About
In early 2018, musicians of the McGill Symphony Orchestra raised concerns about the noise levels to which they were exposed during rehearsals. As a part of the Schulich School of Music's continued efforts to provide and promote a healthy work environment, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) was asked to help assess the noise exposure of orchestra musicians and determine whether they were at risk.
Thanks to a joint knowledge mobilization effort between CIRMMT, the NSERC-EERS Industrial Research Chair in In-Ear Technologies (CRITIAS) at École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) and the Schulich School of Music (SSM), an inexpensive, personal noise exposure set of tools, targeted at youths, musicians and others without a technical background, is now available to help counter the growing trend of Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL).
Research Project
In parallel with the technical development of the platform, a research project was initiated between CIRMMT, CRITIAS and l'école d'audiologie de l'Université de Montréal. Based on the data collected during the project, our research will focus on developing the platform as the main tool at the core of a hearing conservation program and ultimately will contribute to hearing health policies and promotion strategies
Team
Current researchers:
Isabelle Cossette, Schulich School of Music, Lead, supervision, funding, scientific, educational;
Jéremie Voix, ÉTS: scientific lead, standards and policies;
Adriana Lacerda, Université de Montréal, École d’audiologie: scientific, audiology, testing;
Students:
Bradley Austin-Keillor, Alberto Acquilino, Lara Landauro, Jacob Lloyd
Audiology team:
Michelle Young, Christel Azar, Ana Carla Oliveira Garcia
Former contributors:
Romain Dumoulin, McGill/CIRMMT: design lead, scientific;
Francesco Tordini, CIRMMT : project manager, scientific, funding (2018-2019);
Annelies Bockstael , Université de Montréal, École d’audiologie: scientific, audiology, testing (2018-2019).
Students: Xu Han Fu, Crystal Lin, Herman Korsunov, Emmily Yang
Fundings
This project has been funded by:
Internal Social Sciences and Humanities Development (SSHD) Grant McGill University (2022)
Canada First Research Excellence Fund, awarded to the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives initiative at McGill University (2019)
Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT)
The Schulich School of Music of McGill University
NSERC-EERS Industrial Research Chair in In-Ear Technologies (CRITIAS) at École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS)
The World Health Organization for the World Hearing Day 2019 Award
Publications and Presentations
The hearing-care platform has been already presented on several occasions during scientific conferences:
Einig, L., Dumoulin, R. , Cossete, I. & Voix J. Hearing-care platform: A smartphone-based awareness and hearing conservation program for music students, In Advances in Acoustics, Noise and Vibration 2021 : Proceedings of the 27th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV 2021) online, July 11-16, 2021) Gliwice, Poland : Silesian University Press.
Cossette, I. (2019). The hearing-care platform: A practical and accessible set of tools for the self-assessment of noise exposure, Healthy Conservatoires Network Meeting, Imperial College London, UK.
Voix, J., Dumoulin, R., Levesque, J. & Viallet, G. (2018). Inciting our children to turn their music down : the AYE proposal and implementation. In Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (Vol. Paper 3007868). Victoria, BC, Canada: Acoustical Society of America. Download
Dumoulin, R., Tordini, F., Voix, J., & Cossette, I. (2018). A hearing-care toolkit for young musicians: Combined use of a noise dose measurement app and acoustical manekin. Presented at the 176TH MEETING OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, 2018 ACOUSTICS WEEK IN CANADA, Victoria, BC, Canada. Retrieved from http://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.5068444 Download