How to Improve Your Listening and Musical Skill

Improve your Musical Pitch

If you’re a musician or a singer, then you know the importance of being able to hear pitch accurately to sing or play an instrument in tune. Being exposed to loud music as band and orchestra members and professional singers are has the potential to cause damage to the auditory system.

Pitch discrimination and listening problems can be caused by loud noise, illness, psychological trauma, head injury and weak muscle tone. Did you know we have muscles attached to the hammer and stirrup bones in our ears? These muscles must  have good tone to help us tune out background noise and avoid being overly sensitive to sound.

If you are wondering how you can improve your pitch discrimination, voice and musical skill, then training at Brain Works can help you…

• Strengthen the middle ear muscles, pitch discrimination and vocal quality.
• Improve your musical skill through brain plasticity, enabling you to make amazing new artistic connections.

Improve Your Pitch Discrimination and Vocal Quality through Auditory Training.

Auditory training was developed by a man named Dr. Alfred Tomatis. He spent his childhood traveling with his father, an opera singer. And although he was exposed to fine music at an early age, his parents decided that he wasn’t well-suited for the stage. So instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he went on to become and ear, nose, and throat physician.

Throughout his career, Dr. Tomatis treated many singers with vocal problems. At the time, there was little research on the voice, and Dr. Tomatis soon found that conventional treatments were ineffective. After much research, he developed the theory that vocal problems and listening problems were related.

With regard to opera singers, he thought that the high volume of their voices caused the muscles of their middle ears to tune out their hearing over time. Their ears would do this tuning out, he thought, to protect the delicate inner ear. The result would be diminished pitch discrimination resulting in a poor quality of singing voice.

To test this hypothesis, Tomatis prevented a singer from hearing certain frequencies by blocking his ears. When he  sang, his voice deteriorated immediately. Dr. Tomatis concluded that by retraining the weakened muscles of the middle ear that are attached to the hammer and stirrup bones, one could restore their strength. This would effectively improve the singer’s hearing and vocal skill.

His method of modified music training focuses on the following areas:

• The auditory system for listening with greater accuracy and focus, tuning out background noise, and experiencing less sound sensitivity.
• The vestibular system for better balance, motor coordination, and muscle tone.
• The brain for improved sensory integration, eye contact, speech, language, thinking, memory, and attention span.
• The emotions for greater motivation, optimism, and self-confidence.

At Brain Works, we utilize Tomatis-based listening training to help our clients. We offer many options, from personally supervised sessions to at-home programs designed for personal use.  See Auditory Training. Please contact us for a consultation to learn more about how to improve your hearing and vocal skill.