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This past Sunday I broke the tip of my left long finger. I type and edit medical reports for a living. According to the orthopedist this will take 4 to 6 weeks to heal, during which time I am out of work. At first I thought, "Hey, I can work on music!" But no, I won't be playing guitar or bass for a while. So I'm writing to ask what others would do or have done under similar circumstances. How can I make productive musical use of the time?
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Brilliant! Looks better than the splint, too.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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How about composing music ? You don't really need five fingers for that ?
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Yes, composing (as opposed to decomposing). 
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Django Reinhart played with mangled fingers. You can play with a splint!!!
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Music playable only with barre chords?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Well what do you know! That's the same finger I type with.
ROG.
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Chris
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I'm curious... how did you break the "tip" of your "left long finger"?
JBlatz
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I don't know, Blatz, as I was reading your last question I started to wonder if we want to know that.... dangerously close to the TMI line.
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The only "TMI" here is what an incredibly stupid thing I did to let it happen at all. Suffice it to say that a U-Haul truck was rolling backwards. I either broke my finger against the open driver's door or on the ground as I fell. (Not sure which; my memory gets flaky under stress.) A quick-thinking helper kept the incident from being much, much worse. Moral: Always take your meds, even on your days off; and next time, hire professional movers.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Hey Richard, glad it wasn't any worse. You take care.
What about getting in a few singing lessons whilst the finger heals?
ROG.
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Good luck to you . . . Other than the slide guitar suggestion above all I can add is I wish you well.
On a side note . . . About 5 years ago I cutoff the tip of my 4th finger left/chord hand. ER doc did a brilliant job sewing it back on, still holding in fact and can't even see a scar.
I played a gig 5 days later, needless to say I played a lot of bar chords that day. Also I explained to the first three rows of my audience that if any foreign object flew in their direction during the performance that they should just save it and give it back to me after the show.
Get well soon!
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Yo, Richard, you know the old saying, "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade," right?
Now would be a great time to delve into Band in a Box a bit more, song layouts, composition, etc. all the "other" things we often bypass or ignore when our instrument is in our hands and playable.
Consider also the use of a keyboard of any type, that can be worked with one hand.
Good time to expand on the Music Theory and Ear Training processes as well.
A chance to refocus on the "original instrument," the human voice.
And, as already mentioned, the Slide Guitar.
The time will fly and soon your finger will be healed.
And, as I discovered several years ago when the flesh-eating bacteria darn near took me out, a month in the hospital and several operations, followed by quite a long recuperative time, I found myself passing the time by *mentally* practicing, remapping the guitar neck and the keyboards from different standpoints than I'd previously addressed, looking for things new to me and at least being able to memorize a few new tricks so as to be better able to attempt to play them when the time came, actually served to improve my small arsenal of musical tricks.
For the guitarist, a wounded fretboard hand represents a great time to work out the advanced fingerpicking patterns with the other hand, all the various forms derived from TIMA, etc.
And I also found out what it was like to be "hungry" to play again, once the day came...
--Mac
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You might also work on your harmonica chops.  Rob
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Thanks... my curiosity has been satisfied. I could visualize mashed or crushed, but not broken.
Thankfully your helper was indeed a quick-thinker.
JBlatz
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Mac, you may know this because you are more of a historian than I am, but there was once someone very famous who was held in a foreign prison for a lengthy term. Upon his release he was asked if he thought his skills were going to suffer. He said that during his incarceration he sat in his cell and played his scales mentally over and over every day and his skills were actually sharpened by the experience. I don't remember who that was, though.
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Guitar Center is right now selling 7 harps for $19. C, D, E, F, G, A and Bb. I picked them up and while they are obviously not TOP quality, they do play and there's 7 of them, so...
Harp on!
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Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k
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