Posted by Mary Ann on August 07, 2003 at 10:11:08:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Tastes... posted by Wade on August 06, 2003 at 23:22:21:
Focal dystonia is a sudden-onset embouchure failure (in the case of brass players). The most recent research indicates that it is a brain problem; that somehow the signals that the brain sends get full of static. It is not a problem with the muscles per se. When the person tries to play, the muscles will not do what the player is trying to get them to do; they may quaver, move uncontrollably, or refuse to tense up.
I particpated in an FD research study this past June at the IHS conference in Bloomington, Indiana. A friend who has FD, who volunteered for the study, asked me to participate with her and observe, since the researcher also wanted data from people without FD.
His test: it took quite a while to wire the subject up; electrodes were pasted (like for an EEG) to the "smile muscles" of the embouchure, in four places, where were off to the side, and above and below the mouth. It was a lot of apparatus to try to play attached to, but necessary for the test.
The first thing was to form an embouchure and just blow through it without buzzing, and the signals from these muscles went into the computer. We could see the graph (also like an EEG, sort of) being produced on the screen.
Second, a series of midrange notes was played, in a strict 4 beats on, 4 beats off pattern. My friend, who had looked normal when just blowing through a formed embouchure, when she tried to play the note...her corners went in and out covering maybe an inch of face territory, completely not under her control, causing a huge "vibrato" or "wavering" in the sound, very, very far from a controlled tone. Like, to imitate this....go back and forth between a full pucker and a wide smile, about once a second. This is what her face did when she tried to play a note.
Third, we were asked to hold that same pitch, breathing in small gasps as necessary, for as long as it took to reach embouchure failure. My friend got mostly nowhere, being unable to hold the pitch at all, and I lasted for about three minutes before I was unable to hold the pitch up even with just air.
At the point where my emouchure gave up, the researcher (who has FD himself, and is a PhD in something similar to physiology) said..."Welcome to focal dystonia."
But....when my embouchure failed, it was muscular. FD is not muscular; I think he was just trying to show a normally functioning person what FD feels like.
My friend is a life-long horn player, who is very concienscous in her playing. She had a WW 5tet performance, and the embouchure started to be a little weird a couple days ahead of time, but not knowing what was going on, she persevered and kept trying to get it to behave. Midway in the performance, it just quit. She could no longer control it, suddenly, and the performance had to be stopped midstream. She was VERY upset. This was a few years ago, she has made very little progress in improving the problem, and she is still upset and working every day on trying to fix it.
Both this IHS and the last IHS held in the US, had forums on FD. There is one pro horn player, a younger woman, Jenine Gabrouy, who got FD and overcame it. But she had excellent advice, which she had the intelligence to listen to. Someone close to her recognized what was going on, and told her to stop playing immediately. She did, rather than plowing onward trying to overcome the problem as my friend did, and credits the good advice as part of the reason why she was able to come back on a professional level. However, she says she had to learn to play differently, to think about her embouchure in different ways. She was not able to go back to playing the way she did before. I have heard her perform, and she sounds just fine to me, on a professional level.
My friend gave me an article recently that was from a double reed publication. An oboeist develed FD in her left hand and was able to overcome it not with exercise but with concentration exercises, focusing attention on her fingers just as to "where they were." Her problem was that she would try to move one finger, and another one would move instead. At some point her brain thought she had an extra finger. It was definitely a brain confusion problem, and not a physical problem.
From my readings and observations....if you have FD, the solution is not in working the muscles but in learning to have your brain focus differently on the problem area. One of the posters above said he uses different muscles; the oboe player and the horn player both "think about" their playing differently.
That's all I can come up with. Hope it was helpful.
MA