A good ear?

How often do people say, "you have a good ear" I wonder?  Well, obviously it refers to your ability to recognise tuning, notice mistakes and general musical skill.

How scary is it when you consider that "a" good ear implies that only one of your two ears is good (an ongoing joke, I have) - but that was something to genuinely worry about last weekend.  I lost 80% of my hearing in my right ear for two days.  Why? Don't know. Going to find out though.

In the meanwhile, what I noticed was how debilitating it was, musically, to only have "a" good ear.  I have decided that my right ear is the one that can hear mistakes and my left ear is that one that only notices good things.  During a Sunday Mass, I was playing a number of grand old hymns and I could not hear any mistakes, despite the fact that I occasionally found my fingers sitting on the wrong keys!  I wish I had been recording it, because no doubt I developed some interesting harmonies that obviously fitted in somehow.

I've decided that I don't want to become deaf.  It is stressful enough being half-deaf, temporarily.  No wonder Beethoven was grumpy!

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