Musicians with Dystonia Bulletin Board

As far as the various sensory tricks are concerned (gloves, tape on fingers etc), I feel that, when Katherine introduced the idea to me at the beginning of the year, they definitely helped - or to be specific, the use of Coban tape certainly helped. I didn't really get on with the gloves or the splint that she made for me (nothing wrong with the splint, I just didn't take to it.) However, using tape was a revelation. The way my FD manifested itself, and yours is perhaps similar, was that my middle finger wouldn't return naturally after plucking a string without HUGE effort, if at all (no curling towards the palm). The ring finger and little finger would move outwards to compensate/assist. I was getting to a point last winter where I was starting to eradicate this compensatory movement but when I tried tape on my middle finger it magically seemed to work as it should. This gave me the means perhaps to strengthen the finger which I feel had become extremely weak.

Over the last few months I've experimented with the tape, different widths, different fingers, different joints (even if I put my wedding ring on my middle finger it makes some difference). What I've found is that, with some tape on the end joint of the middle finger, I can get normal use but, as you mention (if this is what you meant), this normal use diminishes after a while (a few minutes).

The point I'm at now is that I can play very slowly for a while with varying amounts of dystonic movement (from none to some). I did try the Sakai slow-down approach for a while with a metronome but I'm not sure if using a metronome works for me. Some days are better than others and some sequences of fingers are more fluent than others (e.g. ma is better than am) so I prefer Paul Sogaard's advice that he gave me which was just play and ensure that the hand is relaxed after each note. The other day I played a Bach Cello Suite prelude (which I use daily) in 18 minutes (should take less than 5). Yesterday I could only just finish in 30 minutes. Using a metronome would mean that I couldn't play faster on the better days. (By the way, with tape a few days ago I played this piece in 10 minutes. I worry a little about using the tape though in case in case the brain is only learning how to move the finger properly when it's got tape on it!)

I've also found that 4 sessions per day of half an hour each seem to suit me best. I'm about to try using two of those for repeating the same action, i.e. plucking with the i finger for 10 minutes, then the a for 10 and finally the m for 10 - nice and slow (perhaps one note every 2-3 seconds), ensuring everything else in my hand is entirely relaxed. When I do this on my m finger if it won't work on its own (allowing longer per pluck) then I will use the tape - on the basis that the brain is triggering and re-inforcing the correct movement. Who knows...I don't.