Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Solutions for Musicians - Interacting with Computers

I have carpal tunnel syndrome. And chances are if you’re reading this you do too. Here I’ll provide some carpal tunnel syndrome solutions that musicians can use to improve the quality of their life, and minimize the time away from their musical endeavors, caused by this terrible scourge of a condition.

My carpal tunnel symptoms aren’t really triggered by performing or practicing with my instrument. But instead, they are brought on from heavy computer use at work, in my non-musical life. So I’ll be approaching this article from that perspective, though I’ll provide enough information here, so that any reader can, in some way, benefit from it .

If your looking more for an article on physical therapy for musicians with carpel tunnel, or how to interact with a piano keyboard and other instruments with carpel tunnel, then just click the links provided to go to those articles.

How carpal tunnel killed my film scoring career

A little over 16 years ago, my Serenade for Violin and Orchestra was premiered by the Los Angeles doctors Symphony Orchestra, now known as Orchestra Nova LA, at Plummer Park in Hollywood. Sam Fisher was the violinist, and Ivan Shulman was the conductor; he still is to this day.

My Spitfire Sample Library version of my Serenade for Violin and Orchestra

After the concert, a woman came up to me, whose last name I’ve forgotten, though I distinctly remember that her first name was D’Lynne due to the uniqueness of such a name. She told me she worked with BAFTA – the British version of the Oscars – and that she was part of the group of people that voted on the best film scores for the year.

She also told me she was Hans Zimmer’s neighbor, and that he was looking for a new studio hand, which involved rudimentary work at first, but then would eventually lead to helping his team flush out cues, ghost writing, and perhaps even full-fledged compositional credits down the line. She said she liked my tune, and would like to recommend me for the job.

Generally you only get a handful of these life-changing opportunities in one’s lifetime. And there is a credible list of A-list film composers that came from Zimmer’s Media Ventures Studio. But I regretfully had to turn her down, as every film score I had worked on previous to that point had resulted in significant carpal tunnel pain. I had already suffered a small amount of permanent injury on my right hand, and the last thing I needed was for that to get worse, working the 16-hour schedules needed to keep up with post-production.

Engineering solutions for carpal tunnel syndrome for musicians

Let’s first go over some of the equipment I use at work, and in my writing studio, that minimizes the irritation my carpal tunnel receives from doing repetitive computer related tasks. These are useful for those of you who, like me, are obligated to use a computer at work, for most of your working day.

However it should be noted that it’s not enough just to own and use these items. You need to use these in ways that are the most efficient, and ergonomic as possible. And further you need to find unique ways of using them that minimizes the number of times you use any one motion of your fingers or hands. This involves finding multiple ways of interacting with these tools for a given task. But we’ll go over those later in the article after presenting the items.

3M ergonomic mouse

I hate putting this at the top of my carpal tunnel relief solutions list, because it’s a little hard to find on the market these days. But I’ve been using this mouse since the early 2000s, in my studio when I’m recording music into my DAW, and also when I’m working on my notation program, to make scores and sheet music.

Here you can see it faithfully sits on a few books on top of my keyboard, so that it is at the perfect ergonomic height for use, when I’m recording music:

For this mouse, you are using your full arm to push the cursor around on the screen, which allows you to avoid any flexion or extension of your wrist, or any lateral motion as well, all while keeping your wrist in a neutral position.

To operate the button on the mouse, your thumb rolls back and forth on top of the joystick, using a slight lateral motion that again avoids any flexion or extension. And it takes very little effort to click its version of either the left or right mouse button. So you can use this product for hours, without it irritating the carpal tunnel region of your hand.

There is a second button on the joystick itself, that’s activated by lightly squeezing all four of your fingers, but I never use that particular function. However I like that it involves all four fingers, such that very little work demand is placed on any one digit, and thus it’s less likely to cause any irritation on a single tendon, as it glides through the carpal tunnel.

Logitech M650 mouse

Logi M650 for carpal tunnel — Logi M650 mouse has super easy buttons with shock absorbers to make them whisper quiet, but also helps reduce irritation from repetitive use

Next up in the mouse category, we have the Logitech M650 (Amazon link). At first glance it looks like a normal mouse, but its “whisper quiet” clicking technology actually makes it very carpal tunnel friendly.

When you click the left or right button it takes minimal effort, as the starting and stopping positions of the buttons, i.e. their traveling distances, are relatively small compared to other mice.

But what really seals the deal is the rubber cushion the button lands on as it’s depressed. It’s designed to minimize the clicking sound you hear when operating the buttons, but the pleasant secondary effect is that this rubber cushion absorbs most of the shock incurred when the button hits its stopping position.

So instead of those micro-shocks traveling through your fingers, and into the tendons used for flexion, when you are clicking the button, the mouse absorbs such. And when you are clicking the buttons hundreds of times per day at work, those micro-shocks, which additively build up to cause irritation and inflammation in the carpal tunnel region, are minimized.

I started using this mouse at my old job (I just switched jobs at the time of writing) a few years ago and I basically stopped having occupational related carpal tunnel irritation and inflammation. I could finally work a 40 to 48-hour week with no symptoms.

Corsair K55 RGB gaming keyboard

Another carpal tunnel friendly tool I use at work is the Corsair K55 RGB gaming keyboard (Amazon link). The main advantage this keyboard has, compared to your standard work keyboard, is that it has an onboard memory that can store macros in six gaming keys, that are located on the left side of the board.

This means not only can you program in repetitive steps, that define your computer work, into these gaming keys, but this programming requires zero software to accomplish. This alleviates the need to install unauthorized software on your computer at work.

So if you do happen to have a high volume data processing job like mine, that involves a lot of repetitive steps, programming in such steps into the game keys on this keyboard can reduce your keystroke volume significantly, thus reducing the amount of work your fingers and hands are doing per day.

This happens to be a wired USB keyboard, so all you need to do is just plug it in an extra USB port on your work computer.

Unique ergonomic ways to interact with your computer

In order to minimize carpal tunnel symptoms when interacting with your computer, you have to find ways of doing things that minimize finger flexion volumes, the force of such flexion, and that minimize wrist flexion and extension such that your wrist is always in a neutral position.

This often requires finding redundant ways to do the same task, and cycling through these ways as you’re working, to minimize the cumulative stress caused by any one specific way to accomplish such.

Ergonomic use of a standard computer mouse

Here I will describe how to ergonomically us a right handed mouse. So if you use a left handed mouse, of course do the opposite of my directions.

Moving the cursor of the mouse

To move the mouse around on the mouse pad, you should mostly be using the motion of your upper arm. This requires hovering your forearm in a parallel position relative to the mouse pad and desk it sits on. Your forearm should not be touching the desk.

The large group of muscles at the base of your thumb, otherwise known as the thenar eminence, can be a point of contact your hand has with the top face of the mouse. The secondary contact points would then be your index finger and second finger, grouped together, touching the area of the left button on the mouse, while your ring finger and pinky occupy the rite button area. And indeed, if you rest your thumb laterally on the left portion of the top area of the mouse, you can get away with not needing much of the muscle at the base of the thumb as a primary contact point. Hence you can operate it with a carpel tunnel brace on, if needed.

You’re basically creating a neutral hand position that lightly touches the mouse from its top area, such that your fingers are naturally creating a arch-like structure over the top middle part of the mouse. You’re not actually palming the mouse the way its shape implies that you should. The majority of your palm is not touching the mouse, but instead just arching over the top face of it.

Using these contact points, you should be able to guide your cursor normally without any flexion or extension of your wrist, nor any lateral motion. Directional navigation should solely be provided by your shoulder and elbow joints.

Clicking the buttons of the mouse

To minimize flexion related force when clicking the left mouse button, you should be performing the task with both your index and second finger grouped together on the left mouse button. On occasion you may even attempt to move your hand inward relative to the mouse and use your ring and pinky finger to press the left mouse button; the idea there being that you’re trying to minimize these repetitive motions by spreading out the work of a given task to different muscle groups and tendons.

A lesser used, third way to press the left mouse button is to rotate your forearm outward such that the back of your hand is at a 45° angle relative to the top of your desk, and use the right lateral side of your index finger to press the button . This avoids use of your flexor muscles in your forearm and instead uses whatever group responsible for the lateral, or side to side, motion of your index finger. This same technique can be used with the right lateral side of your second finger, with it grouped together with the index finger for more support.

Using the scroll wheel

Tasks involving the scroll wheel on the mouse can be done equally between the second finger and your ring finger. But it’s also credible to spread the test out even further by using your index and pinky fingers on occasion.

Avoid mice with broken scroll wheels

You may sometimes encounter an old mouse that has a broken scroll wheel. When you try to scroll the action on the screen is incomplete the scrolling is erratic. This forces you to either use the scroll wheel even more, to navigate to the correct position on the screen, or to left click on the scroll bar, generally located on the right part of the scrollable material, and manually scroll down.

This has the potential to significantly increase the amount of work your hand is doing, so it’s best to replace a mouse with a broken scroll wheel as soon as possible. Again refer to the mice suggestions above in the article, for carpal tunnel friendly options.

Ergonomic use of the computer keyboard

Just like interacting with the mouse, your forearms should hover above the desk in a parallel fashion to such. You shouldn’t be parking your forearms or wrists on top of the desk. This takes a little getting used to as it places the burden of holding up the weight of your arms onto your deltoid and trapezoid muscles.

Later in a companion article, we’ll go over upper body resistance training as another method to help tackle carpal tunnel symptoms. But these exercises should also help you condition yourself to hold up the weight of your arms, over your working day.

Adjusting the height of your keyboard

You may need to position your keyboard so that it’s at the perfect height to interact with your hands, when your forearms are parallel with the desk. I even like to bias the height of the keyboard in such a manner that my forearms are approaching the desk at a slight upward angle (not perfectly parallel). I do this by placing a stable base object under my keyboard, such as a small upside down basket. But you could also use a small box if it fits well under your keyboard.

Another benefit of placing your keyboard on top of a small base object, is that it can reduce the designed angled bias it has on its profile, where as you travel from the space bar to the F keys, there is a slight upward grade. This common design is not ergonomic or carpal tunnel friendly, and placing the keyboard on your base object can bypass the small stands on the upper back of the keyboard that enhances this angled bias.

Typing on your keyboard

One of the things that really triggers my carpal tunnel symptoms is rapid typing on the keyboard. So when I’m having symptoms I find it helpful to throttle the speed of my typing, so that I’m typing at only 50% or less of the speed that I normally type.

For lower volume typing tasks, sometimes it’s even best to place the tip of your thumb against the side of the tip of the index finger, and exclusively use your index fingers to interact with your keyboard, remembering to keep your wrists in a neutral position, and allowing your arms to accomplish the typing motions needed.

One variation of this, that I like to use, is to hold a writing pen in my right hand between my index and second finger, near the base of the fingers, so that the end of the pen – the non-writing side that often has a spring loaded actuator – is pointing down towards the keyboard, with which I then used to type. As I’m typing in this fashion, the spring in the actuator works as a shock absorber which attenuates a lot of the micro-shocks that naturally occur when typing, which get translated into your tendons and contribute to distress in the carpal tunnel. When I’m using this method, I’m usually typing normally on my left hand, so that I am not significantly reducing the speed of my typing to that consistent with “hunting and pecking”.

Gently interacting with the keyboard

Speaking of micro-shocks, you should not be forcefully typing on your keyboard. You should be using just enough pressure to get the typing task accomplished. This not only reduces the amount of flexion force you’re exerting, but it reduces the amount of shock that your tendons and muscles are absorbing as the keys are fully depressed, and the downward motion of your fingers is abruptly interrupted.

Voice to text options for multi paragraph writing

For multi-paragraph writing such as the body of this article, I find it best to use a speech to text translation app. The one I’m using to write this particular article is called speechtexter.com. It’s a free app that works with Google Chrome, and has a fairly low translation error rate.

Sometimes it does randomly capitalize certain words. But it does allow for the verbal placement of punctuation, which makes up for that quirk.

Further you don’t have to train it to your particular voice or vernacular, like you used to do on some of the first generation speech recognition software programs.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Solutions for Musicians – Interacting with Computers