My 92 year old mother was a trained singer when she was young and always had a beautiful voice. She has moderate dementia at this point and over the last 4-5 years or so has begun to believe that her electronic keyboard is out of tune. When we swapped hers for ours, she said the same thing. She insists that we get her keyboard tuned but, of course, electronic keyboards cannot be tuned and both of them sound fine to the rest of the family. So, to try and address this my husband and daughter took her to a music store where she played no less than 10 NEW keyboards, all of which to her ears were (you guessed it) out of tune. Taking her to our church where she was permitted to play the JUST TUNED piano resulted in the same declaration. She does have significant hearing loss at this point as well but refuses to use a hearing aid and that's just as well as she has "lost" her lower dentures twice in the last month and a half. Has anyone heard of or know about whether dementia has an impact on tone deafness?
I think you've analyzed the situation right - I think singers have gifts and talents that contribute to their ability to sing so beautifully and accurately, and like any other artist, can have a difficult time adjusting to a loss of that, especially since your mother didn't read music. I recall becoming frustrated just playing piano when my left hand became somewhat arthritic and couldn't keep up with the right. So now I just play left handed chords intermittently!
Your post reminded me of Beethoven's deafness. To have accomplished all that he did but lose his hearing must have been devastating.
Out of curiosity I just googled "
It is possible as well that she's entrenched in denial, which is understandable given that she was a professional singer and could be losing a faculty that was critical to her profession.
Does she have a tuning fork?
In the interim, perhaps you could try playing CDs for her - it might inspire her to sing along and switch her focus, although I suspect that she's unable to admit her hearing is deteriorating.
Best of luck to you in addressing this issue.
Continuing the "out of curiosity sentence"..... I googled "meds, side effects - hearing loss" and got a lot of hits, including medical reference sites.
This one is worth browsing - there are a surprising number of common meds that do affect hearing: aspirin, NSAIDs - very common meds.
webmd/a-to-z-guides/medicines-that-cause-hearing-loss-topic-overview
Read articles at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan website for causes and treatments of pitch interpretation losses
Can you determine from your mother what areas of tones she thinks are off, such as octaves about middle C and higher? Can she hear bass tones without problems?