Comments

About 12 years ago I decided that I needed a tenths technique. After practicing them for a few weeks I felt some rather significant pain in my left hand. I put the violin completely away for a few months (a luxury we amateurs have) and when I resumed I didn't go close to tenths.

Sometime later I found my teacher who corrected numerous problems that he ascribed to my reliance on a shoulder rest. Over the years my technique has been completely reshaped.

In the last year I have resumed study of tenths and I can say that I can now play tenths scales and passages (perhaps not as totalyy reliably as I would like) but there has been absolutely no pain.

My question is then when does pain justify a reexamination of our basic premises of violin playing. When do we turn back down the road we have been on and see if we can pick another road?

I am afraid that many young musicians are so intent on a particular path to musical success that they gloss over fundamental problems and avoid backtracking and reworking in order to avoid "falling behind". This kind of doubling down is a bad bet and the payoff is usually zero.

"Start over" is frequently the correct choice.

One way of addressing the psychological element of "needing to play/practice" that aggravates injuries is to proactively develop the away-from-the-violin capabilities of visualization and audiation when not injured (or even when injured). As I understand it, it works because vivid visualization of a movement activates the same cortical regions as movement, with an additional Inhibit signal from frontal cortex inhibiting the movement so that nothing actually happens in the brainstem (and beyond). Thanks for the detailed medical review. I hope that your sister and everyone else similarly afflicted will get the right treatment and heal. I'm glad that you recovered without spending years working on the problem. Bill, I think a lot of music that is readily within someone's technical grasp can be practiced successfully away from the violin but the very most difficult passages demand our hands on practice. If there is any flaw in our technique we subject ourselves to injury by repetitively worrying the flaw. Corwin, I may be misreading you, but you seem to be suggesting that injuries are due to flaws in technique. That is certainly sometimes the case, but there are other reasons for pain and injury and it does seem unfair and reductive to blame the victim for "gloss[ing] over fundamental problems." You probably are not misreading me. Unless a violinist has residual damage from a non-violinistic injury that is exacerbated by playing the violin, most "violin" injury comes from some technical defect. or overuse. Correct technique can bear a lot more overuse than incorrect technique. I include posture defects as technical defects.

However, incorrect technique is not a moral or character flaw and it can afflict even the most talented players.

One more thought: when a young person is doing very well and making rapid progress it's easy for the individual, his teachers and his parents to ignore small and festering issues. Then they erupt into large and debilitating problems. The victim in this case is almost always the victimizer aided and abetted by parents and teachers. Technical defects are not moral issues but forcing someone to overlook them and gloss over the real problems can certainly become such.

Read all the literature on the development (and mis-development) of young ballet dancers and just see how much fits the violin world. Then add in gymnasts and skaters.

I ought to concede one point: A lot of people play instruments that they are not suited for. No amount of technique can fully correct a mismatch between player and instrument. Injury is nearly inevitable and questions ought to be raised on why an inappropriate choice of instrument was made or allowed.

I speak particularly of the viola. It is not an instrument for children at all and many adults are unsuited for it.

I also will add that there may be good uses for a shoulder rest but using it to correct a mismatch between body-type and instrument is not one of them.

Wow! I almost missed this post. What an interesting read. I had no idea that so many things could go wrong. I'm so glad that Dr. S's son recovered and the video you posted of him is just wonderful. I'm glad you included it.

This article is jam packed with great info. I hope you do well with your cyst. Thank you, Caeli.

Love the Halloween pic, too.

What a great article. I have read that musicians have the highest risk of work related injury of any professions so it's really helpful to have an in depth story like this one. It is encouraging to hear how people are able to work around their injuries or come back after layoffs. Your article gives the perfect view of what many musicians have to cope with. Caeli, this is an excellent article. It brought back a memory that I had forgotten: I had a ganglion in my left writs as a teenager, but not from violin per se. It flared up during hockey season, in one year when I was playing a lot of squash, too. My orthopedic surgeon at the time recognized the ganglion behavior right away. It never amounted to a totally debilitating problem; I kept playing hockey and squash, though I lay off the latter in intensity and most importantly in my case, I avoided large extensor loading with the wrist flexed. It eventually stopped bothering me. Caeli, thanks for this very interesting and informative article. I hope your wrist heals soon.