I’m still looking for an (inexpensive) used copy, if anyone has one they aren’t using.
Loren
Interesting, playing flute right handed and Rockstro, and rightie on stringed instruments as well, I’d expect the left hand/wrist to be the affected one - I know I’m having my share of issues with my left wrist from Rockstro flute and Stringed instrument playing. Any other righties have problems with the Right hand caused by flute playing? Seems like the wrong hand to have problems with for a flute or guitar/banjo strummer.
Loren
I have one I’m presently not using but I keep thinking that one day, as God is my witness, I will use it.
Have you tried the used books/CDs stuff on amazon?
Aha, thanks for the splint note. I wondered if something was up. A friend said he’d seen the Solas Reunion DVD and it looked like he had something on his left pinky; all we could come up with was that maybe it was device to help him hit his long F and G-sharp keys a little more easily since he does use so many accidentals and simple system keys are pretty kluge-y …
It’s so weird, this wrist and hand pain thing… seems like triplets on a banjo would hurt far worse, but so far I haven’t run into any banjo players with problems. Meanwhile, we flute players are falling out of the trees with it.
Hmmm.
Thanks again!
Well, I guess I know a stringed instrument player with troubles now! 
Both my hands get stiff and swollen after festivals/big gigs or long hard sessions, but I’ve got a fair amount of arthritis from old equine-related misadventures to begin with. But as for pain, I’d say my left wrist and hand are far worse than my right.
FWIW, typing makes everything hurt. Must stop posting so much!
Yeah, no luck so far. Now if I wanted a copy of a Riverdance DVD…
Loren
Well I’m 99% sure it’s due to the flute playing:, I dinked around with guitar here and there for years, with no problems, and I was also playing a little mandolin, along with the usual half assed flute and whistle practice. No problems for until earlier this year, when I decided to start putting in 2 hours a day on the flute. Within a few weeks my left wrist was acting up, so I sold the mandolin and quit picking up my guitar, hoping that would solve the problem, but no such luck. I’ve taken a couple of months completely away from the flute, and everything thing, and 10 minutes back on the flute, and I’m right back where I was a few months ago with the wrist pain. 
Anyway, I’m no stringed instrument player, and certainly I don’t think those instruments were to blame for my wrist issues.
Loren
Something tells me our wrists weren’t intended to spend hours at that angle…
Loren
Hey! It’s the fetal pinky thing again! I was watching “Come West Along the Road” recently and noticed that Paddy Carty and Seamus Tansey, along with several others, curled up their LH pinkies like that.
How do they do that? Needless to say seeing so many fantastic players do this I had to try it (forget the magic bullet, I’m going for the magic finger), and mine will not even CONSIDER being folded into such a shape while playing a flute (it resists mightily even when not playing a flute).
Curious.
Actually I believe it’s ‘Mad for Trad’ rather than ‘Mad for Tradition’. In any case, let’s hope they’re just mad for trad and not mad for suing copyright infringers, huh?
I posted that photo a long time ago as an example of what looked like painful playing to me. Now I’m considering that it’s partly an issue of camera angle making it look worse than it actually is. But maybe I’m just telling myself that since I stopped using piper’s grip…
Even better, when he plays and “lifts” the 3rd finger of the left hand (the G finger covering the A hole 
) he curls that one up as well, at least on the slower tracks of the tutorial.
Which I have, but don’t intend to sell any time soon, sorry Loren. I like it very much, even if the tricky parts of the ornamentation are not explained in much detail. I can play the videos frame by frame, which answers many questions.
peace,
Sonja
In the DVD for Solas’s “Reunion” album, Seamus Egan seems to be wearing a brace of some sort on his LH pinkie whenever he plays the flute, but not when he plays any other instruments. I haven’t figured out what it is.
-Craig
Wow. I get to quote me! 
But now that I’ve seen that pinky, well … hmmm. The thot plickens.
I understand it’s for tendonitis aggravated by playing flute (and not other instruments).
Best, John
I have some thoughts that may apply.
It’s no secret to any on the boards that I now play a 6-key Hamilton flute–because I’ve certainly made enough noise about it (and with it! 
) since I’ve had it.
When I first got the 6-key body, I couldn’t handle the long F key…it was just too short for my stubby little fingers to comfortably make the reach. I literally have short, stubby fingers and broad palms, go figure. Anyway, to reach the long F predictably, I was having to bend my left wrist at a very sharp angle, similar to–but not so drastic as–the piciture of Seamus Egan.
I had Hammy lengthen the touch of that key, and viola! back to a normal (for me) hand position, and no further trouble.
I was taught that when playing flute the wrists should be held pretty straight, and the arms up and well away from the body, and this is how I still play.
Ironically, for years I fought arthritis in my wrists and fingers (psoriatic symmetric polyarthritis), which was finally brought into remission (Yay!) with low-dose chemo (MTX) therapy.
I played flute pretty intensively during much of that time. I credit the flute playing and the typing for the fact that my hands took so little damage from the disease.
Finally, I can’t resisit sharing something:
Last week Glen Road played in Little Rock and stayed to session. During the session, I played “The Mountain Top,” a B-flat major hornpipe which I have done major work to learn as it is a cast-iron b–ch on flute. Turlach Boylan looked at me and in his quiet way said, “I do believe you may have practiced that one a goodly bit.”
–James
Good on ya, J!
lots of finger bounces and crans