A Field Guide To Musicians' Tinnitus

In this episode, we flip the table and Juan interviews Frank about an article he co-authored for Seminars in Hearing Volume 45, Number 3 (2025). First, a thank you to guest series editor Marc Fagelson, PhD, for the invitation to write this article for Seminars in Hearing. Marc, Frank, and Juan have been collaborating for the last year on an exciting Music Audiology project with the American Tinnitus Association (ATA) and Texas Roadhouse to bring hearing and tinnitus awareness and care to musicians and crew music festivals. This work has been described in detail in the ATA’s Tinnitus Today Winter 2024 publication and we discussed it in detail on a panel episode of Talking Ears.

Second, this article would not have happened without the contributions and insights from these amazing collaborators:

• Nancy Gould, M.Ed - Nancy is the Tinnitus Specialist with Tuned Care, and practices on telehealth and in North Carolina. She specializes in mindfulness stress reduction as well as tinnitus retraining. We first connected when she made dramatic differences in the care of many of my patients seen on the Tuned platform through the MusiCares program, so I knew she would have great insights into this article.

• Melissa Rogel, LMFT - Melissa is a licensed individual and relationship therapist, runs the practice Cooperative Path in the Philadelphia area, and is the drummer of Philly-based indie rock band The Diaphone. She clearly understands the musicians’ perspective and brought to light the psychological concepts. Full disclosure: Frank has been playing keyboards and bass with The Diaphone since 2022, so we’re bandmates.

Thus the article: A Field Guide to Musicians’ Tinnitus outlines the differences in psychological presentation and care approaches when working with musicians who have significant tinnitus reactions, then follows a case that Nancy and Frank shared via teleaudiology. 

Music heard in this episode was written and recorded by Juan Vasquez and produced by Frank Wartinger.