Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.piano Subject: Re: Cold fingers : I recommend that you take the problem seriously and ask your doctor : about it. Your hands shouldn't get cold from playing. If they do, it's : probably a lack of circulation. That could be serious. A lot of folks : have been giving you a raft about this, but it is unusual an you should : have it checked out. : > > Weirdly, my fingers are fine when I'm typing (which : > > I do pretty much all day). I agree. I have the same problem, fairly pronounced, so I went in to the Dr, who, after doing some simple tests, thought I was a little unusual. So I went for some blood flow type of tests. The guy talks to me like I'm another yuppie complaining about cold hands, does the tests, looks somewhat shocked, and decides to take me seriously! There were two potential diagnoses, some variation of heart trouble, or some variation of rheumatoid arthritis (no piece of cake for a piano player). After some more work, he said I have somewhat pronounced Reynauds syndrome (common in smokers, very rare otherwise). He told me I should think about moving from Idaho to Florida! They told me I may only have 3-4 years of piano playing left, bleah. I don't believe that, though. Anyway to be sure, I would see a Dr. NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 15:31:42 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Xref: unlnews.unl.edu rec.music.makers.piano:95023 I feel a little sheepish about revealing this (why, I don't know. . . I've got to get over this wired-in machismo), but I often have a problem with poor circulation in my fingers. They're often ice-cold, even on a nice spring day like today. When this happens they're very stiff and it's more like trying to land on the keys with crow quills than with fingers. . . obviously this kills my technique. It's a bad thing, because when your fingers begin to hit wrong keys, it scrambles your musical thinking a bit too. . . It seems to correlate with fatigue (from work, what else?), but not always. Of course I can still get going, but it takes considerably more time to warm up in this situation. But until I get warmed up, it's like suddenly losing a good two grades in my piano aptitude. Very annoying, especially given that my time at the keyboard is often very limited. Does anyone else encounter this, and what do you do for it? NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 07:51:47 PST Xref: unlnews.unl.edu rec.music.makers.piano:95026 I have the EXACT same problem (in my feet as well). My instructor always told me that you should run warm water over your inner wrists to heat the blood going into your hands and fingers, but it never worked for me. I practice when I get home from work every day and, in the winter time, my hands can be quite cold. I usually run warm water directly over them for a minute or so and it helps a lot. If I warm up with a short, physical piece like an etude or the Fantasie-Impromptu, I'm usually ready to go. I often get cold fingers *from* playing. Then I just sit on my hands for a little (a padded bench helps) or blow into them and they'll warm up. NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 07:56:48 PST Xref: unlnews.unl.edu rec.music.makers.piano:95027 > >They're often ice-cold, even on a nice spring day like today. When this >happens they're very stiff and it's more like trying to land on the keys >with crow quills than with fingers. . . obviously this kills my >technique. It's a bad thing, because when your fingers begin to Yeah, it's called 'Raynauds Syndrome' or when it's worse 'Raynauds Disease.' Odd that you mention machismo, the rheumatologist that told me I had it said 'usually it's women who get this.' The cause is unknown. There is no cure. Nicotine makes it much worse, so stop smoking if you smoke. I've found resistance exercises to make it much better, since they open up and actually seem to enlarge blood vessels. There is an older blood pressure medication that helps, it's a vasodialator, and when I used to have this church gig where they thought it was necessary to have the temp where you could freeze meat, I would take one before playing there. Can't remember the name, but a doctor would know. There's a newer blood pressure med that can make it WORSE, one of the beta blockers, name isn't coming to me, but unfortunately it's often also prescribed for cases of STAGE FRIGHT, because in fact, it will reduce all that nervous symptomologies, butterflies, sweaty palms, etc, by blocking certain neurotransmitters. Unlike a benzodiazepine (xanax is common these days, valium is famous), though, it's not (usually) dulling on the mind, and it's never habit forming. So anyway, watch out for that. It can make a case of Raynauds have your hands looking absolutely purple, OR it might just help the stage fright. Drugs effects and side effects can be statistically predicted, but if you're in that small percentage who react badly, statistics don't help. It will stop once the drug wears off, though. Someone lately mentioned that Glen Gould used very hot water to warm his hands up. Well, I never heard the he used very hot, only warm, in any event I've been told by two very trustworthy sources (one, a book by a famous concert pianist, forgotten the name, the other face to face by a nurse) that very hot water will damage the nerves in your hands. I didn't believe the first time I heard it, and used very hot for a long time, and I've always wondered if that was the cause for my peripheral neuropathy (there were other possibilities as well, so it's unknown), but I stopped using very hot, among other things, and the nerves gradually came back to normal. I _believed_ the nurse who told me the same thing, years later. In short: it's probably more common than you think. It's indeed a real problem for a piano player. There are things that can be done. If it's really bad, see a doctor. No kidding. Try a vasodialator. NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 16:30:30 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Xref: unlnews.unl.edu rec.music.makers.piano:95041 > In short: it's probably more common than you think. It's > indeed a real problem for a piano player. There are things that > can be done. If it's really bad, see a doctor. No kidding. > Try a vasodialator. > Thanks for your advice. Actually to share some of my thoughts, I've found hot water to be a very poor thing, as the evaporation of the moisture from your skin soon makes things even colder than before. As far as cictulation goes, being something of a jock away from the piano, I do know that weightlifting and running improve things greatly, and in fact, when it gets real bad, I actually run up and down the stairs a few times before I can even play. The problem is lack of time for all this. . . NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:26:37 MST Xref: unlnews.unl.edu rec.music.makers.piano:95051 GG> Does anyone else encounter this, and what do you do for it? I've definately noticed that cold hands make it rough to play. I haven't experimented much with soaking them in warm water first but it seems worth a shot. I've tried to play a few times right after getting in from shoveling the snow. Bad idea ;-) I've also noticed that independent of temperature, there is a _huge_ difference (at least for me) between good days and bad days. Some days it seems like I can do no wrong, and even sections I usually struggle with go really well. But I can come back the next day and stumble over even the simplest things, and everything I attempt just ends up massacred horrificly. I'm not sure how to explain the difference. NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:41:35 PST Xref: unlnews.unl.edu rec.music.makers.piano:95060 >I've also noticed that independent of temperature, there is a >_huge_ difference (at least for me) between good days and bad >days. Some days it seems like I can do no wrong, and even >sections I usually struggle with go really well. But I can come >back the next day and stumble over even the simplest things, >and everything I attempt just ends up massacred horrificly. I'm >not sure how to explain the difference. I have the same problem. For some reason Tuesday evening is my peak time as well as Saturday afternoon. I think it has to do with the amount of sleep you get. After losing sleep all work week long, Friday is one of my worst days. I have had Saturday afternoons where I played passages at blinding speed and perfectly, when I never could before. Then never again. I wish I knew how to predict these times. NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 19:08:25 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Xref: unlnews.unl.edu rec.music.makers.piano:95062 > "I've also noticed that independent of temperature, there is a _huge_ > difference (at least for me) between good days and bad days. Some days > it seems like I can do no wrong, and even sections I usually struggle > with go really well. But I can come back the next day and stumble over > even the simplest things, and everything I attempt just ends up > massacred horrificly. I'm not sure how to explain the difference. This I know very well, and have spent much time thinking about why. Personally I have two unrelated theories. . . come to think of it maybe they -are- related. One, I know from your other posts you started playing late, as I did. I don't know -how- late, but for me, 36 years, and I think there are definitely some motor limitations that don't exist for people who learned to associate certain muscular movements with the production of certain pitches, or combinations of pitches, at a very early age. . . Just like with my golf and tennis (which I also learned late), I have days when I can do no wrong, but on bad days I feel like I've got a rare muscular disease. My theory here is that we have learned to play using a distinct and separete off-shoot of the higher nervous system from people who learned as 5-year-olds. What it is exactly, I don't know. . . the door shuts at a certain age, and we must now go through a different (and much smaller) door to get where we're going musically. . . Some days we can squeeze through fine, some others, we can't. . . Two, I have found music-making to be a thought process that takes place much more effectively in a continuum. . . that is, in a regular, consistent, way, every day, without worries and distractions. My job requires that I often spend long hours pretending to be happy about actualizing the ideas and desires of the worst philistines you can imagine. This is not only very stressful to the soul, but also very distracting to music-making, which requires a kind of inner calm and contentment to be able to focus well. When I have met my deadlines, and I know I have a few relatively calm days ahead, I play really nicely, and learn at a much quicker pace. But the interruptions in between are fatal. . .so this theory is that, approximately speaking, for every day you spend being whupped by the marketplace, you will require an equal day to recover your senses enough to go back to making music. As you can see, the implication is that the "bad" days and the "neutral" recovery days will outnumber the "good" days approx. 2-to-1. Some people might interpret this as pessimism, but actually, I'd rather think of it as objectivism. You must learn to acknowledge these things in order to work through them and around them. I used to try to pretend these factors didn't exist, but that was foolish optimism. I'd regularly hit the kind of walls you described, not knowing where they'd come from, or why, and just sit there at the keyboard totally bewildered. . .