Posted by drypitstop on Thursday, July 5, 2007
1 comment on “Thumb on playing hand sore at joint”
OTJunky Says:
Thursday, July 5, 2007 @5:19:05 PM
I don't think many fiddlers hold the fiddle in such a way that the thum rests at the tip on the violin neck.
Most of us just cradle the neck in the trough between the thumb and forefinger then let the fingers arch over the finger board. So you can see the thumb sticking up behind the neck.
But it's pretty hard to comment on your particular issue at the moment without seeing a picture of you holding the neck. If you've been playing since 1985 and this issue is just cropping up, I suppose it could even be medically related.
There are plenty of people on this board that know more about this stuff than I do. I've been waiting for one of them to weigh in. But since no one has my advice would be to first see your doctor about it. Once that's done take a look at the pictures of people fiddling on this site and see how your thumb's positioned hold compares with the people in the pictures. Finally, the ideal thing to do would be to find another fiddler that you know can play, then have a conversation with him or her about holding the neck.
If that' s not possible for some reason, you might convert this from a blog to a thread on the forum. I'm sure you'll get a lot of feed back that way.
Good luck with this...
