Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Have you hurt yourself while playing?

The edges of my nails sometimes split and crack, and the dermatologist says that's just a byproduct of aging. He had no remedies except to suggest a couple of skin creams...yeah, that will really help me slide around on the keyboard.

One 20th-century piece I play a lot demands really rapid leaps all over the keyboard, and those especially are hard on the nails. Fast leaps, hard landings. Probably has to do with hitting the edges of adjacent keys inadvertently.

RP and others...

Have you ever heard of BagBalm?

It was mfg for cracks in cow's udders and now used by humans.

Does the trick for cracks on the tips of fingers for gardeners.

Cheap too.

Use it at night and wash with hot water and soap before playing.

Might take a few days to really heal, but it will feel better in 24 hrs.

Worst piano injury ever!

I not sure if this one counts but...

I was practicing and a car alarm went off outside that sounded like my car. I jumped up really quickly, lost my balance and accidentally kicked the table next to my piano. I ended breaking a toe. D'oh!

Damon -

HA HA HA!!!

I have sometimes wanted to.

A couple of years ago while learning the Bach Partita #4 Ouverture, I made a poor fingering choice that required the LH thumb to pass quickly under 2 & 3 while 5 was holding a note. I later found a better fingering but not before the thumb had endured too much stress. It is sore off and on to this day.

Actually I haven't. I have also hardly felt any pain. And I feel pain even if I use a pair of scissors, so it's a good sign.

There's the feeling of working muscles (and overworked sometimes) but rarely is it outright painful.

The flute and the guitar were much worse for me in the first few days. The flute felt sooo heavy and I had to take breaks all the time, and the guitar also felt heavy and caused pain on my leg. It was only for the first few days though, maybe a week.

Yeah, that happened to me once. Took a full month to recover. Horrible experience...


On a serious note, this did remind me of a real injury I once sustained. I was playing at a hotel, and apparently no one told the security guard I was supposed to be playing. He thought I broke into the piano to vandalize it by playing a Chopin nocturne (C-minor). Instead of simply asking me to stop, he walked up from behind me and closed (read: "slammed") the lid on my fingers. I barely had time to react, and bruised my knuckles where the lid rapped them. Took three weeks to heal. I repaid the security guard in kind--that was his last day of employment there--but that injury really ticked me off because it was 100% avoidable.

Ouch!!!

(Probably an ex-cop who lost that job for something similar)

What a [censored] dick.

Luckily my piano's lid comes down very slowly in order to avoid injuries. It can indeed hurt to have the lid slammed on your fingers!