88keys

Avoiding doctors

There are two kinds of people in the world -- those who like authority and those that don't.

I fall firmly into the former camp.  I don't share NY's general distrust of cops; I think they're generally good people, and I feel safer when they're around.  I'm taking a cooking class this week, and unlike my classmates who throw in a pinch of this or a dash of that, I refuse to alter the recipe until told to do so by the teacher.

And I generally trust medical authority.  When something's wrong, I assume my doctor has the solution, and I'm highly skeptical of any non-traditional medicine (just try to get me to take an herbal supplement...).

So it's somewhat out of character that I refuse to go to the doctor for my arms.  At my sister's wedding, three different people suggested doctors that I should see, and I nodded appreciatively and then threw away the info they gave me.

It's not that I haven't tried.  Back when the pain first started in high school, I went to a bunch of doctors, and then again in college.  They'd diagnose it as some sort of overuse syndrome or tendonitis, and then prescribe a range of treatments.  One doctor had me start swimming every day, which incidentally involved breaking into a hotel since they had the nearest pool in the area; another had me dipping my arms in hot wax twice a week, and another was running electricity through my arms for 15 minutes at a time, which I did three times a week for about 6 months.

And in every case, the treatment would help a little (except maybe for the swimming which never helped but was fun), but eventually it would become clear that the pain wasn't going away and I'd give up.

Looking back at it now, the issue was obvious.  I'd spend an hour trying to treat the inflammation in my arms, and then I'd head right back home to play for three hours.  It wasn't that the therapy wasn't helping; it was that I was actively working against it.

When I had my first Taubman lesson, Edna watched me play for 5 minutes, and immediately pointed out 10 things that were causing pain.  I was hunched over the piano with bent wrists so had no leverage, meaning all the work of playing was coming from the weak muscles of my fingers rather than the stronger arm muscles.  I was pushing too hard on the keys, which incidentally produces a harsh tone that doesn't carry well.  I was continuing to push on the keys even after the note had sounded, which doesn't do anything other than tire your arms.

For all the many doctors I saw, not a single one ever suggested what I firmly believe now -- that the problem was actually how I was playing the piano, and that treating it would require changing how I played.

When I started working with my current Taubman teacher, John Bloomfield (to whom I basically owe being able to play the piano again), he told me two things that, after 15 years of pain, I had some trouble believing.

First, he said that the body is well designed to play the piano, and if you're doing it right, you can play all day without pain or injury (incidentally, the same is true for typing, which he's also re-taught me how to do).  Second, if you're playing correctly, the experience can actually be therapeutic; if you come to the piano already in pain, playing correctly can get rid of it.

Sitting at the piano about 6 months into studying with John, I complained that my arms were starting to hurt after something we were doing.  He had me go back and do a simpler exercise very slowly and with careful form, and my arms started to feel better.  It was the first time I really believed him that this thing I loved doing could actually be healthy and pain free.  I left the lesson almost in tears.

And so when people suggest doctors or offer medical advice, I smile and nod -- but I think perhaps in this case, I'm okay sticking with John as my only medical provider. 

My ear sucks. But less than yesterday.

Does anyone remember this guy?

Does this help?

Back in the late 80's, at the back of every music magazine in existence was a full page ad for the David Lucas Burge Perfect Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse.  The ad told the tale of David Lucas Burge's "discovery" that perfect pitch was not, in fact, something you had to be born with, but something that could actually be taught if you understood the secret.  And for just a couple hundred dollars, he'd teach it to you.

As a type-A over-achieving 10 year-old musician, I was of course bitter that I had been born without the elusive Perfect Pitch gene -- so learning that I could overcome my disability was quite exciting.  I saved my allowance for what seemed like years and sent away for the course, along with its companion Relative Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse.

The course arrived in a box of 53 shiny CDs (only recently dubbed from cassette tape), 8 on perfect pitch, and 45 more on relative pitch.  I excitedly put in the first CD and learned all about the wonders of perfect pitch and the mystical journey I was about to embark on.  In disc 2, I learned that perfect pitch is actually not unlike how we see colors.  When we perceive light, we recognize different frequencies as different colors; similarly, the ear can distinguish between different audio frequencies by recognizing the unique "tone color" of each pitch.  All I had to do was "unlock" my ear so that it could hear these subtle differences in color.

Excitedly, I bragged to my friends on the playground that I was about to join the exclusive ranks of the perfectedly pitched.  It's a wonder I didn't get beat up more.

Returning home, I began disc 3, and discovered that "unlocking" your ear actually requires doing all kinds of exercises, which turned out to be well beyond the attention span of a 10 year old.  The discs quickly found their way into a closet, and I resumed my life of imperfect pitch.

When I moved back in October, I stumbled onto my pile of 53 not-quite-as-shiny CDs, which have somehow stayed with all these years.  I decided to rip the CDs into my iTunes, if only so I could stop carrying those stupid CDs around every time I move.

As the first relative pitch CD was loading, I decided to give it a listen.  It talked a bit about the importance of good relative pitch, and then started quizzing me on recognizing fifths.  Easy stuff.  Feeling good about myself, I kept on going, and breezed through fourths, octaves and unisons (a gimme).  And then somewhere around disc 5 (of 45), I got stuck.  It was still pretty easy stuff -- he'd play an interval and you had to quickly identify it as a fourth, fifth, or octave.  Should be easy, but I kept getting flustered and making mistakes.

And that's how I learned that my ear is not as good as I thought.  As I worked through the drills, I found that my ear is actually pretty terrible.  I was having trouble recognizing basic chord progressions, dictating melodies, hearing chord inversions.  If you're gonna play jazz, not having an ear for it is a problem.

So ever since, as I'm waiting on the subway or walking to work, I've been going through the relative pitch course on my iPhone, a little bit every day.  While others are jamming to music, I'm jamming to David Lucas Burge drilling interval after interval, progression after progression, while I quietly mouth my answers.

And I'm getting better, slowly but steadily.  I'm on disc 11 now (you're not allowed to go on to the next disc until you master every drill on the current one), so only 34 to go... And then maybe I'll give the perfect pitch a shot and see if it really can be taught.

Let's see how you do:

06 Lightning Round_ Mixed P4, P5, M3, M3, M2, Perfect Octaves And Perfect Unisons

I'm healed. Now for the real work.

I've been in pain for about 15 years.

I grew up playing the piano, and was pretty serious about it.  I practiced every day, played in lots of bands, worked weddings and cocktail hours playing lounge stuff, studied with two teachers (one jazz and one classical) and even considered leaving high school to go to a performing arts school.

And then sometime in high school, my arms started to hurt.  I was playing the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and was working on the broken octave section (:13 of the link), and I started having pain in my upper forearm.  I chalked it up to tiredness, took a break and came back, and found it was worse.  And just kept getting worse.

From then on, it never really went away.  I continued to play, did lots of accompanying through college and played gigs here and there, but I could never play regularly without the pain coming back.  Every few years, I'd decide to get serious about playing again and start a regular practice schedule, and within a few days, I'd be unable to play at all (and usually unable to type too).

I tried doctors, massage, hot wax baths, electro-stimulation, Advil, wrist braces, and anything else I could think of, but nothing helped.

So piano stayed a hobby, and I never got any better (since I couldn't practice), and eventually, playing stopped being fun because I was so shitty at it.

And then about a year ago, I decided it was time to give it one last shot.  I spent a day pouring through web articles and books about piano playing and pain, and learned a few things.  First, there's surprisingly little writing on the subject.  Despite there being an astounding number of pianists (and musicians more generally) with injuries, very few people have researched or written about the issue.  Second, among those who have, there's very little consensus.  Some say curved fingers, some say not; some suggest finger isolation exercises, some warn against them; some point you to Hanon, and some say to avoid it.

However, there was one name that kept popping up in all the articles: Taubman.  No one really explained what it was or what it meant, but article after article kept mentioning the Taubman technique as somehow being associated with piano pain.

So I sent an email, and a few days later found myself in the studio of Edna Golandsky, the pre-eminent Taubman teacher in the world (who luckily lives in Manhattan).  She had me play a single note with my third finger.  Then she corrected how I was sitting, and had me play again.  Then she corrected the shape of my hand and finger, and had me play again.  And again, and again, while she made simple corrections and talked to me about what it means to "drop" onto a note, about connecting from the elbow to the finger, about balancing on the fingertip, about the difference between dropping and pushing.

And sometime in the middle of 30 minutes of playing the same note over and over, the playing changed.  I felt a different connection to the instrument than I ever had before; I felt a different connection between my arm and hand and finger than I ever had before; the note sounded rounder and fuller than it had before.

Fast forward a full year of studying Taubman.  Three weeks ago, I made it through a full week practicing 90 minutes a day every day, for the first time since high school.  I can't say it was 100% pain-free, but it was pretty close, and I'm getting gradually better at identifying what's causing any pain and fixing it.

My New Year's commitment this year is to practice daily, and end the year proud of my piano playing again.  In this blog, I'll talk about my last year of Taubman retraining, an incredibly frustrating but amazing journey of relearning every aspect of what it means to play the piano.  And I'll talk about this year as I try to apply what I've learned to get back in pianistic shape, get my jazz chops back and, with a little luck, hopefully become a pianist again.