Does anyone else on the forum have this? it's a real annoyance when you're inspired and in love with music but your fingers just won't respond properly anymore. Most folks probably have never heard of it but classical player Liona Boyd had to give up her career because of it. Brazilian guitarist Badi Assad had it as well though she seems to have recovered from it, to a degree.There is no cure for it at present so i think Badi has recovered a bit but i think there's a lot of things that she could play previously that she can't do anymore.

I can still play but certain things cause me problems, with me it's in my picking hand; my right. Symptoms are that, when you fingerpick, the muscles all go into a spasm and contract when they don't need to and it makes the right hand so hard to control. Pick wise i use a thumbpick now because i feel when i play fast with a flatpick that i'm going to drop it or it's slipping. It's not as much an issue with the pick it's more for fingerstyle that the problem comes. Fingerstyle jazz stuff is my favorite of course so i'm screwed

With me it's not so bad in that it's not my career, but i've been in love with the guitar and music since i was 15 or 16 so it's a real source of depression seeing your technical ability that you've slaved for years to develop all but disappear in front of your face.

Trouble is i don't really know what to do. If i go to a doctor then they'll send me to a neurologist but then what? at the present time there is no cure. There are some medicines or treatments like botox injections into the muscles but they're not a permanent solution and wear off. Also i don't think the NHS in the UK would sanction that anyway because it's so expensive.

I'd be interested what the other forum folks think. What do you think i should do? just accept i've got it and find pleasure in what i can do? or pursue it further medically?

It's a real conundrum.

I'm sorry if folks don't want to hear this because it's similar to a golfer when he get's the "yips" when he putts, it's the same thing i think. Anyway other golfers don't want to hear about it, or even think about the possibility it might happen to them. I know it's the same with guitar players and musicians, with a lot of people it's a taboo subject as if they think even talking about it might bring it on. But when you have it you get desperate when you love guitar.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

I can understand the frustration.I had to have carpal tunnel surgery on both my hands and now I have arthritis really bad and my hands just don't want to work like they did...it sucks.I hope you figure something out...good luck

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1986 Fender Sidekick Reverb 35
1990 Fender Red Knob - "The Twin"
1992 Fender Newporter - Acoustic
2000 Fender American Series Strat - Natural ash
2010 Fender Mustang 1
2011 Fender Blacktop Jazzmaster -Sunburst
2012 Fender Champion

Thanks scarleg, yeah i've just been treading water with it for a long time because i know there's no cure for it, it's a neuro-muscular problem. Like i say they can give you botox injections but it doesn't cure the root of the problem, just kinda masks it.

When i fingerpick i can do it a bit with thumb and middle but index finger and ring finger are pretty useless. Doing things like pinching a 4 note chord fingerstyle repeatedly is so bloody uncomfortable and everything tightens up in a spasm!

Sorry to hear of your own problems. I think the best we can do when we get like this is to play our own stuff or play any way that's comfortable. I find that i just can't play pieces out of books with the right hand fingerings they give, it's just impossible. So i have to be inventive and try to come up with some way of getting around it.

It's good for your creativity in a way, but i wish we didn't have to deal with it. Do you remember the time your hands were perfect and you never even thought about it? I never even knew this stupid condition existed that i've got

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

hi Gary , sorry to hear about your problem mate , total bummer , i know what i'm like if i can't get playing a guitar due to one thing or another , as pink floyd once said , those swollen hand blues and arthritus in the pinkie knuckle sometimes give me grief but not to the extent you seem to be suffering bud , i would still go and talk to the doc about it , it's worth a go , cheers
Alan

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Sounds as though there's quite a bunch of us here, with one or another sort of hand/finger problems. regardless of the variety, were all faced with the same dilemma. What to do? In my case my left hand hurts so bad when I try to play, that I don't play at all. At least for now. Mine is caused by a vitamin deficiency that causes a softening of the bone. The pain comes from tiny fractures in my hands. I have all my guitars hanging on the wall, and It's killing me to just look at them, and not be able to play. I can well understand your frustration.
----Danny,

Hi Alan, thanks mate. I'm thinking about it but don't really see what they can do as there's no cure for it. I think they can give you medications that might ease it a bit but basically it's incurable I have to laugh otherwise i'd cry! They can give you botox injections too to stop the offending muscles from contracting when they shouldn't but can you honestly see the NHS here agreeing to meet the cost of that? Those botox injections are expensive!!

I can still play pretty well, with the thumbpick for my picking you wouldn't really know i'd anything wrong, but fingerstyle woah! that's a whole other ball game and everything go's to hell!

Hope you're having a good weekend mate.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Hi Danny, yes that's what i thought, we're all in the same boat in that regard. I love solo jazz guitar and Ted Greene's playing and there's a ton of great transcriptions up on his site that i want to play but because of this i just can't, it's too uncomfortable. With that style you're doing a lot of 4 and 5 string pinches fast and my hands just won't do it anymore, no matter how hard i practice it. It's quite upsetting, but anyway i keep telling myself it's not the end of the world!!!

I'm so sorry you too are suffering from these problems. It'd be a dream if they could make medical breakthroughs that could help us all and we'd be back with a vengeance!

Have a great weekend Danny.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

the doctors originally thought i had that in my right hand. but it was spasming and extremely stiff all the time, and it wasn't just my hand it was my arm aswell, and my right foot. so now i apparentley have 'spasticity'. when i play guitar, my thumb contracts, my fingers try to contract, and my wrist also trys to contract, sometimes. and now my biceps decided to also get really, uncomfortabley tight to. sometimes i cant even play, sometimes i can. playing in front of a crowd is hard for me, both mentally and physically. mentally because i think they'll all laugh cause i look like a retard (s'pose i am though....), and physically cause the more nervous you get, the worse it gets.

so my advice; SEE A DOCTOR! how long have you had these problems? if not long then there is that chance you may be able to re wire your brain with intense therapy, but that chance goes after a while. does it only occur when your playing gee-tar?

if the doctor reccomends botox, get it. i've got it around 10 times, and about 8 of thse times were succesful in reliefing the immense, uncomfortable tension and stiffness. its a pain to have to go down to the hospital every 4 months (litterally when they stick that massive needle into ya it feels like someones spinning you round and ripping your neck off) but i guess its worth it, to a degree anyway.

but it all comes down to gut feeling. hope you make the decission that feels right to you

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former user radio_friendly_unit_shifter

Hi Riley, the symptoms you have in your arm is the way mine go's when i fingerpick the guitar, the muscles in the forearm that move the fingers get sent confusing signals from the part of the brain that controls movement and it results in it going into a cramp/spasm that makes the fingers move in weird ways. I tend to feel the tightness round about the forearm muscles near the elbow and that then impacts on the fingers and their movement. It was just initially with fingerpicking i noticed it, then i started noticing my hand felt weird even using a flatpick, particularly if i tried to play fast, i'd feel like the pick was moving too much between my fingers and i felt like i was gonna drop it. I kept thinking "what the hell is wrong with me!"

If the botox thing would help then i'd think about it but i don't know if i could afford it as i know it's expensive and i can't see the health service here agreeing to pay that out regularly.

I reckon i've had this a long time, about 10 years i'd say. It also feels worse the more i play. If i lay off for a while i come back and can play normally for a little while but then the over flexing of the muscles catches up and it all starts going haywire again. Funny you mentioning about is it just with the guitar? funnily enough it's not, i also notice it when i write a letter, my hand starts feeling weird and fatigued and just strange and sometimes the writing starts looking untidy.

I might go to see the GP and he'll probably send me to a neurologist because it's neuro-muscular. The problem is i don't think there's much they can do.

Hope you feel better sometime.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Hi olemuso, you're suffering too!! i know you can only have cortisone a certain amount of times and that's it. Don't give up that's the most important thing. Your technique can be affected but you still have your own personality to get out through the instrument and nothing can change that.

At the moment i just try to find pleasure in some aspect of it every day even though i'm way down now in technique fingerstyle.

Keep hanging in there and keep playing as much as you can and don't yield to it.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

definetley go see a doctor, if you dont have a neruro muscular doctor, get one. try to get an OT, they will help alot. they'll tell you excatly what you should do. while your seeing your GP, just bring up botox. he might be able to organise something. as far as i'm concerned, its actually cheaper than you'd think, in australia anyway.
for me, it doesn't really bring back any movement, it just weakens the nerve signal. believe me, its the biggest relief in the world.
just whatever you do, if your hand is tight and spasming 24/7, even when your not doing anything, dont give in to those contractions. i made that mistake, and let basically all my muscles contract for a year or so, and now my finger tendons are shorter than usual. straightening them is a almost impossible challenge for me.

if you dont mind me asking, how excatly did you get it?

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former user radio_friendly_unit_shifter

I really don't know riley, i've been trying to figure it out. They say with focal dystonia in musicians it's caused by repeating very small finger movements like we do when we fingerpick, anyway they say it's doing that all the time that causes it. But then how can some people get it and others don't? it beats me. Basically it happens when i fingerpick and i also notice it when i have to write a long letter, the hand starts to feel weird.

I was wondering if it was anything to do with being on anti-depressant medication. I'm sure some people have said on the net that some types of SSRI can cause it. But then others say no so you end up not knowing who to believe. If i go see the doc i'm gonna ask him about that. That's why i hate taking any kind of medication, you don't know what side effects there's gonna be. It also says trauma can cause it but i'm not sure what they mean by trauma.

This is the way i heard it described : your brain has kind of maps of your individual fingers laid out so that it can move everything individually, but with this dystonia it says the maps of the individual fingers become blurred and tend to merge into one so that the fingers start getting confused signals and when you play the wrong muscles fire up, if you go to pick some strings muscles that don't need to fire up start contracting. With me the fingers want to curl up like a claw into the palm of the hand. It's so annoying

Here's a link to a Guitar Player article on Liona Boyd who had to give up her recital career because of this horrible condition:

http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/liona-boyd/158

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

that is excatly why i dont take most medication. my pyscologist suggested anti depressants, but i said no for that excact reason, i read somewhere that it may potentially cause dystonia, an if i got that in my left hand, itd be the end of me.
the docotors also suggested i might have it cause as soon as i started getting symptoms (around 10) i was going through a massive growthspurt, and considering the tisse in my brain that conrols the right side was still recovering, that may have messed with it a bit. highly unlikeley anyway, i just think i have it cause the damn doctors didn't tell me what had happened to me in detail so i didn't do anywhere near enough rehab in the first year. i strongly despise doctors for that.

anyway, whatever decission you make, i hope it gets better.

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former user radio_friendly_unit_shifter

Yes on any sites about dystonia they tell you about what drugs can cause it Anti-psychotic drugs definitely cause it big time, that's been proven. Anti-depressants may cause it in some cases, they say some SSRI's (that's what i take) can possibly cause it, but i don't think they really know for sure.

But you're right, anytime i ever need any kind of medication for anything now i'm paranoid about side effects. Doesn't matter what kind of drug it is there's usually always side effects somewhere.

Maybe i'm barking up the wrong tree with that theory though about the SSRI's, i'm just desperately trying to come up with a reason to explain it and i can't think of anything else apart from the practicing too much thing or the SSRI's.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.