Keyboardists have it easy

[PhonoBrainer]

To this list of Boomer Musician nostalgia, I will only add that I agree 100% with the OP. In the '90's my stage keyboard rig was two JBL 15's on stands and a Crown power amp (I didn't want the regular house PA, mixed with everything else, to ruin my keyboard sound!) Plus a Yamaha kx-88 controller for some Roland JV-1080 and Korg Wavestation modules, plus a Motion Sound fake Leslie contraption, mic's up of course. Heavy and cumbersome as all hell, and why is it when you play a big hotel they always make you load thru the kitchen???

 

And with all of that, I felt I had it easier than anyone else in the band, because when you come right down to it, playing keyboards is like glorified typing.

[Shane_B.]

22 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

The back is a funny thing. If it works you never think about it. If it doesn't you can't think about anything else.

I was getting shots between my vertebra for a while but it didn't help. The doctors tell me I'll eventually be in a wheelchair either from that problem or the bus that ran a stop sign and hit me. I just learn to deal with it. Drinking helps, but I hate to sit around like that all the time so I stopped having my 2 beer a night. That and the wife was getting really really mad about it and I get it. It's why I'm so cheery and happy and lighthearted and friendly all the time. ?

That said, I'm a firm believer in you have to keep moving. Been hitting the gym hard the last two weeks. I went for an MRI 3 weeks ago and he pretty much said you can't make it worse and the more you move the longer you'll be able to keep going.

That said, I don't mind lifting heavy stuff. Never really did. My love for the music and being with my friends and playing for people made it all worthwhile. I used to put those SP5's on telescoping poles. We had them up about 7 feet. I was the tallest so I always had to lift each one over my head and line up the 3" holes on the bottom with the pole.

I didn't really mind it all though. But it is true my one shoulder is lower than the other. Every new doctor I go to points it out and I give him the story. Honestly, I don't know if that's what it's from or not but I've been that way a very long time.

On a side note ... I'm going back home in a couple months. I have a gig and 2 band practices lined up with guys I haven't seen since the late 80's. I am SO EXCITED. I keep trying to remind myself why I'm still here . . . oh yeah that's right. N/M. Edit: I'm driving out and have to take my amp and 2 guitars with me plus the rest of my travel stuff. I'm going to be there 3 weeks then my wife is flying out and we're taking a week to drive back home through the south.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Shane_B.

[Tim Smith]

Sorry to hear about your back @Shane_B.

It seems you are making the best of it. What else can we do? 

When my back goes out which only happens very seldom, it's generally very bad so far as the pain from it. The last time I had it go out on me in a very bad way, it had more to do with the way I twisted. I cut an old unused antennae mast down in back of my house and I was throwing the top section of it into a trailer to take to the scrap yard. When I heaved it into the trailer I pivoted with the weight. That's when it happened. It wasn't necessarily the weight that got me but the way I moved with the weight. I felt a little pop and disk L6 shifted. I was in pretty intense pain for two months afterward. My body healed itself. I don't think the chiropractors helped. It took awhile but eventually things worked back into place. For the first few weeks I could barely walk it hurt so bad, then gradually I could walk sideways and people would ask me if I was ok. 

I still cringe thinking about it. Music making was out of the question.

[craigb]

He keeps talking about his back; has he taken a good look at his front??! ?

(?)

[Shane_B.]

1 hour ago, craigb said:

He keeps talking about his back; has he taken a good look at his front??! ?

(?)

Hey, it's just as nice as the back! Wait, that didn't come out right.

[bitflipper]

On 4/6/2022 at 10:32 AM, Tezza said:

The keyboardist just chucks his synth in the car with a cable, turns up to practice and plugs in to the PA.

Lemme fix that for ya...

The keyboardist runs around the club at 1:00 AM trying to pry the guitarist and bassist away from the barmaid so they can help him hoist the keyboard into the van. The van he had to buy because no regular car is big enough for the keyboard. Then, hopefully, said string pickers will also help tear down and pack up the PA, which the keyboardist bought as well. If they're feeling generous, they might even bring the keyboard player a cola since they're all packed up and ready to go while he's still rolling cables.

My standard whine: next time, I'm taking up the piccolo.

[InstrEd]

14 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Lemme fix that for ya...

The keyboardist runs around the club at 1:00 AM trying to pry the guitarist and bassist away from the barmaid so they can help him hoist the keyboard into the van. The van he had to buy because no regular car is big enough for the keyboard. Then, hopefully, said string pickers will also help tear down and pack up the PA, which the keyboardist bought as well. If they're feeling generous, they might even bring the keyboard player a cola since they're all packed up and ready to go while he's still rolling cables.

My standard whine: next time, I'm taking up the piccolo.

As in Trumpet or just the Piccolo Dave

[msmcleod]

I'm forever putting my back out, and I've got an old shoulder injury I sustained while playing squash which plays up every now and then when putting PA speakers up.

My usual go-to is my tens machine, which works wonders.  On my shoulder, the pain is gone again for around 6 months... for my back, it takes away enough pain to allow me to move around normally while it sorts itself out over the next couple of days.

[bitflipper]

Don't you Scots throw rocks around for fun?

[craigb]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

Don't you Scots throw rocks around for fun?

I thought it was telephone poles! ?

[Tim Smith]

8 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I'm forever putting my back out, and I've got an old shoulder injury I sustained while playing squash which plays up every now and then when putting PA speakers up.

My usual go-to is my tens machine, which works wonders.  On my shoulder, the pain is gone again for around 6 months... for my back, it takes away enough pain to allow me to move around normally while it sorts itself out over the next couple of days.

A fresh set of batteries in a tens turned all the way up. I can smell burning flesh but it feels good.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Tim Smith

[Tezza]

On 4/9/2022 at 12:07 AM, Shane_B. said:

But it is true my one shoulder is lower than the other. Every new doctor I go to points it out and I give him the story. Honestly, I don't know if that's what it's from or not but I've been that way a very long time.

 

I had a bit of a problem a while back with what I called guitarists physique, one shoulder dips a bit and your spine twists over time. I found a good personal trainer by accident really, when I signed up to a local gym because I was fat and unfit and had aches and pains. This trainer was into posture correction  and took one look at me and said that is what he would recommend, so I did the exercises which are designed to reverse the asymmetrical differences in your skeleton by exercising certain muscles and twisting, felt really weird but it did work, after about 3 months I noticed that I held myself differently when standing and I looked more symmetrical in the mirror. It felt odd at first, felt like I was twisted when standing straight but I was actually straight, it was just the old me that was twisted.

I am looking for a thinline telecaster or squier custom telecaster at the moment as I am just completely over heavy guitars, even my mim strat is annoying me with its weight.

I also did Feldenkrais, recommended to me by an occupational therapist at work and that was surprisingly good at restoring full range of movement. It doesn't seem like anything is happening but then you start to notice that your body moves with more grace and balance and you can reach and bend more efficiently.

Also a good physiotherapist can work wonders on aches and pains, I had a neck injury from an accident and nobody could fix it or even find what was causing it, then I saw a physiotherapist who located it straight away and fixed it permanently. After reviewing the x-rays and taking a history, he grabbed my arm, bent it backwards behind me while keeping it straight and then grabbed my outermost fingers on my right hand and bent them back. As soon as he did that I felt the pain in my neck right on the exact spot that was causing the problem. I think they call it neural tension or something but it's designed to stretch the nerve coming out of the spine. After a bit of that with massage, it went away permanently.

I think there are lots of things that experts can do to fix things but finding the right one for your particular problem can be hard and they have to be willing to take the time, not just push you through the door to move on to the next patient and then there is the matter of cost, as it can be expensive but some of my my best results have come from hospitals that are attached to universities, where they run training for students. So you get a student physio with a tutor or qualified instructor, they really take their time to get to the source of the problem and also take their time fixing it. There was also no charge. No shortcuts like you can sometimes get with professionals in the field who have one eye on their profits and just want to see as many clients as they can in the shortest possible time.

[Shane_B.]

On 4/8/2022 at 6:09 PM, bitflipper said:

Lemme fix that for ya...

The keyboardist runs around the club at 1:00 AM trying to pry the guitarist and bassist away from the barmaid so they can help him hoist the keyboard into the van. The van he had to buy because no regular car is big enough for the keyboard. Then, hopefully, said string pickers will also help tear down and pack up the PA, which the keyboardist bought as well. If they're feeling generous, they might even bring the keyboard player a cola since they're all packed up and ready to go while he's still rolling cables.

I'd show them. I'd buy a laptop and get a manageable midi controller.

[Jesse Screed]

I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.

[Shane_B.]

12 hours ago, Tezza said:

I think there are lots of things that experts can do to fix things but finding the right one for your particular problem can be hard and they have to be willing to take the time, not just push you through the door to move on to the next patient and then there is the matter of cost, as it can be expensive but some of my my best results have come from hospitals that are attached to universities, where they run training for students.

After experiencing what I did because of the accident I was in I could write a book on this. I was hit by a schoolbus that ran a stop sign. Cut and dry, 100% her fault, all on video, she was ticketed on the scene, and fired the next day. Almost all of my injuries where labelled pre-existing except the broken fingers and the eye I almost lost. Even the concussion I got from the airbag blowing my left hand back and breaking my fingers across my right eye was labelled as pre-existing. She actually put in writing that if the symptoms of the concussion persisted more than 2 weeks that it was from a pre-existing condition. Doctors now days are all scam artists because it's become a money laundering service between them, the insurance companies, and the lawyers. It's 100% all about money now and it's pretty rare to find one that actually cares. I find some of the nurses I've dealt with care more and are better than the actual doctors themselves.

That said, like you mentioned, I have had the best care from doctors at Universities. They did an experimental treatment on my ears to stop the chronic ear infections I've keep getting ever since I was born and it worked. But even there now when I go for checkups it getting like a revolving door type of thing. They don't listen to you anymore and just rush you right in and out. The pandemic changed a lot of things. I'm not sure if it will ever go back to normal.

Thanks for mentioning the exercises. I will definitely look in to them. And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has experienced this. I'm right handed but play left handed. So the strap goes over my right shoulder and that's the one that droops. But I don't know if it's from the strap or the fact that my left arm is up over the body for strumming and my right shoulder is sort of down for fretting.

[craigb]

2 hours ago, Jesse Screed said:

I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.

But, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail! ?

[Jesse Screed]

5 hours ago, craigb said:

But, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail! ?

The pen is mightier than the sword.?

[Jesse Screed]

6 hours ago, craigb said:

But, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail! ?

And another thing Craig, I'm trying to decide what I should have for breakfast tomorrow.  What would you recommend?

My choices are

Spam

Bologna

head cheese

little smokies

hot dogs

breakfast sausage

liverwurst

or budget boxed mac and cheese that has an open powder cheese packet with little weevils in it.

[craigb]

10 minutes ago, Jesse Screed said:

And another thing Craig, I'm trying to decide what I should have for breakfast tomorrow.  What would you recommend?

My choices are

Spam

Bologna

head cheese

little smokies

hot dogs

breakfast sausage

liverwurst

or budget boxed mac and cheese that has an open powder cheese packet with little weevils in it.

 I actually have a cheese slicer that's permanently setup to cut a can of Spam into exactly eight equal sized slices.  I used to make several sandwiches that way (until I stopped eating bread).  Now I cook all eight slices, cut each into eight parts then add them to a box of mac and cheese.  Usually I then add a pound of bacon becan and a can of peas.  That makes three comfort meals for me.  YMMV!  ? 

[bitflipper]

I had Spamsilog for breakfast this morning. Filipinos will know what that is, even if over there it's considered a fancy breakfast, something you'd order at a restaurant.