Bass Trombone Interview Series

[Dennis K.]

Hey Gents,
These articles are truly top-notch. Good questions, fine writing, excellent material.

Thanks for your contribution Mr. Guilford!

[MaryAnn]

I noticed in the interview with Bob Hughes that he recently had to resign from the LSO due to Task Specific Focal Dystonia, which is of course what I developed last spring. Musicians who have not encountered this on a personal level continue to assume that it is a problem with technique, air, or forgetting the basics but that is not the case. Musicians who have encountered it understand without explanation.

At our concert Wednesday, at which I played tympani (fun, BTW) several musicians questioned me about the dystonia, and I got to explain it to them. The latest explanation, that seems to make it more clear to people, is that it is similar to epilepsy in that the muscles behave improperly because of the incorrect signals the brain is sending. Since everyone understands that a grand mal seizure is a "brain thing" and not a "muscle control thing" it seems to be a good way of getting the general concept across. If you only had an epileptic seizure with your embouchure when you tried to play your instrument, you would be pretty close to task specific focal dystonia.

I take the opportunity now and then to try to get more people to understand dystonia, in the hopes that they won't come back to the people who suffer it with admonitions about how to practice. A few people do manage to re-train around this problem, but the vast majority do not find a way, and go on to other musical activities.

MA

[Eupher6]

Good point about there being a huge assortment of superior musicians in D.C.

Not to disparage any other venue, but when you've got the sheer number of premier military bands in D.C., plus the usual assortment of orchestras and operas, well, it's hard to overlook D.C. as a mecca for fine players.

[iiipopes]

A couple of years ago I started developing the cramps in my left wrist and arm badly while playing guitar. I developed a variant on a fanned fret fingerboard that is actually closer to a 16th century English luthier's approach I saw described in a print that used to be online from a Paris museum (funny, as fanned fret guitars have become better known, that particular webpage is no longer up. Hmmm. But I digress....) than the current Novax, but the positive effects are to keep my elbow, wrist and fingers aligned as they pivot from my shoulder up the fingerboard, relieving stress and mitigating the cramps.

I know it's not a be-all or end-all, but in addition to all of the conventional medical perspective and advice, I posted this anecdote because we need to make sure our instruments are adjusted so that they, at the very least, do not exacerbate any physical stress incurred or endured as a consequence of playing the instrument.

If it's too heavy, get a lighter horn. If something about it is causing you to constantly adjust, figure out what that aspect is and normalize it. Spend the bucks to get your leadpipe to the right height and angle to your face. Pay attention to the orientation of the valve block, both overall to the horn and valve to valve to fit your elbow, forearm and curvature and length of your fingers. And that's just the starting point for tubas.

Doc recently posted in the funnies thread a, "You know you're too old to gig if..." and one of the line items was selling your Les Paul guitar because of the weight. I did. My shoulders don't hurt playing guitar any more.

Dystonia in whatever form is a serious condition, and there may not be anything that can be done to prevent it, and very little to manage it, but since it can be career ending, we all must be aware of anything however minor it may seem that might help.

[WoodSheddin]

Fantastic stuff. I went to school with Stephen at Northwestern and the guy could outplay most tubists on their own literature. Hella good musician.

[MaryAnn]

A formerly fine trumpet player in the band I now play timpani in, has focal dystonia. It isn't embouchure dystonia though; when his mouthpiece gets close to, but not yet touching his lips, his head starts to wag back and forth as if he were saying "NO!" emphatically and continually. More than one conductor has asked him to "stop doing that" either politely or not, and of course, he cannot "stop doing that" because it is focal dystonia. He is far from an idiot too, being a professor at the local university.

MA