CRAIG BLUNDELL: It’s all in your head
Craig Blundell says helping drummers look after their hearing can be an important part of a retailer’s offering…
When I have a little bit of time off I always scour around the odd forum looking for interesting subjects that come up, whether it be new drummers, new products which I always have an interest in or general drum chit chat. If you can get past the usual forum police there usually is some good debate to be had.
As with most intelligent debate, it changes with trends.
More recently, aside from the millions of ‘what’s your favourite [insert drum or player here]?’ it has moved on to monitoring and hearing protection and something that a lot of drummers are starting to take seriously. And rightly so.
It is crazy how many drummers play around the world and how many don’t wear plugs. I remember touring with Gregg Bisonnette a few years back and at the start of his clinic he really hit home with this issue. The man had a point. Even now when I’m involved in sound design projects, I’ll get the odd day where the ears aren’t what they should be and sometimes I go back the next day after a session and listen to the level my in-ears were at and it’s staggering!
I genuinely think we could all do more to push plugs and headphones, I’d love to see the statistic of guys that just thrash with no plugs in and a monitor that goes up to 11.
With the increasingly nuts world of health and safety all around us, I hear lots of my old friends saying their gig was shut down because they hit a snare with their stick and it tripped the limiter. Volume is taken really seriously in public circles but never really seems an issue to a parent buying a kit that is going to be played in a tiny 10×10 space.
Is it worth educating more consumers on hearing in store? It’s a ridiculously loud instrument we all play and if everyone knew the long-term issues it could cause, a set of plugs or headphones on the transaction is a minor price to pay for a life of hearing our instrument clearly.
We only have two of them. For me, probably not quite that many.