Book Review: What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body is an evaluation of Barbara Conable’s book about body mapping for musicians.
This post is one of a series of posts related to my own experience with tackling Task Specific Focal Dystonia (TSFD) which affects my right hand. These posts are a reflection of my own thoughts, feelings and progress in overcoming this disorder. The range of issues that are coming under scrutiny due to TSFD is becoming more and more [...]
These strategies are in no order of importance.
The body
Important Disclaimer
Please note that these ideas are a result of my own thinking and what I have learned about my own Task Specific Focal Dystonia.
The process of thinking about and understanding TSFD is by no means finished. By extension, these strategies are an unfinished work and will [...]
These strategies are in no order of importance.
The instrument & execution
Important Disclaimer
Please note that these ideas are a result of my own thinking and what I have learned about my own Task Specific Focal Dystonia.
The process of thinking about and understanding TSFD is by no means finished. By extension, these strategies are an unfinished work [...]
These strategies are in no order of importance.
The mind (and the heart)
Important Disclaimer
Please note that these ideas are a result of my own thinking and what I have learned about my own Task Specific Focal Dystonia.
The process of thinking about and understanding TSFD is by no means finished. By extension, these strategies are an unfinished [...]
This post is the fifth in the series “Task Specific Focal Dystonia” . The first was my discovery of the syndrome. Next came a very short selection of some of the literature that I read – I spent weeks searching for scientific and medical literature as well as first hand accounts. Other frst hand accounts [...]
Here is the testimonial Iwrote for Joaquin Farias at www.focaldystonia.net/.
Dr. Joaquin Farias is highly competent, highly educated and an extremely good listener. Not only clear, logical and open-minded: he was a paradigm of discretion. I immediately felt relaxed in his presence despite knowing that my playing had totally collapsed.
My initial fears that these seminars might [...]
In eight hours of one to one seminars I learned more about me and my music playing than in thirty years of actually playing. And some of those thirty years were as a professional musician.
Before my visit, I knew that there was something wrong. I was practising morning and evening. I was concentrating on relaxation, breathing and good posture. I was [...]
In order to further understand Focal Dystonia I have scoured the web. There is some carefully written literature on the subject as well as practitioners that offer help with the syndrome. To assist my own understanding I have selected the most relevant of the resources on the and provided a summary of the work [...]
I have been diagnosed with Focal Dystonia and after spending hours and hours researching I agree with the diagnosis.
Essentially, focal dystonia is an involuntary movement of one or more fingers. In short, I cannot play and have not been able to play for a considerable amount of time. Despite all efforts (and considerable efforts) to [...]
Do you stay in your safe zone when practising?
“The essence of deliberate practice is continually stretching an individual just beyond his or her current abilities. That may sound obvious, but most of us don’t do it in the activities we think of as practice.
I have now written out, in tab and stave the scales based on A. Go to the “scales the notes” to find the pdf.
Here is the final installment of our soleá. There are four rasgueado exercises that form the basic soleá rasgueados. More details about these are given in the newly updated rasgueado page.You can download the pdf here:
At the top of the page I have shown some simple chords that are most often used for this [...]
How can you start learning the rhythmic forms of flamenco?
Start counting. Count the beats out loud, or in your head. Do it in any language you like, the idea is to start to develop a feel for the accents sub-consciously. It will help if you tap your foot, click your fingers or tap your knuckles [...]
Warming up is making the joints, tendons and muscles of the fingers and hands ready to play. Use exercises that strengthen and make supple your fingers and hands to avoid injury (tendonitis).
A simple rubbing and stretching of our hands is enough to begin to achieve this aim. After this, short studies of scales, arpeggios, rasgueos [...]
Learning how to study the guitar is as important as learning to play given that we will only ever play what we practice. If we don’t practice well, we will never play well. For this reason it is important to learn how to practice: defining what we want to achieve and knowing how we [...]
Words of advice from Sabicas:
“It is not done with speed and force, only with touch and tone. ‘Fast’ is a term that should not be applied to music. Only the note value and the tempo dictate the number of notes in a measure. The feeling of speed is most effectively achieved when tempo and note [...]
2011 Guernika