Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic
Subject: Re: Help!!!!!! OUCH!!!!!!!!
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 11:41:37 -0500
Organization: Earlham College Computing Center

Marxhausen) wrote:

> 2. Realize right now that "I _can"t_ stop playing" is not a workable
>    attitude.  You will _almost certainly_ have to at least reduce your
>    playing considerably, possibly for weeks & months.  If you refuse
>    to compromise on that you may cripple yourself, and I don't use that
>    term lightly, from personal experience.

Also true.  A relevant story, learned from my first teacher, who was also
the first teacher of the composer Ian Krouse:  Krouse was at one point a
concert guitarist with an extremely promising career as a performer.  When
he left South Bend, IN where he'd been teaching locally, he founded the de
Falla trio in L.A., and also (I think) did some occassional work with the
L.A. Guitar Quartet (feel free to correct me on this last statement, since
I'm not sure about it).  

He was also fanatical about practice (sometimes upwards of 10 - 12 hours
per *day*).  Unfortunately, he was also into bodybuilding, and a few
years' worth of wrist curls later, he had developed stress fractures in
his wrists.  This might have been a temporary problem if he had done
anything about it -- he didn't, partly on the grounds that he "couldn't
stop playing".  A year later he had to stop playing -- pretty much for
good.  To this day (ten years later) he still can't perform, because his
hands won't hold up to the stress of a two hour concert.

Now out of this, he decided to concentrate more on composition, and the
classical guitar might not have his wonderful music if he were still a
performer.  It's pretty safe to say that he did not see things in such a
rosy light at the time, however.

Anyway, the anecdote is just to illustrate Paul's point:  don't screw
around with your hands, and don't take a short-sighted view about problems
with them!

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