BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm Grace and Perry. I'm an artist and this is my guest edit of the Today program.

I've got tinnitus and I'm interested in what it does to your perceptions of hearing.

Here's Justin Webb talking to the singer-songwriter KT Tunstall.

I certainly. a songwriter, KT Tanstall. I'd certainly experienced tinnitus before because I was quite an avid clubber in my teens and 20s.

Going out and dancing all night, usually quite in quite close proximity to the sound system.

You'd often have a day the next day when your ears are ringing and you just always trust that that's going to go away.

And it always did.

And then it's about 11 years ago, I'd been doing a lot of transatlantic travel because I was gigging in America,

gigging in Europe and the UK.

So I'd just done a long haul flight and I got back to London.

And I actually was going to see the spice girls at the O2.

And I fell asleep on the couch and I, in a bit of an awkward position, I think, and my ear was against the arm of the couch.

But I basically woke up from that kind of jet lag gnat and realized that there was a really persistent, bad ringing in my left ear.

My ear also sort of felt like it was underwater.

It was all around that time and then I know that I had some touring pretty soon after that

and it was extremely difficult.

I found myself feeling quite depressed because I just wanted to curl up in a ball and stay in bed

actually because I couldn't get rid of the sound.

It was a very persistent kind of dual sound of a high-pitch, constant sound

with a sort of rushing white noise sound behind it that was a lower pitch.

And does it change in kind of volume in your ear?

...