everything, and I am a DJ/Producer.

I first noticed tinnitus and hearing deterioration in around 2003 I think, it has got ever so slightly worse ever since!

I came to Musicians’ Hearing Services because I had always used over the counter plugs, so I needed some proper ones. They have made a massive difference to my life and I cannot thank you enough for helping me out.

My advice would be to other musicians and DJ’s to get yourself a pair of proper Earplugs as soon as it is humanly possible, otherwise it will be too late. 

 The service from Musicians’ Hearing Services has been absolutely outstanding, Very professional and lovely.

EatsEverything

DJ Hiatus

I love my hearing, though you wouldn’t have guessed from the way I used to treat it.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years producing electronic music, often on headphones to avoid annoying neighbours at antisocial hours; I’ve spent countless weekends in clubs, clinging to speakers when I wasn’t DJing myself; and I’ve played keys in several bands, often seated within deafening distance of an ear-piercing arsenal of cymbals.

I occasionally bought disposable earplugs from the chemist and left them to gather dust in a drawer: like many musicians, I chose not to think about long-term damage to a sense I believed I’d be able to rely on forever.

Until I first heard the ringing – similar to the sort I used to get after a night of heavy clubbing, but infinitely more unsettling.

I was running around the park when it started, and the sound was so sudden and distinct that I found myself having to sit down, a single word forcing itself to the front of my mind as I struggled to banish it from my thoughts: tinnitus.

That night I lay in bed listening to what sounded like a distant orchestra tuning up in a part of my head to which I had no access. I didn’t sleep a wink, and the next morning I called my friend Eddy Temple-Morris, a DJ and musician who has long been campaigning for greater awareness of the condition he’s suffered from since his early teens.

Some of the things Eddy told me about tinnitus – that’s it’s generally permanent and incurable, for example – compounded my fear; others, such as the number of famous musicians working with the condition, were reassuring.

Most memorably, he told me that at that moment I was in a bad place – my most trusted sense turning against me, my head filled with dark thoughts and a distressing sound I couldn’t control – but that things would get better; that my brain would learn to tune the sound out and turn it down, something I didn’t dare believe at the time, but which has mercifully proved to be true.

In the meantime, he told me that as soon as I had a chance I needed to get myself to a specialist clinic and do the thing I’d been putting off for the better part of two decades: I needed to buy myself a pair of professional ear defenders.

Eddy put me in touch with Geraldine at Harley Street Hearing, who saw me the following day. The ear defenders turned up a week later, just in time for a DJ gig I’d been dreading since the onset of the ringing.

I needn’t have worried; with the earplugs in I found myself capable of hearing what was happening on stage better than I ever had in the past – the plugs filter out resonant frequencies, which means there’s no booming bass, no deadening mid-range or screeching top-end to drown out acoustic subtleties while they batter your hearing.

I was even able to pick out the voices of people around me in the club, something I’d not been able to do for years.

I’ve since played more shows, all of them with the earplugs in place, and the sense of hope it’s given me to know that I can still perform as well as produce music is priceless.

I only wish I’d started wearing them fifteen years ago, but hindsight isn’t a whole lot of use in these situations.

Music has the power to make us feel invincible, and it’s easy not to think about long-term damage to our hearing when it’s a sense we rely on so much.

But if you’re cranking up headphones to hear yourself mix in a club, if you’re producing your own music on maxed out monitor speakers, if you’re playing on stage near a drummer annihilating a set of cymbals – or if you are that drummer – if you’re doing any of these things and you’re not wearing ear protection, then you will have to think about long-term damage to your hearing, and it’s not going to be in a hypothetical, reading-an-article-on-the-internet sort of way.

If you love music, then you love your hearing. Get some proper ear defenders, and your hearing will love you back.

DJ Hiatus

Foreign Beggars

I have been dj-ing over the last 10 years and have used Musicians’ Hearing Services ear plugs for half of that, now everyone in the group have a pair!

After a few times performing with the -15 db filters it became completely natural, and now I can actually hear things a lot more clearly on stage and in the dj booth than without them.

Tinnitus is a problem that a lot of young people I know have and proper hearing protection is the best investment I have ever made. Geraldine is the best in the game”.

James / DJ Nonames (Foreign Beggars)

Andy Spence, New Young Pony Club

3 people in NYPC use Elacin earplugs and we all agree they are the best way to protect your ears without ruining the sound you hear. Musicians’ Hearing Services have always been very professional and considerate when fitting the plugs so we don’t hesitate to recommend them for ear protection or any other hearing needs.

Andy Spence – guitarist
New Young Pony Club

Ben Watt, Everything But The Girl

It is hard to overestimate the importance of ear protection in clubs. 

I still believe in not wearing them for short periods to experience  the sheer tumult of load music as a physical experience from time to  time, especially on a well-tuned sound system with no distortion (the main culprit for ear damage), but as a DJ, I wear them for five out of every six minutes, removing them only to hear the transition from one record into the next as the club hears it. Otherwise I wear them at all times these days in all clubs.

I have used moulded earplugs from Musicians’ Hearing Services for five years now.  The sound reduction is pretty even across all frequencies allowing for accurate sound mixing. It also actually improves your ability to hear conversations as extraneous non-voice frequencies and distortion are reduced. I make use of the different filters too. 9db – 15db reduction in small clubs. 25db reduction for big systems.

If I could make one improvement it would be a modification where you could open and close the filter without removing the plug itself. This would make life much easier and prevent loss of both the plug and filter on the dark floor of every nightclub!

I would also like to see clubs obliged to provide improved and user-specific ear protection for all employees; bar staff particularly, who take orders from people shouting into their ear as well as enduring the loud volumes of the music. Foam plugs are not enough.

We live in an age where live music is loud and constant. Ear damage is for life once it strikes.

When you are young you expect the ringing in your ears will go away in the morning, but without precautions one day you will wake up and it won’t.

Ben Watt
Everything But The Girl