Is it still possible to produce correctly with hearing loss ?

[Googly Smythe]

This woman (Evelyn Glennie) has been profoundly deaf since she was a kid. Beethoven conducted an orchestra when he was deaf. Get over yourself and enjoy making music. Who gives a sh*t what people think of your music?! And yes, I also am half-deaf in one ear. When I turn up the hi-hat so that I can hear it, my wife winces.

[thecontrolcentre]

I am 20.
I have no musical name, page, on the internet.

But thanks to hardworking I have already made many songs featuring artists from Armada, or XFactor for example,
wich have been published in small label.
I also worked for mixing purposes as a freelancer.

So you are already successful, and you are only 20 ... it took me 10 years hard work to get my music released on a small label. My advice is continue making & writing music, and ignore family, and anyone else who tells you otherwise. Self believe is really important when it comes to creativity. Go prove the haters wrong.

[BertKoor]

But would you be happy to know that you will NEVER reach your goals ?

The answer to that is yes for the majority of us. We all know deep in our hearts that we dream of goals we never realisticly can achieve. But yet you keep on going chasing that stupid dream of producing a hit so you can quit that stupid job.

[Aleatoriac]

Who gives a sh*t what people think of your music?!

(Raises hand) I don't.
Speak up children, I can't hear you.

[slipstick]

Who cares what other people think? Making music is a personal experience. If you enjoy it, then do it ... and please stop opening new threads to talk about the exact same issue as in your (many) previous threads.

But would you be happy to know that you will NEVER reach your goals ?

That all you will achieve will be crappy things ?...

It's simpler than that. If listening to you friends and family and all this worrying about your tiny little hearing problem makes you unhappier than giving up making music would then give up.

But didn't you say that music was your passion, your reason for living? If that is anywhere near true then giving up music would make you more unhappy than carrying on would, even with some small problem to overcome. So you'll carry on.

You get to decide. But I have to say that if you can't stand things being less than perfect and you can't take people having opinions about your music or your life then making music is probably not for you.

Steve

[jancivil]

Mixing/audio engineering is a different matter. It's that person's job to shape the sound best for the medium/room/whatever and with that you can probably get away with normal age-related high frequency loss, but once you get severe loss in the low thousands you'll need a lot of monitoring tools and reference material to ensure you are still mixing for the standard ear.

To NotreDame: see this and be done. This is it, to the extent of that loss you will need help and advice you can trust as well as technical help as mentioned.

For the record, my hearing is not balanced perfectly left to right, weaker on the right. I compensate and guesstimate. Some of what I've put out is not perfectly balanced and sometimes that's how I mean it (who knows the difference?). It depends on how much you care about convention (or opinions such as coming from your family who are abusive to you frankly), too.

[deastman]

I think the more important topic here is your family convincing you to stop making music, rather than a minor hearing inconsistency. Your family may be concerned that you have unrealistic expectations, and they want you to have a stable career which will bring you more success and security in life than you can reasonably expect from music. That is reasonable and responsible of them. But if they are truly ridiculing you and trying to undermine your goals and ambitions, that is something else entirely. If you want this badly enough, you will sacrifice anything to get it. That means ignoring the critics. But you also need to be realistic- what is your plan? How will you develop a successful career in music? What specific steps will you take to reach your goals? What is your backup plan in case it doesn't work out? Or how will you support yourself while trying to establish your music career over the course of ten years? Be ambitious, but be smart about it.

[metamorphosis]

Your brain's designed to compensate for hearing less of one frequency or another - that is how tinnitus happens, for the most part (reduction of hearing in certain frequency area to -infDB produces amplification of (essentially) electrical noise in that same area).
Some of the best producers have very weirdly fluctuating response graphs on their hearing tests - it doesn't matter.
Certainly something to keep in mind but not something to worry about.

[aciddose]

What does everyone think? Maybe nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine out of a million cases music is not a career without a lot more struggle and hardship that other paths.

People always should take into account the "starving musician". This has been the case for all of recorded history!

https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-t ... g-musician

Only the very top artists ever actually profit from composition, production or performance. That's because if you're an average guitarist/singer/whatever there are probably a million others exactly like you lining up to do the same work for free.

You can only succeed if you're completely above and beyond that point.

Not just slightly better...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilnnMzK_m8w

If people are telling you that you're total shit: maybe take that into account.

Of course manure is perhaps not a thriving industry but nonetheless a successful one especially with "green" and "organic" trends. Being a low-grade manure producer may be a very niche path to take so you have to be very selective about targeting your market.

[incubus]

(very displeased face)

Am I the only one who read this as "hearing loss" not "going completely deaf" ??????

[deastman]

Only the very top artists ever actually profit from composition, production or performance. That's because if you're an average guitarist/singer/whatever there are probably a million others exactly like you lining up to do the same work for free.

You can only succeed if you're completely above and beyond that point.

Not just slightly better...

I don't think that is quite right. You have to have the skills, no doubt about it. And the good looks. And the confidence and ambition to shamelessly self-promote. But I don't think you need to be head and shoulders above everyone else. If you have the prerequisites met, you only need one more thing: luck. Because sure, there are plenty of other people who are more qualified than you, but that doesn't mean you won't make it. You just need luck. Easy, right?

[incubus]

Who cares, and why are you encouraging them?

Here's all you need to know about "producin"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuZawlDqJZk

Know what I'm sayin????????????????????

[aciddose]

If you have the prerequisites met, you only need one more thing: luck. Because sure, there are plenty of other people who are more qualified than you, but that doesn't mean you won't make it. You just need luck. Easy, right?

It all depends upon how you define "make it".

If you mean own a house, cars, maintain a fair size family, take vacations and such ($200k equiv. income) then yes this is way, way, way beyond the range of what most musicians are capable of.

The sad fact of the matter is most musicians who are out touring or working in the studio, whether they're producing soundtracks or doing post-production work or so on are barely scraping by. That is entirely due to the fact there are a near unlimited supply of individuals willing to do the same work "at cost" (= for free, profit not possible) with the same skills.

Only the very brightest manage to profit much at all. Yes, a very significant portion of that is luck although talent is not to be underestimated. As you mentioned there are many aspects of talent including promotion and getting on the good side of people you need to know.

For everyone else it is purely a labor of love: sacrifices that are almost completely unfathomable to most people are made on a regular basis just to keep doing what you love.

It isn't anything like a reasonable choice between careers in deciding which college courses to take. Choosing a career in music means a very high probability of near-poverty, nearly zero free time, lack of any sort of stability and so on.

If it's "dental assistant" vs. "musician": dental assistant wins every time.

This is made clear by the fact a very significant portion of people in the music industry do not do so full-time but rather maintain a "day job" to allow them to do music as a hobby.

[Musicisbest]

Not everyone looses hearing exactly the same.
Some find that high frequencies are more dull, others just volume.

If you lost essentially just volume, you will find you can still mix fine at higher levels.
Its when you cant hear the full spectrum that you will have problems mixing.

[whyterabbyt]

If you mean own a house, cars, maintain a fair size family, take vacations and such ($200k equiv. income) then yes this is way, way, way beyond the range of what most musicians are capable of.

200k income is way, way, way beyond the range of what most humans are capable of.