Forearm muscle excitation analysis for different professional piano players.

Abstract

Piano playing techniques demand a fast coordination of intellectual and body response to accomplish the specific speed, timber and tempo required by each musical piece. In order to achieve a good performance, pianists, as well as other musicians, require several hours of practice which can lead to overuse of the physical body parts involved. From 60% to 87% of professional musicians will, at some point of their career, develop a playing-related musculoskeletal disorder (PRMD) [1]. Different techniques have been reported for several players, some of them leading to a more efficient muscle activation and energy consumption, or even lower PRMD impact. Thus, injuries and pain could be prevented by using the right playing strategies and controlling the wrong or excessive muscle tension. However, there has not yet been established a clear strategy for electrodes positioning that allows one to fully understand muscle excitation on the forearm while playing the piano. The overall objective of this master’s thesis is to determine the position placing electrodes on the forearm in order to representatively study the muscle activation while piano playing. An experimental protocol for studying the most common piano playing movements has been planned and conducted with several professional pianists. This has been performed using High density EMG and a markers motion system synchronized allowing to obtain both the body kinematics and muscle excitation of each subject and for each task. The data has been analyzed correlating movements to different regions of activation and studying the variability within the different subjects. Thus, the possible regions with higher muscle activation have been detected and associated with the different body movements. The results will be used to assess the feasibility of a hand brace for the rehabilitation and/or training of the hands of musicians