Music -- Physiological effect; Music, Influence of
From the viewpoint of patient interest and instruction, the piano is
the best instrument. When equipped with pianola fixtures, it is the
one instrument that gives the widest range of activities. Because the
piano is difficult to move, playing is restricted to the room in which
it is housed and there need be no concern about its interference with
other patients if the practice room is sound-proofed, or is situated
some distance from the other patients. The piano offers excellent
opportunity for flexion of the fingers and thumb, extension, abduction
and adduction of the wrist, as well as flexion and abduction of the
shoulders and exercise of the neck and back.
The piano can be adapted for use by patients with extremities in
hanging casts, which can be supported by sling arrangements attached
to the piano or the patient’s neck. It can even be used satisfactorily
with a cumbersome airplane splint if a very low bench is substituted
for the usual piano chair. The height of the bench can be arranged so
that the key-board and hand are on the same level, and the challenge
of this position will make the patient try all the harder to use his
fingers.
For the contractures resulting from burns of the hands, the piano
offers an excellent medium with which to increase joint motion. In
depressing the keys the fingers are forcibly flexed. The key surface is
much broader and easier to manage than that of the typewriter key. The
piano, therefore, offers less of a psychological deterrent to use than
does the typewriter. Mistakes at the piano are less annoying because
there is nothing to erase but a memory, and the memory of unpleasant
things is fortunately short-lived. By means of special musical
arrangements and additional notation written next to the printed notes,
some fingers can be exercised singly or in any combination desired.
The physical exercise or co-ordination of selected fingers can be
obtained more subtly by the use of marked music than is possible with
most crafts. Some instructors may prefer to mark the keys of the piano
with the letters to which they correspond, but this is not really
needed in the instruction of adults. A large diagram of the piano keys
placed above the musical scale for which they stand may be located to
advantage on the wall over the piano.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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