Hack Sounds residency
The last week of March 2022 I saw an opportunity to attend a residency with Hack Sounds in Sydney. They would be experimenting to discover how to create the best music experience for the d/Deaf and hard of hearing community. (Lower case d refers to those who cannot hear while upper case d refers to those who identify as part of the Deaf community. They choose the Deaf culture. Not all deaf people do while many HoH people do.)
I naturally applied as this is exactly the vision for my business Wheelie Good Productions, plus I am HoH and immerse myself in the Deaf community and I have not enjoyed listening to music in years. April 1st I get the call offering me the last position. 5 hearing musicians, 2 Deaf and 2 HoH musicians and 1 Deaf lady who wants to enjoy music. There were others from both communities joining online following what we were doing. Only issue was that I had 5 days to find a support worker and rental car during Easter holidays. People running the program got COVID and other things got in the way for me, other participants and organisers, yet it came together with last minute changes. So hats off to all.
It was an absolute joy to work in my chosen field using Auslan and English. Most won’t know, but Auslan is my preferred language. I was beyond thrilled I got to work alongside Asphyxia. She is one of my favourite Deaf authors, a composer and an artist. She’s come up great ideas on how to make music accessible to deaf and HoH people including a free online course.
Now to what we learned.
Asphyxia takes the melody down into the bass range. Since bass sound waves are quite big, they can travel much further than treble pus through walls etc… this also makes bass vibrations easy for us to feel. One of the hearing musicians brought a sub pack. We ran the melody in the bass octave from one of Asphixia’s songs through the sub pack for me to feel. It was a clean vibration making it easy to feel distinct information unlike how vibrations are normally felt. She signed the lyrics and played the treble through a normal speaker. It was the best music experience I have ever had. Feeling every pitch including those i cant hear with amazing clarity, seeing the lyrics and hearing in unison provided a complete experience. I actually felt the melody quite clearly. It moved in pitch around my hand with changing colour and intensity! I didn’t know that was possible. So for those unable to hear anything this is still quite enjoyable.
The next day we connected my phone to 2 speakers. The bass speaker taped to a wooden box as bass sound waves travel through porous surfaces, and the treble speaker taped to a metal container as thats best for them. With my left hand on the bass box and right hand on the treble, i listened to my piano compositions. Knowing them intimately meant I could correctly gauge what works. I noticed fast passages of quavers (eight notes) were best in the mid range. That’s where they were felt clearly without the vibrations being muddy. Treble is much harder to feel due to the sound waves being so small. Ironically thats also the octaves harder to hear for most people with hearing loss. Some lose the bass. Now the bass was fun to work with.
One note being played at a time keeps the vibrations clean but you can also play arpeggios or fast passages between those single notes with a good effect. Those fast passages provide smooth vibrations breaking up the silence between the rich full bass note vibrations. Of course its important to utilise silence too. A good musician knows how to shape (play) silence for the required musicality without which the experience of listening to or feeling music is unenjoyable. The lack of musicality produces a mechanical inexpressive experience.
The last day we focussed on how to create the clearest sound in regards to hearing and feeling music. Turns out we needed to lessen the mid range between 100-500 HZ. I started the week believing it possible to make music enjoyable for hearing, HoH and deaf. Happy to report I was right. This of course is just the beginning. How exciting it is to have a starting place thats been confirmed by others from different walks of life.
Sarah Styles
