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Lvas

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Greetings all, I am writing on behalf of a former student of mine who is now teaching 7th grade band. I have no experience with LVAS, but perhaps some of you do. Any help you could offer would be appreciated greatly. Here's her email. "I am e-mailing you because I am trying to do some research on one of my students. He has Large Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome (LVAS) which means he wears one of those boxes around his neck as a transmitter to help him hear better. If you are not familiar with the syndrome, it is not recommended for him to play any sort of contact sport or anything that may jostle his head around and cause further hearing loss. Here is a website with more information website His mother called me because she heard that playing a brass instrument would most likely affect his condition negatively because of the amount of air pressure and resistance. By talking to other parents of children with this condition, she has decided to let him try a woodwind instrument. At first, she was told by others that flute would be the best pick for him. When he tried the flute, he did not get really much sound on it, so he was tried on saxophone. He got much better results with saxophone. My question to you is, what do you think about him playing saxophone? Do you think that the resistance on saxophone is much greater than on the flute? Have you ever known someone who played saxophone and had this condition?" Thanks for any help you can offer. Brian

It can be easily and factually be stated that the resistance of a saxophone is greater than the flute. The flute has no real resistance, while the saxophone does. The issue is that the flute is a harder instrument to start than the saxophone. Most anyone can generate noise on a saxophone while the technique for the sound generation on a flute takes some practice to get and get well. As to the question of knowing someone with this condition, I don't know anyone with it so I cannot comment on that part.