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Blondie#2 -> RE: Thoughts on Technique and Some Issues (Dec. 12 2012 12:40:53)
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I'm not quite sure how to answer how bad it is - that's subjective - what I would say is that the longer you have it, the harder it is to fix. Certainly I have seen much more complicated cramping of the fingers than you have, some people are left being unable to play anything at all whereas it sounds like it is just affecting your IA picados and starting to affect arpegios.
Your hand is 'miswired' - the wrong signals are firing the wrong muscles and the harder you try to make the right muscles work the more you will reinforce the incorrect wiring.
A motor skill - like playing arpeggios or scales - is a bit like software. Its a program you have assembled over years of practice. The sensory motor cortex has 'plasticity' - this means the program is not fixed, and continues to change and adapt according to what you are trying to do and what your senses feedback that is actually happening. It is continually learning, in other words. Unfortunately it can adapt in the wrong way, when under pressure.
Fast, delicate, fine movements like those performed by guitarists and pianists (highest incidence of FD in musicians is pianists, followed by guitarists) push this system to its limits, and in certain circumstances push past those limits. For example, sustained repetitive practice of a particular technique, sudden increases in practice time, sudden changes in technique (change in right hand position, the way you hold the guitar...) can all overload that system, especially if there is too much tension present
anyway.
Once something goes wrong - eg a certain finger doesn't flex fast enough according to what your 'progam' is expecting, the brain
tries to adapt and approximate the movement some other way eg A finger is not flexing fast enough, so M finger jumps in to try and
help it along (by flexing first).
Suddenly that becomes part of the program, which by repeating you reinforce. Getting stressed and tensed about it invariably means
trying harder to get the right finger to move which means the same problematic motion is just repeated. Brain scans of healthy
individuals have clearly separated representations of the fingers that 'light up' when these are used. In people, with FD, these areas
are smeared and overlap - visual proof of this rewiring.
Then other fingers/muscles join in as we try and inhibit the incorrect movements we are seeing, what you get is kind of a chain reaction of
paralysing tensions which will develop as a pattern, and can spread to other similar movements - if IA alternation is causing you problems in picado
then it is not surprising that I followed by A in an arpeggio will do the same thing.
You have to rewire your hand, rebuild the correct picture of where everything is. That means ultra slow practice under the threshold
at which the dystonic movement occurs, between different finger combinations and different techniques. Eg if for you M is
involuntarily flexing in IA picado I would forget about IA picado for starters, I would be re-training MA and IM, IMAM, free and rest stroke
for example, to rebuild those different relationships. Arp combos too.
Psychology plays a big part in recovery too, as it does in learning any motor skill.
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