SCOTTISH classical musicians are being trained in how to make music which is less hard on their ears.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra launched two days of workshops yesterday, with a “noise team” aiming to work out ways of playing orchestral music safely.

While deafening music is usually associated with the thundering basslines and power chords of rock, the classical world has been stirred into action by European regulations limiting the noise to which musicians can be exposed.

There has been rising concern in the UK over the potential damage to musicians’ health from sound and stress in the workplace.

Later this year, the British Association of Performing Arts Medicine is expected to open a new clinic in Glasgow. Last weekend, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama held a conference for students and music organisations on “performance and stress”.

Recent research has focused on the danger of musicians growing deaf or losing their pitch discrimination.

“For musicians, the ears are a very important part of the kit,” said the RSNO chief executive, Simon Crookall.

Last week, the orchestra played Dmitry Shostakovich’s The Execution of Stepan Razin and Richard Strauss’s resounding Alpine Symphony, both “quite big pieces”, he said.

But he insisted there would not be any changes in the RSNO’s repertoire. Instead, the orchestra is to experiment with different types of earplugs – and plan a careful mix of music in rehearsals.

“It’s not having to stop playing Wagner, but if you are going to play Wagner you have to plan it in a certain way.

“We have to be aware that we can’t rehearse incredibly noisy pieces for weeks on end. If you are rehearsing a loud piece in the morning, you would rehearse a quiet piece in the afternoon,” Mr Crookall said.

This reflects concern over the average level of noise over a day or a week. Musicians might be warned, for example, not to go to a noisy rock concert or disco the night before they play.

The RSNO is only the second orchestra in the country to receive the training from experts at the Association of British Orchestras (ABO), of which Mr Crookall is chairman.

Already the RSNO, in common with other orchestras, has introduced discreet Perspex screens between the brass and string sections, but a new concern is that musicians will be blasted not by other instruments but by their own.

The ABO’s director, Russell Jones, said: “Our research showed most noise damage was done to the musician himself with his own instrument. It’s about rehearsing, or teaching in broom-cupboard-sized rooms in schools. All that is potentially more damaging to your hearing than sitting in front of the trombones for a few bars in a Mahler symphony.”

European law now limits the noise people can be exposed to at work to 85 decibels. Theatres and orchestras won a two-year delay in implementation.

“Noise is our product, not a by-product of what we do, like it is for someone digging up the street,” Mr Jones said. “We have to think carefully about how we solve that problem.”

The Musicians’ Union has been behind the drive for tighter rules. “Rock musicians have been doing it since they started rocking, using earplugs to filter sound levels, but orchestra musicians are more sensitive about using earplugs,” said Ian Smith, the union’s Scottish organiser.

“This is something that the whole industry is taking very very seriously. I spent 20 years working with symphony orchestras and my hearing is damaged, no doubt about that.

“The use of ‘ear filtering mechanisms’, a posh word for earplugs, is starting to grow.

“A lot of these sophisticated earplugs filter out the most dangerous frequencies, the very high ones, for example from the piccolo, and the E flat clarinet, the smaller high clarinet.”

Medical studies have compared sitting in front of trombones and trumpets to a 12-pound field gun going off, Mr Smith said.

Orchestras have been testing for sound levels and moving players around.

Hilary Jones, a lecturer at the RSAMD, said the aim of the conference was to make Scottish organisations aware of work done on performers’ health.

“Health problems vary by instrument. Brass players tend to need dental work because of the pressure on their mouths, while violinists suffer neck problems. As a pianist, I have suffered from inflamed tendons in the hand,” she said.

“Because musicians are sedentary, people aren’t aware that there is physical stress.”