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Better Hearing In Old Age?

From Mediplacements.com

"Lifelong musicians experience fewer hearing problems in old age than those who do not play an instrument, it has been revealed.

"A study published in journal Psychology and Aging studied musicians who had began their training by the age of 16 and continued to practice until the day of testing.

"It was found that when it came to detecting sounds which grew increasingly quieter, musicians did not have an advantage in old age.

"Despite this, when it came to detecting a gap in sounds, identifying the relationship between different sound frequencies and the ability to hear speech among background noise, musicians fared better than their non-musical counterparts.

"This suggests that being a lifelong musician could combat age-related changes in the brain due to the constant use of their auditory systems on a high basis.

"Lead investigator Benjamin Rich Zendel said: 'What we found was that being a musician may contribute to better hearing in old age by delaying some of the age-related changes in central auditory processing.

" 'This advantage widened considerably for musicians as they got older when compared to similar-aged non-musicians.' "

Videos

For those of you who want to have a primer on finger picking:

A little video on making smoother chord transitions:

This is the first of what I hope to be a series of videos on guitar tips and tricks. This one demonstrates a basic strum that you can use on a lot of the songs you like to play:

A wonderful TED video on the trans-formative effects of music:

For beginners: How To Play A D Chord

An IJ Performance:

More to come!

IJ