Chris Bradley: How I became a deaf guitarist

Over 10 years ago i saw that there were guitar lessons availlable at our local college at night school. I always wanted to play so signed up at once.

I was the only deaf person there and at the time I wore a private analogue aid in one ear. Luckily I coped well enough with the lessons which involved being shown how to play chords then practicing songs.

I had my own guitar and practiced as often as I could and was slowly improving when my aid broke down. Unable to afford another one I went to the NHS clinic and was given 2 digital aids.

Whilst i was otherwise pleased with the new aids, my guitar just didn’t sound right. I was gutted as I can’t hear the acoustic guitar at all without an aid. Amazingly a friend unwittingly solved the problem.

He was at my house when I was listening to my hifi and asked why i had the music on so loud. It dawned on me that the compression on my aids which lowers background noise in favour of speech was the issue, so I went back to the clinic and the audiologist lowered the compression on the aids’ 3rd programme (the first being speech and the second being the loop programme).

Thus with the ‘music programme’ as I called it, I could hear the guitar well again and as a plus, if I am in an environment like a hospital where the hard floors and walls make speech echoey, I can switch to the 3rd program and have extra volume.

I love playing my guitars and have improved greatly whilst having a lot of fun. I record myself playing on my phone or laptop then can play it back and listen to my playing through earbuds or just my aids.

I put the videos on my facebook page and can watch them at leisure and hear if I have made any mistakes.

I also have an electric guitar that I can turn up the volume on or play using headphones.
There are thousands of songs to play and you can look up the chords etc on the web easily.

I am looking forward to attending a music group that runs at a nearby pub on Thursdays which should be fun.

Chris Bradley is a 54 year old recycled teenager going through a mid life crisis, who wears two hearing aids.