Hey all, I’m working on a youtube video about reducing your risk of overuse injuries while working on electronic music. Between my love of electronic music gear and my education in exercise science I have a lot to share, but I’d like to hear what other people have dealt with so the video can help as many people as possible instead of just being a bunch of stories about me.
It would be super helpful if you could share your own experience with injuries:
What was the injury, and how did it relate to your gear?
How did it limit you using your gear?
Did you try anything to avoid further injury, and were you successful?
For context, here are the risk factors I’m currently planning on addressing:
Head position (e.g., looking straight down at an instrument on your desk)
Wrist position (e.g., when playing a keyboard)
Twisting/rotating at the trunk or shoulders (e.g., playing a few notes on a keyboard that’s not directly in front of you)
Reaching/leaning (e.g., turning a knob that’s a bit far away)
I’m super grateful for everyone’s responses so far, thank you all!
To answer some questions:
Maybe more like a PSA video? I saw a post on Reddit about someone selling their gear to go to a DAW solely due to back pain and I got kinda bummed out. I’ve made a lot of successful changes to my setup that have relieved aches and pains and I hope that sharing what I know can help others do the same.
A few reasons:
I don’t think there’s nearly as much discussion around posture and overuse injury amongst electronic musicians, especially compared to pianists, guitarists, singers, etc.
I have a pretty deep understanding of back injury, which is what I think about when I see some setup pictures.
I’m definitely not qualified to discuss injury prevention for every single instrument ever.
Legitimately a great question.
Probably not once or twice or even a hundred times, but if you have to lean forward and twist to reach the cutoff knob on your modular gear and you do that a few dozen times per day for a couple years, you’re increasing your risk of herniating a disk. A lot of back injuries come from smaller movements like that done repeatedly, and slight adjustments can really make a difference.
I’ve certainly never been injured by music directly but my neck, back and various other parts are all kinds of fucked up from a misspent youth. This means I have to be real careful with posture and make sure I take a breaks fairly frequently. At home forgetfulness is the big fight but I occasionally play some pretty long gigs and there’s much less opportunity to get up, walk away, and/or stretch. Sometimes this leaves me with a fair amount of back and neck pain for a few days.
I’m not sure this information is helpful at all as I didn’t exactly answer any of your questions but I definitely take this stuff seriously because it hurts when I’m not mindful!
I have one! When I was maybe 21 I was… …up for say 30+ hours writing music (Peru-yadda-yadda). Posture was fine because of my custom high table. I believe it was Q, XT-30, SID Station, a Drum Station and XD-5. Anyway, my pinky finger went completely numb from my elbow resting on the table for extended periods. Was like that for a week or two before I finally went to my doctor. Was just a squished nerve. Got some prednisone, and it was back to normal.
So… you know…. Don’t do naughty things, and stay up too long writing music with your elbow on the table.
I’ll tell you what’s worse though. Three straight days of wiring, framing and sheeting. (House renovations). I feel good from the exercise, but wrecked from all the weird positions I have to work in
Thanks for sharing your perspective! I don’t expect everyone to take an interest in boring stuff like preventing overuse injuries.
I think this is actually what I’m getting at: how many people know how to “sit properly”? Aeron chairs tend to put you into lumbar extension, which actually happens to aggravate old injuries for me. If you’re not sure how to figure out if your back hurts from flexion or extension, you’re not likely to buy the right chair or make the right adjustments to your setup to ease your pain.
As a professional mover you may be aware that your spine is strongest when neutral and braced, second-strongest when flexed and braced, and the weakest when extended and braced… but overall more likely to be damaged from repeated flexion (see Stuart McGill’s entire body of work). This is exactly what might happen if you try to reach across your desk while sitting in a chair that biases you toward extension, and knowing this can help you avoid hurting yourself even more.
Anyway I’m not trying to convince you; just writing out responses to the skepticism so I know what to include in my video–thank you again for sharing your perspective!
Not sure about prevention, but going straight from a kb/mouse at work to synths and/or video games for years on end absolutely fucked my arms. I’m hopefully getting an MRI soon to figure out exactly what’s going on because every other test/scan has come back negative [insert gripes about the US “healthcare” system here].
US healthcare is garbage. I can remember a time (basically when I was a kid) when my mom could bring me to a private practice doctor. They’d tell me what was wrong, I’d get fixed. Rarely got forwareded off to specialists. Now you have to pay to walk in the door, be told the “doctor” doesn’t “do that” and then shuffled off to a specialist who couldn’t care less about you. Good stuff!
That’s all I can bring myself to talk or think about that though or I’ll start getting angry. I wouldn’t like me if I was angry.
the magic secret to not getting crippled by doing nothing always has been and always will be…doing basically any sort of exercise. I am willing to bet that the overlap between reddit posting synth fanatics and gym rats is not a large one
