Greetings and help

edited November 2015 in Community
Hello I am John Doe,
I am Joined here because I am looking to take my guitar playing to the next level. Please let me explain, I few months ago I was building my speed and long story short my wrist now makes multiple popping sounds when I rotate it. So my idea is that because my body has hit its limits and my mind still craves more to attempt to build a cybernetic guitar that will allow me to play the more complex melodies and rhythms that I am craving. While I am at it something to alert me when I am getting that tense, so I don't hurt my self again. Also ware is a good trust worthy source for more information on things like anatomy and infections? Just poking around on here can get pretty technical. Thank you for reading and any advice.

Sincerely,
John Doe
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  • I play guitar too and had issues with RSI, here's my advice:

    What you should do instead of posting here is see 2 professionals: a doctor and a good tutor.

    Find a classical tutor and ask them to review your technique and critique it, if you're hurting your arms that badly your technique is wrong and you're causing injury.

    Take plenty of fish oil and glucosamine sulphate and make sure your diet has plenty of protein, see a doctor to check for any possible permanent damage and get good quality tuition.

    Practice slowly and GRADUALLY build speed up - don't just keep speeding up, you'll hurt yourself AND your playing will get sloppy. Use a metronome and make sure you can play slowly with perfect technique before slowly increasing the metronome speed. If you start making mistakes, drop the speed and practice slowly until you get it perfect and effortless.

    Stretch before and after playing and do warmups - do some chromatic exercises and such before you start playing properly. Make sure you drink plenty of water (or an isotonic sports drink) while practicing and don't overdo it - keep your practice to under an hour a day until you've had professional guidance.
  • A more practical example of advice I gave a friend following a hand injury:
    Set your metronome to 20bpm and play a scale PERFECTLY (strict alternate picking) and painfully slow - so slow that it's boring. Repeat a few times a day.

    Increase by only 5bpm per day.
  • Thank you for your advice I will take it but the idea of a guitar that I can play with my mind is in my head now after seeing pictures of transdermal implants. Heck of a gimmick eh?

    Sincerely,
    John Doe
  • You can make music using EEG - lots of arty types do precisely that, I suppose you could rig up a guitar too but it would be nowhere near as efficient as just learning to use your hands correctly.
  • I will also recommend you check out the exercises from tendonitisexpert.com - the website seems spammy as hell but it's all legit and the techniques do work.

    Still see a doctor and a tutor as well though.
  • One thing I have noticed about that site is they talk about pain, I don't have any pain it just pops a lot. I am not sure if it matters but I will defently look into it some more. Also the idea behind the guitar is to make music that can't be made just using your hands, like playing two instruments at once. Thank you for the eeg tip that seems like a promising route. Also when you referenced the eeg you said plenty do precisely that. May I ask what they do? For instance what software/hardware do they use?
  • There's lots of approaches but the basic idea is to use EEG in some way to guide a synth.
  • Thank you for your advice
  • edited November 2015
    I too have popping in my wrist (And play the bass guitar). If you build up strength in the muscles that stabilize it, it goes away somewhat. You just have to learn how to not "pressurize" the joints there by over-tensing the muscles that roll and move your wrist. It's easy to do when you're trying too hard to play a fast song. as far as tensing, you could rig up sensor(ask @cassox or @bciuser , or even @ThomasEgi . They've done a fair amount with things involving muscles, and the sensors needed to detect activity) to trigger an audio tone, or vibrate when you keep a certain muscle group tensed for more than a certain amount of time.
  • @TheGreyKnight Want to form a biohacking band? :P

    More on topic, tension causes all sorts of issues, including the wrist thing - fixing your technique is what you should focus on in all cases, since that's the underlying cause.
  • edited November 2015
    I was on a team which built a robotic xylophone controlled by EEG for a hackDay. The precision available on consumer EEG headsets is nowhere fast enough or accurate enough to play music the way you want. Our rig merely changed the timing of a preprogrammed song depending on the concentration of the wearer. They couldn't play any song except the theme from Harry Potter. Making a guitar playable by mechanical actuators would be doable.
    Robotic Xylophone Project
  • Thank you McSTUFF may I ask what you bit rate was for your project? I was looking at building the electrodes, it had crossed my mind that maybe speed would be a factor, but to what end? If digital is out of the question would there be a way to use analog? I know that's a long shot but still.... And thank you for sharing that project with me.

    Was that a legit offer about the band? Any drummers?
  • The bit rate on the serial port was 9600 but I suspect you are curious how often the readings occur. The EEG reader we used was a toy so we got a reading approximately once per second. Commercially these readers are the bottom of the spectrum in both price and power.


    I look forward to a cyborg band.
  • At the rate things are going it's the next big thing, my gut feeling is it will start in metal and move to pop punk after hitting mainstream. Thank you may I ask ware can I learn about reading a eeg? I am starting to feel enhanced by all I am learning about this stuff....
  • Here's the openyou page, http://www.openyou.org/
    I used their github repo not too long ago to work with an EPOC on a linux box. Hoping to return and maybe help fix some bugs once Ive got the bandwidth

    Process will be a little different depending on the actual hardware you'll be working with. Liking a lot of these band ideas :)
  • Thanks, and remember dumb stuff before smart stuff!
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