Tinnitus Audio Streaming

Could I ever do it? Let people know what I hear?

Last night in a fit of insomnia, I remembered that people buy tracks consisting of the sound of white noise in order to help them get to sleep. I had a listen to the different layers of tinnitus in my head. The jangling is the loudest, followed by the whistling, which is really high pitched and intermittent. Then there's the high and constant sound that can only be described as the sound you'd hear in the background when the old-fashioned tube TV was on: ultra-high in pitch, and a sort of electrical tone. Underneath all this there is the roar and this is what I tried to tune into, to raise the level almost as though it was being mixed on a mixing desk. Sure enough, the rest of the noise fell into place around it.

What was weird was that by tuning into this low noise, I began to hear another sound: the pulse of my heartbeat. Once I'd tuned into this, I fell asleep.

I'm due to see a doctor about all this in December. Many musicians experience tinnitus, and we talk about ti a lot and know that it is permanent. We live with it, and suffer fools gladly as they recommend solutions that don't work. We can still hear though it, which is the most important thing: one of the best mastering engineers I knew, Colm O'Rourke, listened through it all and finished a lot of ace tracks despite it all.

Ting-a-ling!