It is close to a year since I had a heart
attack and stroke, and what has music done for my recovery?
At the end of January last year I had a
heart attack, two days later a stroke. Fortunately the heart attack was
at home, my wife was there to call an ambulance; the stroke happened while I
was still in hospital. This will explain to those of you who follow the blog
why there has been a considerable break!
I obviously recovered well from the stroke,
and although the lasting effects are quite subtle these are significant because
they affect certain elements of my musical memory, and performance capability.
Most of this is to do with multitasking and
learning new songs. It definitely takes me longer to process, particularly if I
am playing and singing. However, what I want to focus on today is how I have
found that learning and playing a musical instrument helped, and ultimately sped up my
recovery.
First of all I was able to play, but the
way it affected me was I felt very rusty and when it came to reading music it
was like reading through a fog! However, by focusing on the small aspects of
the task in front of me for example, reading a couple of bars of music very
slowly, I found after a
short period of time that facility improved enormously. Likewise with playing,
I found that regular short periods of practice enabled me to improve rapidly.
Another area that I found interesting was
my cognitive ability particularly when it came to using a computer keyboard; I
was affected in such a way that I couldn’t recognise certain letters on the
keys. I had to relearn how to spell a number of words, it seemed as if I was
reapplying my memory in another place and once this developed, that memory
stuck.
So then I started doing some of my private
lessons online using FaceTime or Skype I found that multitasking, such as
listening to somebody play and watching them whilst typing on another
keyboard and remembering what it was I wanted to say when the person finished
playing, speeded up my recovery and
cognitive repair.
I still get very tired when doing mental
work, and I have to break my work down into small sections of time. I’ve also
reduced the amount of work to only two days of actual physical face-to-face
teaching which could last anything up to five or six hours. After that I
definitely need to shut down, and I do this by meditating or power napping.
The experience of this has not been all
bad, infact I have learnt a lot about certain states such as dyslexia from this
experience. It has also given me chance to step back from what I was doing ,
and evaluate my work. This has led to me starting a music charity, and focusing on
podcasting.
As usual Blues Camp will be running next
year, but we did have to
cancel this year. Part of the franchise moved to France, this will be running as part if
it next year which is incredibly exciting!
So to sum up I have recovered well and my
experience wouldn’t be the same as somebody else who had the same medical
condition. However, I truly believe that playing a musical instrument,
particularly when it is something you already do, can greatly benefit your recovery.
This is because it is using existing memory and learning something new within
that framework, which helps the brain’s elasticity. I’m not sure how easy it
would have been to have learned an instrument from scratch after having stroke,
but I tend to think that reassessing something that is already in the mind even
if it is something that you did as a child has real potential, and this is
often shown in studies of elderly people with dementia.
So, I will be back next week with another
perspective about music! Please check out the podcast either on YouTube or
iTunes podcast this is called ‘Creative’, There are a number of interesting
interviews including Adele’s guitarist Ben Thomas, and a storyteller called Andreas
Kornevall. All of these people have great ideas explaining how they became
successful in their fields, and how they use creative thinking.
Remember Blues Camp for next year! Please visit www.bluescampUK.co.uk for details
Vic
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