When you think of singing and a hearing impairment you usually don’t think of a beautiful singer with perfect pitch. Most people with hearing loss cannot hear the music to its fullest extent so its hard to stay on beat, or even find the pitch like a person with perfect hearing. One TV show that shows people singing with hearing loss is the TV show Glee. The first season of this teenage hit drama has an episode that shows how people with hearing loss are usually perceived.  This is one representation of how some people with hearing loss or a deaf person might “sing”.  But this is not every persons case, some people can still hear a normal range and still sing for the most part and this TV show only really focused on the deaf.

But, on Americas Got Talent  in the second video a singer named Mandy Harvey sings with muscle memory, sound vibrations, and practice. This is a unusual case because she had a rare ear condition that took her hearing quickly at an older age, but its another way a deaf person can sing with a full range.

Music is an important part of every persons life and it can transform the way you feel. When you have hearing loss some of this feeling can go away. Some people with hearing loss gravitate towards music with a heavy base because they don’t have to hear to feel the base and other like myself try to learn the words to the songs to understand what they are saying in a song. People with hearing loss have to find different joy in music like the message of the song and base instead of the melody.

In the video from the TV show Glee the deaf singers cannot find the pitch and instead they are signing the lyrics in ASL. This is one way that a deaf person can sing and enjoy music. Another singer that can sing and has no hearing is from Americans Got Talent, Mandy Harvey. She uses the vibrations from the ground to feel the beat and tempo. This genre can be tricky for some hearing impaired and it can take some trial and error to find the way to sing but if there is a will there is a way. Its important to know that they can still do the same thing as any other person just in a different way.

VIdeo citations- Youtube