The Under-Use Syndrome
Published: 1990 Author: Gordon Crosskey
CONSIDERABLE MEDICAL RESEARCH has been carried out in recent years on occupationally related muscular problems. The patients have been men and women active in sport, factory employees whose work involves repetitive muscular actions, and musicians. Among the latter no particular instrumentalists seem to be immune. Problems arise among pianists, wind players, and string players (including guitarists).
The symptoms range from the usual tendinitis and tenosynovitis to problems with the movements of specific fingers, in the case of guitarists often involving the right hand. Tendinitis is commonly referred to as an ‘over-use syndrome’, caused by practising too much and for too long a period at a time. Most of us at some time in our musical careers have been careless enough to do this but have come to no harm. However for others the consequences can be serious, although only very rarely is permanent damage done.
Readers may be familiar with the article ‘Over-Use Syndromes in Instrumentalists’ by Richard Lederman and Leonard Calabrese, published in the magazine Medical Problems of Performing Artists (reproduced in Guitar International, February 1987). Another very informative article, entitled ‘Isolated painless manual incoordination in fifty-nine musicians’, by Newmark and Hochberg, appeared in the Journal of Neurology (1987:50). This article describes case histories of several classical guitarists with right-hand problems, flexion of the third finger frequently being one of them:
In each case the third finger was unable to extend sufficiently rapidly after plucking a string to be in position to repeat this motion. Fast scale and tremolo passages were, consequently, most severely impaired. In two patients the problem was confined to the third finger, with the second and fourth fingers additionally involved in each of the others. None of the patients reported spread of the problem beyond its initial location.
It is not the purpose of this article to delve into the complex physiology of the muscular movements involved in guitar playing, a matter best left to medical specialists. But it is perhaps worthwhile enquiring whether flamenco guitarists suffer as many muscular problems (especially of the right hand) as classical players. I have no statistics to prove it but I suspect they do not! Also, why is it that flamenco players in general have so much faster articulation than their classical counterparts? It is true that they are less concerned about the overall quality of the tone. Paco de Lucia made the suggestion to Michael Lorimer that classical players would have far better techniques if they stopped being constantly obsessed by the quality of tone. One has to be careful of terminology because ‘technique’ in its broadest sense surely includes the ability to produce a good tone, however defined. But what Paco de Lucia was referring to was simply the muscular power and speed to execute fast scales and arpeggios.
It occurred to me some time ago that right-hand finger reflexes and general speed of articulation can be much improved by carefully practising outward movements of the fingers. Children who learn flamenco spend much practice time developing outward movements of the right-hand fingers in various rasgueado techniques where the outward movement has to follow specific rhythmic patterns. This has the great advantage of developing independence between the fingers. It also develops the extensor muscles, the ones responsible for straightening the fingers.
We as classical players spend virtually all our time concerned only with the inward movement of the right-hand fingers when plucking strings. The muscles used for inward movement are the flexors, which are both more powerful and more highly trained than the extensors. Few players, for example, have a problem strumming chords in a triplet rhythm in an inward direction using a m i. But when the same rhythmic pattern is attempted using a m i in an outward direction, they are ‘all at sea’.
This lack of training of the extensor muscles by not practising outward movements is why this article is called ‘The Under-Use Syndrome’. The development and control of the extensor muscles is a very important (though virtually ignored) part of overall right-hand technique. Development of at least one of the authentic flamenco rasgueado techniques is a great advantage regarding both essential muscular training (though not easy to learn) and musical effect. Ráfaga by Turina, the last movement of Ponce’s Concierto del Sur, and any arrangement of The Miller’s Dance by Manuel de Falla, are just three examples of pieces that sound far better when a proper flamenco rasgueado is used instead of the customary ersatz technique of a rapid out and back alternation of the index finger.
Learning to control the outward movements of fingers rhythmically, as in strummed chords or full-blown rasgueado technique, is only one aspect of the total development of the extensor muscles. An important part of the training is to play arpeggio exercises (or actual studies) in an outward direction, using the backs of the nails (including the thumb) to pluck the strings. This has to be done slowly at first because of the problem of locating the strings. In any case the object is not to play particularly fast in this outward fashion but to control the movement and to strengthen the extensor muscles. The muscles strengthen of course as they are pushing the backs of the nails against the resistance of the strings. Extensor muscles are really quite weak and so it is important not to overdo the outward practice, and the right arm soon starts to ache.
Many arpeggio studies are useful for outward practice. These include Aguado’s Study in G, no. 8 in New Guitar Method (ed. Jeffery, Tecla Editions) or Villa-Lobos’s Etude no. 1 (omitting the descending slurred section). But almost any arpeggio study will do. Scales should also be tried using the outward movement, employing any combination of right hand fingering, though i m and m a are adequate.
This concept of training and developing the right hand through the practice of outward movement is certainly not original to me, as I have met several teachers who advocate the system. I discussed it some years ago at the Karis Guitar Summer School in Finland with the Swedish teacher Jan-Olof Eriksson. Since then the ideas seem to have become more widely disseminated and adopted.
But as with many special techniques, outward practice will not be of much benefit unless done carefully and in a controlled way, on a regular basis and over a long period of time. Those players who do not have a natural aptitude for rapid articulation, whether in arpeggios or scales, will achieve very positive results from four to six months’ regular work on outward movements, with perhaps ten or twelve minutes’ practice during the warming up period.
Clearly some players are gifted with extraordinary right-hand facility and have an enviable ability to play very fast with ease and fluency. But for most of us such skills (if actually attainable) are only maintained with considerable hard work. As a teacher, with relatively little time to devote to my own practice, I find that the regular session of a few minutes of outward exercises speeds up the warm up period, maintains my technique very well and has in fact very much improved it.
One final consideration concerns scales using apoyando. It seems clear to me that the primary limiting factor as regards speed of execution is the rapidity with which the fingers can be recycled after playing a note. One of the main reasons for practising outward movements is precisely to improve this fast reflex action. Now most classical guitarists play apoyando scales with a reciprocal movement, for example when alternating i and m, in such a way that one finger is always in contact with the next lower string. This is exactly like walking where you only have both feet on the ground for an instantaneous moment; if both feet are off the ground at the same moment you are running.
Whereas this ‘walking’ technique in apoyando playing is adequate (and is indeed a very stable technique) for scales up to quite fast tempi, for extremely fast scales it is better to abandon the ‘walking’ technique in favour of a ‘running’ technique. By this I mean that although the i and m fingers still alternate of course, the action is no longer strictly reciprocal. The overriding necessity is to recycle the fingers as fast as possible and a finger no longer waits for the other one to play before being recycled for its next action. That is both fingers are ‘off the ground’ at the same time, like running.
When I began my teaching career as a peripatetic for the former West Riding Education Authority in the early 1960s, I used to give children who were applying to join the guitar classes simple tests in order to get some idea of their aptitude. One test involved their right hands where the thumb was placed on the sixth string and the three fingers placed on the top three strings in the usual way. I would demonstrate a basic open-string E minor arpeggio, p i m a. The demonstration would be repeated several times for each child. However, in every group of children there was always one child who would pluck the strings the ‘wrong’ way, i.e. outwards. As John GavalI said when I mentioned this to him only last year, ‘Ah well, perhaps they were the geniuses!’
Copyright © 1993 by Gordon Crosskey