I had a very quick recording session on Monday. It was one of those things that reminds you that you’re in LA; song demo for the next album by BIG NAME ARTIST (all-caps for dramatic effect), have to get a copy in their hands before they fly back to London at 1PM, decide to bring in someone other than the songwriter to punch up the piano part, hurry up to find a piano room and engineer. It was one of those days where you really hope the coffee girl at Starbucks ask what you’re up to, so that you can casually shrug while you pretend that you spend every monday rushing off to find a studio to lay down song demos for BIG NAME ARTIST.
So, I’m the hired gun, there to punch up the piano part. The song is solo piano and vocal, a rolling 16th-note kind of thing, floating and insistent, dropping into a heavy Elton John piano-rock chorus. It’s an arrangement where the timing of piano part matters a lot, and the whole thing, basically, is the feel. It’s all about the small differences between “right on the beat” and “ahhhhhh, that’s it.”
I love those piano parts, and I feel comfortable delivering something where timing is critical. I spent a lot of practice hours earlier in my musical career woodshedding my sense of time, and I can usually get things to sit in the right spot. Rolling 16ths that breathe across the line? Candy! Great song, decent big room, great engineer, beautiful piano, cup of coffee, it’s go time!
Except midway through the first pass, it was obvious to me that something was very wrong. My right hand was all over the place - individual notes in the part would get stuck, like they were hitting late, and would throw the timing of the whole line off. I was playing a repeating ostinato pattern of 4 16th-notes, and the third note would be late. When you’re playing a part like that, you can’t stop to think about the timing of each finger, it just has to do what you’ve trained it to do. There are too many other things to think about. So, when my fingers started hitting at the wrong time, it took my focus away from other things: arrangement, dynamics, listening to the vocalist, and the little timing problems started to eat away at everything else that was going on.
About 2 weeks ago, I noticed a lump on the back of my right hand, about an inch below the wrist, right above the index and middle fingers. It didn’t hurt, unless I used my hand a lot, and I didn’t think too much about it. That’s my usual method for dealing with body abnormalities.
After the session on monday finally ended, it was throbbing, and Gretchen called to make an appoint for me to see the doctor.
It’s called a ganglion cycst. It’s a collection of clear, thick, gelatinous fluid on the sheath of the tendon that connects my fingers to the muscles that control them. Musicians don’t like to hear doctors say anything that involves the words “fingers” or “tendon”. It’s not big, maybe the size of a dime, but it’s large enough to alter the mechanics of how my hand works.
During the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the height of the vault for the women’s gymnastics competition was set 2 inches lower than regulation. Girls kept falling, crashing into the mats, coaches kept saying to the officials, “Something’s wrong, something’s wrong!” 2 inches difference in apparatus for a gymnast is enough to alter every aspect of what you’re doing.
The added strain of those two fingers having to pull against the cyst is enough to change the timing between my brain giving the signal to play, and the finger striking the key. The pressure on the circulatory system causes the hand to throb most of the time now. The tips of my middle and ring finger occasionally go numb.
My playing was a disaster on Monday. Fortunately, the songwriter I was working for is a friend, and she was too gracious to say anything. She’s enough of a friend that I’m probably not crossed off her list. But, on the drive from her house to the studio, she passed 5,800 keyboardists, all of whom are listed in the union directory, any of whom can do the gig. You don’t get to blow it too many times before people move on down to the next name.
So, this cyst thing has me scared. Frankly, I wanted the doctor to be a lot more concerned. I wasn’t able to communicate to her just how big a deal it is to me to have the timing in my hands thrown off by a little bit. She said to wait for a month, and see if it goes away. I said, “What if it doesn’t?” She said, “Well, sometimes they just go away, sometimes they don’t. If it doesn’t we’ll look at some other options.” “Can’t we just cut the thing out?” “Well, we don’t like to do that until we see if it goes away on its own.” “Well, I don’t like to sit around for a month while we see if the hand that I’ve spent 6,000 hours training is going to actually function worth a damn!”
I didn’t say that last part. Maybe I should have. It’s what I was thinking. It’s all I can think about. This thing has me scared.
That’s sucky and scary indeed. Try taking your hand to Rome…that might cure it!
Seriously, such things are nerve-wracking. I hope it does indeed just go away!
My dad had one that he had to get removed and everything works fine now, and my mom also had one that fixed itself. So there is hope. I’ll be praying.
That totally sucks! Man, I’ll be praying for a quick healing!
Dude. I’ll totally be pray’n for you! I hope it heals all quick like so you can get back!
When I think of your playing, I am reminded of the joke (paraphrased), “How are a pianist’s hands like lightening?” I have always been in awe!
Could you see another doctor who is more sympathetic to your situation? Maybe there are more options than “waiting it out?” Anyway, my prayers are with you…
[quote comment="96393"]“How are a pianist’s hands like lightening?” [/quote]
They never strike in the same place twice? I think you might have just insulted me! I shall banish you to choir 3.
A “ganglion cycst”, eh? I’ll tell you the truth, when I read that, even though I know what they are, I still pictured something out of Star Wars. Something in Jabba the Hutt’s lair.
I wish you the best of luck it though. I know how important your fingers are, so I will be praying for a less than lengthy recovery.
Believe it or not one of the common remedies it to hit the cyst with a heavy book. Breaks it up and it’s absorbed by the body…I had a small one on my wrist and my mom said to just hit it with a book. I didn’t believe it either till she showed me a medical text book. Wikipedia lists the same… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganglion_cyst Worked for me but your hands are kinda important so I’d say go with what the doc tells you.
A friend just had a very large one removed from the top of his foot. Other than getting cut open it was not that big of a deal. Hope yours works out.
Yeah, they call it the bible remedy. Believe it or not, I’m not thrilled with the idea of smashing my hand with a heavy object. Seems kind of like dousing your eye in bleach to get out some dirt.
Michael, I too am a pianist. (I earn my living as a piano teacher.) I too have a ganglion cyst on my wrist which has been growing and changing for the past few months. Monday night was hell—I was afraid that perhaps my career was over.
To make a long story short, I’ve made an incredible turnaround in the past two days. I don’t know if our cysts stem from the same cause—mine is a volar cyst, on the underside of my wrist— but I seem to have discovered how to make mine soften and begin to shrink. My nagging pain is completely gone. (The cyst had been crowding a nerve.)
I’d rather talk with you on the phone than write a long email. So if you’re interested, send me an email and I’ll give you my phone number. I live in L.A.
Bruce
Dude. I’m so sorry. I’m praying that you’ll be cyst-free lickety-split.
Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and have to get the tendon replaced with some sort of hi-tech pneumatic actuated titanium rod. The down side is that you would have to relearn your piano playing. The upside, you could be the fastest piano player in the world. You might make Franz Liszt look like Victor Borge! If you catch my drift.
Remember, in Chinese, the world for “crisis” is the same as the word for “opportunity”.
But the word for “ganglion cyst” is the same as the word for “get a job as a producer”.
OR
Remember, if you playing is a little weird, T. Monk used to say:
“There are two kinds of wrong notes, ones that sound good and WRONG NOTES.”
I’m sure you’ll be arpeggiating up a storm in no time.