Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Music to My Ears by Bethany Holl



I am a musician. I have played the piano for over 12 years and recently picked up guitar and ukulele. Music is such a big part of my life. I enjoy it everyday and without it, life would be so boring. Have you ever wondered how you can enjoy such good music from simple tunes by Ben Rector or the harmonies from Pentatonix?     How can you hear that?
Our auditory system converts pressure waves into meaningful sounds that our brain can understand (OpenStax College, 2014). This translates into our ability to hear and to enjoy the beauty of music. It also allows us to communicate with the people around us.
The ear can be divided into three main parts; outer ear, middle ear and inner ear. The inner ear contains the semi-circular canals, which are involved in balance and movement, and the cochlea. The cochlea is a fluidfilled, snail-shaped structure that contains the sensory receptor cells of the auditory system (OpenStax College, 2014). When sound strikes the ear, it is intercepted by the auricle or earlobe and is channelled through the external auditory canal via the eardrum to the middle ear (Grewe et al., 2013).
The success of the internal ear is brought about by its 32,000 hair cells. These are the receptors in the cochlea responsible for our sensitivity to sound. You should always be careful of high intensity sounds, which could damage your inner ear. These hair cell in the auditory system are extremely vulnerable. In comparison to loss of photoreceptors in your eye which might result in a very small blindspot, damage to 166,000 hair cells would mean profound deafness (Hudspeth, 1989).
References
Hudspeth, A. J. (1989). How the ear’s works work. Nature Publishing Group, 341, 397-398.
OpenStax College (2014). Psychology. Houston, TX: Rice University. Retrieved from
            http://cnx.org/content/co111629/latest/>.
Grewe, J., Thiele, C., Mojallal, H., Raab, P., Sankowsky-Rothe, T., Lenarz, T., Blau, M., &
Teschner, M. (2013). New HRCT-Based Measurement of the human outer ear canal as a basis for acoustical methods. American Journal of Audiology, 22(1), 65-73.  doi: 10.1044/1059-0889(2012/12-0039)

1 comment:

  1. Last year marked 50 years for me on piano and organ. Your post struck a chord with me (pun intended). I've often wondered at the marvelous creation of the ear, especially when I hear an instrument out of tune. Yesterday I was listening to a talented musician playing the piano in Hall Student Union, and I could tell the instrument was in dire need of tuning. How is it my ear can pick out that deficiency and at the same time know when another piano is in perfect shape? Maybe that has more to do with the brain than the ear, but I still enjoyed listening to the artist as she played, despite the tuning (or lack thereof).

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