I have the same thing going on: I live for closed-captioning on the tv, and I find myself working on lip-reading a lot.

And yet I'm still a singer. I think that the singing thing is a focus thing -- I can pick what I want to focus on hearing, so everything else fades out [which parts help, which parts are a distraction]. The more you sing with parts, the more you'll be *able* to sing with parts, that's my personal opinion.

Now, one of these days I'll give in and get earplugs for performing with my band... *blush*

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