When the hands stop matching each other
Keyboard and percussion injuries often announce themselves as musical problems first — a trill that has gone uneven, a left hand that will not balance against the right, a diminuendo you can no longer control — well before there is any pain worth mentioning.
What pianists and percussionists notice
- Reduced dynamic range, especially at the quiet end
- Poor coordination of volume between the left and right hands
- Trills that have become slower or uneven
- Reduced playing endurance
- Loss of finger independence
- Finger collapse, or unstable finger control while playing
- Neck, shoulder, back or upper-limb pain, soreness, numbness or fatigue
Why "practise more" makes it worse
- Weakness is often inhibition, not lack of strength
- One overused muscle can switch off several others
- The hand compensates long before it hurts
- Compensation becomes habit, and habit becomes injury
- The fix is to release what is overworking and train what is not
The instrument does not adapt to you
Imagine walking into a department store to buy clothes and shoes, and finding that everything comes in one size only. That is roughly the position most professional musicians are in.
Almost all instruments are one size. But height, palm size, finger length, finger span, neck length and shoulder width all differ. With a piano you have no choice at all — the keyboard will not shrink for you. The span Rachmaninoff and Chopin ask for is the span they ask for. The intensity Shostakovich requires is required regardless of your physical condition.
What can be adjusted is everything around the instrument: bench height, distance, the placement of drums and percussion equipment, and how the body organises itself to meet the instrument. That is where a great deal of the work happens.
Laxity, and why it cuts both ways
One of the key factors in current research, and a recurring story in my clinic, is the degree of laxity in a person's ligaments and fascia — which is partly genetic, unless it has been accumulated through injury during practice.
Some musicians have stronger ligaments; some have more laxity. Those with more laxity can spread the fingers further than others, which is an obvious advantage at the keyboard. It also makes it easier to sprain and tear those ligaments, producing tenderness that undermines exactly the facility it first provided.
This is one of the reasons a musician's assessment has to be individual. The same repertoire, at the same level, is a different physical proposition for two different hands.
Tell me what has changed in your playing.
Email your symptoms, how long you have had them, and a short video of you playing. I reply personally, and I will tell you honestly whether I think I can help before you book anything.