7 - Music and Cochlear Implants: My Experience

 *Note that Cochlear Implant users have various positive and negative experiences with music. Some experience it primarily positively, others experience it negatively, and a few in between*.

My Childhood Experience with Music

Throughout my childhood, I only listened to Hindi music since my family and I were only exposed to Hindi music. I do not speak in it nor understand the meaning behind the songs at the time. The children's shows I used to watch while growing up had music. However, as I mentioned in my previous blogs, there was no closed captioning during my childhood, so I needed help knowing and understanding the lyrics. When my family and friends would follow along with the lyrics, I would often vibe with them without knowing them. Because of these factors, I never connected with music as much when I was growing up. Still, I enjoyed observing and listening to others singing and playing instruments, which never bothered me.  When I was nine years old, I was exposed to English songs for the first time and began learning Bollywood dance, which made me enjoy music in a much greater depth. I do not recall the first song I ever danced to, but I remember feeling a sense of connection to the music I had never felt before in the first nine years of my life. Since then, I enjoyed the instrumental rather than the lyrical component of music. Lastly, after my reimplantation in 2020, with newer technologies, artificial intelligence, accessible song lyrics, Bluetooth functionality, and active listening, I could enjoy music much more deeply to the point that I began to appreciate the lyrical component of music as well. 

Passive vs. Active Listening

Now, I will discuss the differences between passive and active listening to music. You may have heard of these terms for effective interpersonal communication, which also applies to music. 

Passive Listening—You play music in the background, but it is not the sole focus. The most common uses of passive listening to music are listening while studying, working, or doing household chores. 

Active Listening - the practice of focusing solely on listening to music. This includes but is not limited to recognizing various instruments in a song, following along to the lyrics, and dancing or moving along with the music.

Music Therapy

During my music therapy, I listen more actively. When I hear a song, I usually stream it through the Bluetooth functionality in my Cochlear Implants to get the fullest experience. I listen to the same song repeatedly until I memorize the lyrics and the different rhythms and melodies that occur in the song. I usually dance or use simple gestures to these songs to help me ‘feel the music.’ I also use an app on my phone called Moises, which uses artificial intelligence to isolate different instruments and vocals of a song. This helps me hear the various instruments and the vocals better. For example, if I wanted to know when the bass comes in, and I could not catch it in the original song, I can go to the app and isolate everything else but the bass to get a better understanding of when it comes in and how it sounds like in a particular song. I remember discovering my favourite song differently after using this app, which made me appreciate music a lot more.

As many of you know, I also take music videos of my brother-in-law’s music covers. With repeated takes, I can identify when to move the camera in a certain way depending on when the vocals start or when an instrumental solo is being played. For instance, I focus solely on his hands during his guitar solos, and when the vocals are about to come in, I move the camera back to capture his face as well. When I edit the videos, I ensure that the vocal tracks match the video. I also ask my brother-in-law to ensure they are lined up after doing so myself. This is a more fun and interactive way of doing music therapy since it involves my hobby in photography, videography and video editing. 

Lastly, in my master’s program, we had to take a music course to learn the essential elements of teaching music to elementary school students. We played the ukelele and the djembe (pronounced as ‘jem-bay’), an African drum. We played together as a class, with half of the class playing a different rhythm from the other half, and we played both rhythms simultaneously. We were also encouraged to make up our own rhythms. In one class, I decided to take up the challenge of using the shaker while others used the djembe. I was highly intrigued by the sounds of the shaker playing with the djembes. Lastly, we discussed the benefits and challenges of teaching these activities to elementary school students. Not only did it make me learn the basics of teaching music, but it was also a reflection of my musical abilities. 

My Experience Participating in a Study that Focuses on Musical Abilities of Cochlear Implant Users

Over the summer of 2024, I participated in a research study that more broadly focuses on the musical abilities of Cochlear Implant candidates. Due to privacy reasons, I cannot share details of this study, but I can share my biggest takeaways and my experience in the study's musical sessions. The central part of the study requires participants to attend eight musical sessions in one month. During the first session, the researcher teaches me the basics of musical notation, such as identifying quarter notes, eight notes, whole notes, and rest. Once I was comfortable identifying the notations, the researcher would play a rhythm, and I would play the same rhythm afterward.  Each session becomes more challenging than the previous one. In the later sessions, I would have to memorize three different rhythms and point out the rhythm the researcher plays. Each rhythm is a total of 8 counts (two whole notes). Lastly, in a series of rhythms the researcher provided both of us to see, I had to point out whether the researcher made none, one, or two mistakes in each rhythm and identifying where the mistakes occurred. My biggest takeaway from this study is that I have a good sense of rhythmic abilities (thanks to dance). I could also recognize various sounds, melodies, and rhythms in familiar songs I had not recognized before the sessions. Lastly, my appreciation of music has improved drastically since participating in the study. 

Next steps: Upgrading to the Marvel - Autosense feature

In the summer of 2025, I will be eligible to upgrade to Advanced Bionics' latest processor, the Marvels. The Marvels uses an Autosense feature, a smart rendering system, to optimize listening to music. It does this by detecting music being played in the environment, separating it from other ambient sounds, and adjusting parameters to optimize the music specifically. Similar rendering is also applied to ambient and speech sounds to make them optimal for the user. This will make my experience for music even better!

After learning dance, learning English songs, active listening, participating in the study, lyrics becoming more feasible, technological advancements such as Bluetooth capabilities and artificial intelligence have allowed me to appreciate and love music more than ever. Not only do I actively listen to music more often now, but I often get goosebumps when discovering new music I have never experienced before.