Musical Accidents

Subject: Musical Accidents
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 09:36 PM

No, not the musical kind, but the sort that you suffer when setting stuff up or playing.

The night before last I was adjusting my X-shaped keyboard stand. I had the keyboard off and I wanted to lower it. So I pulled out the locking pin.

It lowered, all right. It lowered so much that it caught the end joint of my left middle finger between the metal parts. Hurt like, well, it really, really hurt. I called upstairs and my wife brought a cold pack; there is now no swelling or pain. But boy oh boy, did it hurt when it happened!

So what's happened to you when you were working with musical instruments, stands, and stuff?

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 10:13 PM

I regularly jam a hard, sharp autoharp string-end into the skin under my fingernail.

Now, that isn't the bad part-- the bad part is that the church lady oughtn't to SAY certain words with a live mic touching her mouth. It hurts holding those in!

I think wire nuts are too big for making harp string ends safe! But they oughtta have a ball on that end, not the bridge end!

~Susan

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: number 6
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 10:21 PM

A nurse friend of ours recently told us of a patient that was brought into emerge who had poked his eye out on a guitar stand. True story.

Needless to say she told be to be extra careful when retrieving or putting my guitars back on their stands.

biLL

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: pdq
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 10:28 PM

Obviously, we're not talking about accidentals.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Sorcha
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 10:30 PM

Sliced my nose open once putting a lap dulcimer into Mixolydian.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 10:31 PM

Only in the sense of an accidental happening!

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: jeffp
Date: 22 Feb 07 - 11:03 PM

Put a small hole in my eyelid changing strings. I was bringing a string up to pitch and it caught on the barrel of another tuner, whipped around and caught me in the eye. Fortunately, my reflexes must have been good and I closed my eye in time. Now, I have to wear glass to see what I'm doing in the first place, so the danger is less. I'm still very aware of what's happening with that string end, though.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 01:28 AM

I once got a paper cut from an Elderly Instruments catalogue.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: jimlad9
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 05:04 AM

Sorry friends I misunderstood the title and thought wewere discussing Cliff Richards again.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Scrump
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 05:23 AM

Cliff Richard's what, jimlad9? :-)

Not quite the same, but once I arrived at a pub gig and was handed a shirt and told I needed to change into it (the band all had them). I went intert bog, and locked myself in a cublicle to change. The bolt on the bog door was a bit stiff and had sharp edges (the bolt handle was square shaped rather than round), and in yanking it open I somehow managed to cut the thumb of my left hand. I didn't realise I'd done it until I got back in the bar and found blood running everywhere. I was a bit dischuffed as I use my left thumb a lot when playing and thought it would stop me playing normally. But luckily it was on the tip of the thumb and I found once I stopped the blood I was able to continue with the gig more or less as normal.

Makes you realise how easy it is to injure yourself with something that seems innocuous, e.g. a paper cut.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: eddie1
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 05:57 AM

I was very involved back in the early years of The Edinburgh Folk Festival. As well as doing school gigs during the day, I was, along with a lot of others, in a programme sponsored by Scottish & Newcastle Breweries in the evenings. This meant playing two pubs each evening and entailed the following:
(1) Setting up your PA in pub 2
(2) Going to pub 1 and playing from 8.00 till 9.00
(3) Going to pub 2 and playing from 10.00 till 11.00.
Bearing in mind there were some 20 or so groups doing the same thing, we used to have nightmares about a multi-car pile-up in Princes Street around 9.30 and it taking weeks to decide which pieces of which guitar belonged to who (or whom)!
Never happened though.

Eddie

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Mooh
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 07:07 AM

Early Telecaster Deluxe got hit by falling stage lights and went flying off stage...no permanent breakage other than scratches and dings, but it did need a major set-up.

Had equipment stolen and not returned.

Godin fretless Acoustibass knocked over on stage during a festival gig...busted tuning machine. Same bass knocked off a stair landing and fell on its face, in the case, 10 feet below...eventually traded while it still had value.

Some engineer moved my 12 string in the studio (I was playing at the time) and then someone stepped into or onto it cracking the top. Hey, I was planning to use that!

I've had drunks fall into me and my rig, shoulder injuries from prolonged self-roadie work and too long with a guitar strap on, hangovers from gig induced over-imbibing, lack of sleep, and other self-abuse...

Oh yeah, and during one road trip, we were hit by a transport truck in a snow storm. The car was banged up good, the gear was in another vehicle (thankfully), but we were unscathed except for our nerves.

You can't beat fun for a good time!

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 08:01 AM

The one that really worries me is the prospect of getting the pointy end of a clarinet stabbed down my throat when playing it on the move. I once had to play a street band musician in a large community drama, and I insisted on being at the very front so nobody could bump backwards into me.

A friend of mine had a severe stroke while playing the Highland pipes - basically he exploded from the pressure.

Ihave heard of bellringers being pulled up into the air by the ropes (usually you just get your arm and shoulder wrenched, but I think somebody died that way a few years ago, getting hanged upwards) or having bells fall on them.

I'd guess the instrument with the very worst accident potential is the steam calliope.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Mo the caller
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 08:12 AM

Beware of the pole supporting a speaker, especially if it's lost its plastic cap and there are 2 of you lifting the speaker (my thumbnail will never be the same).
Try not to trip over speakers being unloaded from trailers in dark car parks.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Midchuck
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 08:14 AM

One thing I feel very lucky about is that I still have vision in both eyes after 30+ years of standing on stages next to fiddlers. OSHA ought to require padding the tips of bows.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Scrump
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 08:19 AM

Check this out - ouch!

Had equipment stolen and not returned.

The b*****ds, Mooh! You just can't get the thieves these days :-)

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 09:13 AM

A guy I used to play with got his fingers caught in his trumpet valves. Nobody to this day is quite sure how he did it and he only suffered some nasty scratches, but we had to disassemble his valves (while the gig rolled on) to get them fingers loose. Fortunately there was someone else available who could do his solo part.

My brother, a trombonist, once gave a clarinetist a nasty head wound by accidentally dragging his slide back across the middle of her head. The spit valve plowed a furrow.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 09:18 AM

Trombonists can also be on the receiving end. The classic one in orchestras is getting your ear sliced off when a cymbal falls off its strap and drops into the brass section.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Grab
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 01:09 PM

Hey, I've done that with the keyboard stand too, Rapaire. It's a neat trick. It's an especially neat trick if you have a heavy weighted-keys electric piano which weighs rather more than you can catch - you try to intercept it but you can't, so you just end up with your hands pinned to the ground. And from there, of course, you're in quite a weak position for getting the damn thing *off* your hands. Even weaker if you happen to have fallen and landed on the keyboard, so that your body weight as well as the weight of the keyboard is on your hands...

Graham.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Scoville
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 01:24 PM

I started out with a pencil-and-rubber band dulcimer capo, which worked fine until one of the large rubber bands snapped and sent the pencil flying across the room. It was a miracle I didn't put somebody's eye out.

* * * * *

A friend of mine once had the cable on his wash-tub bass break and take a bite out of his arm (at a rockabilly show, no less. Apparently nothing drives a tattooed rockabilly crowd nuts like somebody bleeding all over the stage). I didn't think you could get that kind of tension on a wash-tub but I guess whatever he was using had a lot of recoil.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 01:58 PM

I've had lots of pokes, stabbings, & break & fly upward into my face events here & there with various guitar, autoharp, harp, mando, mountain dulcimer & oud strings, but thankfully not into the eyes. I've had a charging trumpet player run into me & permanently scratch my eyeglasses. Or a band director loose his grip on his baton more than once-in rehearsal &/or in concert-which sent flying right at me since flutes are often on the front row in concert bands. Flying banjo & guitar heads swing around & knock right into me. Fellow actors open their arms & swing their hands right into my face during song & dance numbers live onstage. It's fun to be short?
When i was in highschool marching band, lots of fun things happened, but the ouchiest one was when the band director decided that we should do sets of pinwheels which required me to go back & forth with the low brass section. He carefully planned it out so that Willey-6 1/2 feet tall & 1 1/2 feet taller than myself-would be the one swinging his slide above my head as we marched. He forgot about that when Willey was sick & replaced by a backup feller who held his trombone pointing 45* downward (against the rules!) & clobbered me, effectively punching my lights out & knocking me to the astroturf during a gigantic halftime show. The band carried on, stepping carefully over & around me while the ambulance guys were trying to haul me off the field. I haven't fully trusted a trombone player since.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 05:41 PM

I once sang a song..unaccompanied..all the way through without a bum note...definite accident.

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: David C. Carter
Date: 24 Feb 07 - 12:50 PM

Playing guitar and using a harp rack,I slid along the harp,catching a hair of my moustache between the outer covering and the plastic part of the harp.
Makes your eyes water!

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: Scoville
Date: 24 Feb 07 - 12:52 PM

Reminds me of something I saw one one of those home video shows--a young man playing an accordion. Played along very happily until he caught his beard in the bellows . . .

Subject: RE: Musical Accidents
From: GUEST,Waddon Pete
Date: 24 Feb 07 - 01:04 PM

Does dropping your new guitar down a flight of concrete steps count?