Musical pitches

Evokes memories of King Crimson, who along with Procol Harum, and Genesis (all live) in Chicago circa 1974), may have been the root cause of my hearing loss!

Keith & Julie were amazing together, as well.

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Lucky guy! Well except for the long term outcome. :slight_smile: I learned of Tippet and many other artists through their work with KC, its members and offshoots. I was a few years late to the genre. Missed almost all the fun.

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Perhaps it’s time for a visit to your audi. Or, think of another brand. Widex has been known to be preferred by musicians.

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Hello. Just signed up here.
A Google search brought me here as I have exactly the same problem.
I am a hobby pianist only, not a musician. I had my piano professionally re-tuned earlier this year, but the problem remains: notes above around F5 (~700Hz) sound wildly off-key, sharp by more than a semitone in some cases.
It’s not just my piano. Recorded music I listen to also shows the same effect. It’s driving me nuts!
I have a pair of Widex MRR4D’s with three different programmes set by the audiologist but none of the settings solve the problem.
Yes I’m late coming to this thread and I haven’t read all the posts yet, but I’ll try to do so. In the meantime, any advice? Should I go back to the audiologist?

Same for me f#5 to a#5 all sharp g# & a practically a semitone sharp. I don’t think there is a solution, some music I just can’t listen to if there are sustained melody notes on those notes.

Interesting- I have found Keith’s music to be very irritating. My husband is a fan. It’s likely I may have hearing loss all along and just didn’t realize it until my mid forties.

Assuming frequency shifting is turned off in your hearing aids, I wonder if “recruitment” is responsible? My simplistic understanding is as parts of the brain lose signal from the cochlea they recruit connections to nearby parts of the cochlea. I’ve noticed some pitch ambiguity with soft sounds, perhaps you need aids adjusted for increasing hearing loss? Recruitment is normally discussed as a problem leading to intolerance of loud sounds though (at a certain volume now the brain is getting too many inputs or something?)

I love his piano playing, but hate his vocalizing!

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Thanks for the comments: it’s a relief to learn I’m not unique!

A bit of tech. stuff from the music point of view, if you’ll bear with me.

Those familiar with the acoustic piano’s working will know that it is not tuned to exact equal temperament right across the range: instead it is ‘stretched’ with the highest notes being tuned a bit sharp and the lowest a bit flat. This stretching is characterised in a function known as the Railsback curve, which is unique to each piano, and all tuners work to that principle when tuning the piano. The stretch can amount to as much as 30 cents (1/3 of a semitone) but never a whole semitone.

The reason for this stretch is to compensate for the fact that, because of the strings’ stiffness, a note played on a piano does not exhibit true harmonics. The same is true of any plucked stringed instrument such as a guitar or a violin played pizzicato (but not when bowed). A piano sounds ‘in tune’ to a normal listener when it is tuned with this stretch.

But clearly I am not a ‘normal’ listener. I am hearing high notes sharp when they are actually in tune.

If there exists a hearing aid which can ‘unstretch’ the high notes - lower the pitch - as presented to me - that might be a solution. Indeed my current hearing aids might support that, but I won’t know till I ask the audiologist.

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Indeed, reading this thread having Perfect Pitch may be a curse! That said people with PP can listen to piano without going bunker but freak out if another instrument is a cent out of tune. Never understood that.

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There is no such hearing aid. This is a quite common consequence of having a damaged cochlear or cochlears and there is nothing to be done about it sadly. The medical term Is diplacusis.

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There is such thing as frequency shifting happening jn some hearing aids as far as I understand. Whether you have control over it is another, matter.

That is a completely different thing. All that does is shift higher frequencies (which the user can’t hear) into lower frequencies that they can hear. It’s ok with speech but quite unsuitable for music and music programs always have it switched off.

Normally the user can’t turn it on or off, but the audiologist can, using the fitting software.

But it’s a single shift for all frequencies above a certain level, so not intended for and not helpful with the problem where individual musical notes appear flat or sharp.

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Thanks again. From what you say, seems like I have no solution. But I’ll be seeing my audiologist on Tuesday and I’ll be putting these questions to her. Maybe she can refer me to someone or something…

Another option, though it sounds a bit silly, would be to have my piano ‘de-tuned’ so that it ‘sounds right’ to me, if not to anyone else! Then I could get back into practice and play it for my own entertainment… I could even try a d-i-y job: I have a set of tuning tools and I’ve done it before on a different piano (in the days when my hearing was still OK). But I’m loath to tamper with my present piano - I bought it fairly recently and I’d certainly invalidate the warranty!

I’ll have to either give up, or see if there’s some sort of solution out there. Back in the audiologist’s corner…

Doesn’t exist, but it would be cool as hell if it did.

Maybe you could work with your piano tuner to re-tune the piano so as to not violate the warranty. I’d like to think that a curious tuner would be interested in your problem.

On the other hand, maybe if you play some songs that you are very familiar with over and over on the piano that you know is in tune, your brain will unstretch the notes for you. :grin:

Why not make a recording of yourself playing, and take it to your appointment?
Ask the audi to create a program that sounds natural to you, and you don’t have to de-tune your piano.

Didn’t he say it sounds that way even without his hearing aids?

Idk if he did, but if even if so, could his audi set up an eq’d program?
How flexible are widex in allowing a parametric eq fitting?
I’m just speculating here (hear), as I’m no qualified audio pro.

They can’t pitch shift though.

Too bad, but thanks.
Far out thought:
my mind is playing tricks. I thought of microphone piano >peq>amp>headphones?
Probably not!