This quote is from cellist Janet Horvath, describing the long-term scenario of dedicated, practicing musicians and the resulting body wear and tear. Injuries from long periods of tensed muscles and repetitive motions takes a toll on professional players similar to the professional ball players.  I always remember the comment from our listeners “I would give everything to be able to do what you do.” Well for most of the better players - they HAVE!

Especially among string players: painful tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, rotator cuff injury, TMJ problems, spinal distress, and other repetitive stress injuries and ailments.

With the many demands on a musicians’ body, it is no wonder it takes a really long time to find the right doctor, the correct diagnosis, and then decide correct strengthening exercises and (be able to pay) for the correct treatment.

Other ailments: nerve damage, exploded neck vertebrae, thoracic syndrome, tinnitus and other hearing loss problems.

So the pros need to “protect themselves from injury by following athletic training protocols” as it is stated in the book The Athletic Musician: A Guide to Playing Without Pain.

What do you struggle with, as a musician? Or if not a musician, what have you heard about a musician, or someone’s story about finding relief? What have you heard that has helped someone with repetitive injury such as this?

We’d like to hear from you – please share your story! 

Part of why we have our name SYNKOFA is the remembering, not the sad times but the good parts of the past. We encourage everyone to remember one good day, conversation or moment from the many archives of your brain and relish that wonderful time. How can you use it to make a better future moment? Do you remember the season that was going on in that remembrance? What smells or food were you eating at that time? How was your health during that period? What was your mood or how did that moment impact your emotional being?
Sometimes it gets harder to sit and dwell on those good times, and if you write about it you might be able to capture more of those good parts. Keep a journal, and capture those wonderful times so someday you can reflect upon them. And be aware of any new wonderful experiences as they happen. Enjoy your life!

We love having hard deadlines - it helps us to accomplish many things!  So being able to perform on the best acoustic instruments has been a challenge, but not impossible to make it so. Here is another story about getting the violin ready: a 40 year old (still outstanding) Barcus pick-up built into the bridge had a bright silver piece that made the old French classical violin look like a 'Borg' - but not anymore!
Thanks Billy Hofmiester at your studio H for your help in meeting the deadline! Here are some 'painting of the metal parts' a dark walnut color to match this beautiful old violin. Pictures below.

Another deadline is getting our application finalized with Arts Northwest today - thanks Jean! That has helped us to accomplish getting our video and audio demos done not only for this application but for many reasons in the future. Now we wait to see if we are chosen for the ArtsNW Fall booking conference showcases. And a BIG thanks goes out to Kris Evans, videographer and vid editor for helping us to surmount the stresses of getting the video done in time. And ESPECIALLY BIG THANKS to Algie Powers, who wears probably more 'hats' than most of us at Lodestar and does incredibly artistic work in minutes sometimes: videography, photography, graphic arts, webmaster, logo creation, color coordination and corrections, idea bin, music critic, video editing,graphic and artistic direction, and a lot of other things that would surprise the heck out of you! See her websites for music here, and her great web and artistic other design work here.  

We spent some time at David Evanoff Sound Designs Studios doing the Demo mix to prepare the audio tracks for our video. Mixing is very important even if there are only four of us. 
The other thing we have had to struggle with is our onstage sound since we are performing acoustically. Since we are waiting for our sponsor or patron to appear, we have to pinch hit in a lot of areas to accomplish our goals. So enjoy some of our surgery pictures with bassist Steve Wesson and Laina Witte hooking up a hybrid mic/pickup for her cello. Playing in a hall that seats 700-900 this Thursday - we all have to be 'heard' and she needs help! Thanks Steve!

Our group has been through some gigantic changes lately, good ones, and we have accomplished the first step we have needed to do for quite sometime! We recorded our first three songs together. It was a marathon (I think that is always the case) last weekend. We seem to have lots of gear, and our two techies were great to set, problem solve, feed us and produce us. YAY! 

Next step: the video
This weekend we will tackle doing a video with yet another crew. Let the creative process continue!