Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Read something a little troubling - neck/shoulder pain

As I wait patiently for the box(es) to arrive, I read up about different things. Out of curiosity today I read up on shoulder and neck pain. I did this because I have an injury to my right shoulder I acquired it in a weird fluky way about 5 years ago and after lots of physical therapy and an MRI it was determined that I have a very slight tear deep in the shoulder that would be more harmful to surgical repair than leave it, but it causes me problems as the other muscles try to compensate for that muscle with an injury. I mostly do OK, but I sometimes get tingling in that arm/fingers and it's only certain movements that cause problems.

But, I also have symptoms of carpel tunnel too, but I'm SUPER careful to always keep my wrists straight - even when I sleep. I use an ergomic mouse, I use my laptop and desk, etc. so that my wrists can remain straight and I've been successful at not creating big issues with my wrists/inner forearms.

I was happy to learn that the push/pull was on the left side as the damaged shoulder is on the right shoulder, but now I just read about the sharp edges of the older instruments and finger placements that it leads to some people having carpel tunnel issues because of the wrists needing to be bent too much for too long. I did not like reading that!?!?!? Both the boxes I have coming in are sharp edged boxes! Let's hope that I won't run into that problem.

I've found some discussions about the fear and some suggestions to help. This first one is about playing a button box - the fear and some suggestions given by other players: https://thesession.org/discussions/17338

This next one is on a concertina site, but it mentions melodeons too. http://www.concertina.net/kc_ortho.html/

This last one mentions the problem for all sorts of musicians and gives some exercises and stretches to try: http://makingmusicmag.com/carpal-tunnel-musicians/

This page here gives some good advice for straps and how to hold it. However, I think it's old and is without visuals, but good information: http://www.geocities.ws/kozulich/holding.html

From what I've read and gathered - I should get really decent double straps to ease the weight off the hands and the one shoulder, but is that helpful? or is better with one strap? And I am thanking everyone now at melnet for specifying that I should get small boxes to learn on. Now I'm beginning to get it.

Of course, some people play with no straps:



This is a typical strap for a diatonic accordion:



Here is a more deluxe version.




Then there are double straps.



And they can get quite beefy (as piano accordion and club accordions can get quite heavy).




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