I think this is one of the most serious issues with retraining. How much tension to use? I was treaded by Victor Candia, with splints and lots of tension. Despite making some progress initially, it all went horribly wrong for me and I ended up worse than I was to start with (several of the people I was in contact with intitially through this list had the same experience). More recently i've tried to come back to treatment, but tried to use as little tension as I could. I detuned my fiddle so i didn't have so much resistance in the strings and played very gently. Over quite a long period of time this has made things settle down, i don't cramp as much and there are definitely periods of light at the end of the tunnel. But as things have improved, I can really start to pay attention to the tiny details of my playing that make things better or worse, and I'm realising that I'm rediscovering, for myself, all the same things that Victor Candia taught me (including some use of tension). I'm now at the stage where i can play a scale up the stings in one of two ways: 1) I relax and almost flop my fingers down as if they were on strings held from above or 2) I fix my first finger down really hard and use this to anchor my hand and put the other fingers down gently. If i try any other metthod I get cramping. With either of these I get control and no cramping. But they seem incompativle methods...
I guess that where I'm at at the moment, there is a place for playing any and everything just under the 'threshold' and a place for very focused practicing which focuses on changing my playing in such a way as I can use tension but in ways that don't reproduce the dystonic pathways. It's a matter of balance and knowing my own playing and hoping that it all comes together at some stage. But I'm very interested in hearing more about how using a lot of tension has worked for you.
Cheers,
Clive
