Tips from a tutor, Sarnia de la Maré FRSA, pianist, cellist,composer. hello child hellos welcome to the jail teleclub i'm going to talk about musicians health today now i'm not a doctor so a quick disclaimer the advice that i'm giving today or the discussion or the little mini lecture if you like is not from a medical point of view it's purely from the point of view as a of a teacher with many years of experience and a performer and somebody who has come to terms with um quite severe arthritis in my neck so if you are experiencing extreme pain you should see a doctor that's the first thing to notice okay um but all the advice i'm going to give you is learned through experience and through certain um you know teaching methods that people who've told me and people who've taught me so i'm just going to pass on the knowledge as i see it okay but as i say i'm not a doctor and if you're experiencing something that is really you know affecting the way you play was causing you a lot of pain or depression darlings you need to see somebody about it okay a professional so i'm a professional musician but i'm not a professional medic now first of all we'll just talk about methods now the thing with all of the piano methods is that they all involve repetition and the the attainment the goal is perfection and you know by definition then you're going to keep on doing the same thing and that in itself has certain issues with repetitive strain injuries okay so suzuki method where you know for example the variations you're you're doing the same thing over and over again this can cause a massive problem for wrists and arms and necks and but all of the methods similarly you know the popper attitude say you're doing the properties you're going up and down the cello fingerboard um you know all of these things are going to cause a great strain on your body on your physical well-being anytime that you increase movement and performance your body has to get juiced to something okay so these are the first things no one method is going to be better than another so let's bear that in mind um however i do think that certain methods are going to push you to certain limits that perhaps you should think about now the wonderful thing about suzuki of course is that it plays from the back and it you know it dictates that you need to draw in your stomach and that you need to use your back rather than constantly using your wrist this is specifically for cello but also for piano and so that you can save your wrists but then where are you going to save your back well it's moot point isn't it so the first thing to do really is if it's bothering you you need to keep some sort of diary and understand what are the triggers is it music is it carrying heavy shopping is it um conducting you know uh is it watching the television where the tv is at the incorrect angle are you twisting to see things to catch up with things all of these things would make sense if you had a diary and you'd be able to see for example every time i watched telly i seem to get a little flare up after the thing is we're such busy people we do so many things in a day we forget what we've done and how it's impacted on our pain levels you see so diary is the first the first suggestion that i'm going to give to you now the next thing once you've done your diary for a couple of weeks i recommend a couple of weeks because the thing is you may not have a flare-up for a couple of weeks but the next thing to consider is is the flare-up caused by music by something to do with your music now if it is we can do something about it we absolutely can so what you have to work out is when do the does the flare-up occur and after what sort of playing are you doing okay and then we can start to look at the way things are set up okay your seat angles specifically so let's look at your practice setup so you're seating it could be too high or too low now i know for uh cello i have it took me a very very long time to...