Musicians with Dystonia Bulletin Board

Brief background - I am a classical guitarist who has had focal dystonia for 8 years in my RH middle finger. In recent years
this has been characterised by a lack of any ability to play with the M finger and when I attempt to use it, a corresponding
overcompensation in my A finger which would flex at the large knuckle. With a kind of chain reaction, the little finger would
often extend and tense up at the large knuckle to try and compensate for the over flexion of its ring finger neighbour.

Quite a mess in other words, and impossible to play anything with a full hand. As I work at weddings, restaurants etc. I had
to come up with something so for the last 6 years or so have been playing in public with just P and I, the same way David Leisner did, all other fingers closed into the palm. Not great - often uncomfortable and pretty limiting.

Anyhow, last November I decided to really concentrate on retraining, avoid playing and practicing any repertoire unless I absolutely had to, and approach the whole thing with a determined & fresh perspective. I had been trying to learn flamenco and dropped that to. Any time spent playing with my adaptive technique was time wasted that could have been spent retraining.

I took on board several things that I had read here, from people like HKC58 and others who had visited Prof Farias or Fabra. I devised a set of exercises and had to start out VERY slowly. Exercises were very basic to start with - restroke
alternations at first then free stroke later as they are much harder. I didn't attempt arpegios for months. No point trying
to play PAMI arpegios if my M finger couldn't work with either I or A.

I tweaked and introduced new exercises when I hit a brick wall, being creative and cunning to tackle specific problems eg. I
introduced the little finger into arpeggio practice and this REALLY paid off with my A finger, even though we guitarists do
not normally play with this finger.

I used a metronome to start off with - I had to as my FD threshold was so low and I need something to keep me at a VERY slow speed (see results). I dropped the metronome when I no longer needed it and could control free movement much better, ie I could sense my limits and stay within a controllable tempo. I could only do about 20mins a day to start out whereas now I can do about one and a half hours/day. Maintaining concentration is the difficult - and absolutely crucial - thing.

Here are my results, at the beginning (one year ago) and today. These are max speeds I could manage to control continuously
without any dystonic reaction apparent, and no sense of tension building. All exercises are played on open strings, with
fingers playing adjacent strings.

All tempos are number of beats/minute. (metronome click setting X no of plucks per beat).

Results

Restroke alternation

one year ago today

IM 69 400
IA 44 432
MA 26 304

Free stroke alternation

one year ago today

IM 0* 320
MA 0* 140
PM 0* 312

*Yes, I couldn't do these alternations AT ALL at the start, and introduced them at around week 6, starting at sppeeds of about
50 beats per minute.

arpegio combos
one year ago today
PAMI (tested at week 8) 50 240
Carcassi op60#3 40 189

Some of those figures are very exciting and extraordinary for me - check out IM free stroke alternation: quarter notes at
mm=80 when this configuration was just impossible for me to do at all one year ago.

With this speeds, some intermediate level pieces are now within my grasp, although I try very hard not to be tempted as I have made so much progress working on exercises designed to move me forward. I have been distracted a number of times by repertoire and paid for it (zero progress).

Apart from devising specific exercises to tackle MY problems, the other secret was HOW the exercises were played - mental
approach is crucial.

I will declare full recovery not only when I can play everything I could play before FD with a full hand, but when I can play more advanced pieces at perfomance tempo that I could not play before, that way I know am not fooling myself.

There is still much work to do, but I feel I have come a long way in that year :-)