Why I wear GLOVES. The real reason...

[Music] truth be told I actually don't need this today because I'm not going to be talking uh specifically about bass playe um but bear with me because I think it'll be really interesting to you and hopefully it'll be interesting to uh many musician as well around the world because um well I'm going to be talking about these today you might have seen these before um a lot of people know me for these gloves and a few weeks ago we actually posted a and it was my team that actually did it shout out to Jack um so Jack on team he thought uh people would want to know about the gloves and he and he saw an old clip that we had lying around from maybe like six seven years ago or something like that that existed on a very old YouTube video and he cut a snippet out of that video of me talking about the gloves why I wear them um and put it up as a YouTube short and he did that four weeks ago and over the last four weeks uh over a million people have watched that video and over 42,000 people have liked that video and I was like ah maybe maybe I should be talking about why I wear these gloves more often um because I think that there's obviously interest in that but more importantly um is that it's affecting other musicians as well and musicians that careers might be ending and they might not even know why it's happening and that's kind of why I wear these gloves right and I'm sure that you've seen people calling me out in the comments all of the names under the sun like you're an idiot what are these stupid gloves on for and you know like this without going on about it yeah like people call me out about it um but it's because they don't know what I'm wearing these for and and that's actually not their fault that's my fault I'll take responsibility for that um because I should be sharing why I'm wearing these clothes because I think it is so important to so with the many musicians as well that is not discounting that there are a bunch of trolls on the internet going around being complete dicks and you know who you are you know who you are right so I'm not discounting them I wish they wouldn't do that you know for me I've been doing YouTube for over 10 years now so it kind of like I don't even notice it but for some people getting into the game you know putting themselves out there on social media it might really hurt them so I do recommend uh not calling people out for things that you might not fully understand and just to I guess call it out the reason why I don't talk about it is because I've had this thing for 15 years over 15 years I'm almost 20 years I've been suffering with it and and it's because of that I don't really think about it anymore well like I I do think about it um but not in the way that you might feel like oh whoo is me this thing's so bad and all of that um it's not that but I I will say that um I am coming to the realization that I should be talking about this more because I think it is affecting so many other musicians and I don't want to for for them to suffer in silence not understanding what might be affecting them so in this video I'm going to be talking about why I wear these um does it even affect the sound when playing the uh the bass and also I'm going to be sharing something about a uh a project that I'm really really proud of um and I hope that you dig it too and I'm going to be talking about why for this project I had to actually use two gloves because for a long time you might have just seen me use one on this hand sometimes a few years ago one on this hand but for this thing I'm actually wearing two but we'll talk about that in just a minute first of all I want to talk about these gloves and why I wear them so ultimately the reason um well let me just go back and I'll tell you how it all kind of um how it all came to be okay so I was in my mid 20s and around this time I was working as a professional musician it was my full thing I didn't have any B plan or anything like that I was gigging around the UK and I was over in Europe and doing the whole thing as you know professional musicians do and around my mid-20s I started to notice that I was having some kind of like weird issues in my it was actually in this hand it began in this hand weird issues in this hand and it was almost like when I was playing it's almost like this finger my index finger would be unplugged it would simply stop working like my brain would just not send the signal it would actually stop And So It Go from this to this right just one finger and I was like what is going on and it felt kind of like a spasm almost it was it was actually really weird to go through it so I went to a bunch of physios and um chiropractors because I thought it was something to do with my neck and then I had acupuncture and that whole thing nothing happened and it just kept on getting worse and worse to the point where um I actually at some point started playing 100% with a pick I couldn't play with this with my fingers on this hand anymore I had to use a plum or a pick I'm not sure what you guys I think you guys call them pics right over here we call them a pleum but um I I was wearing a using a pick um 100% at the time great I thought so started getting into all of the amazing pick players for inspiration I was looking to Steve swallow and Bobby vager and Anthony Jackson and you know there's guys that are Incredible and play with elro and um and life was good but not for long because after a few months of this hand um not recovering but me finding a fix for it um this hand started to be affected as well again in a really strange way nothing kind of there was no pain or anything like that it doesn't hurt it's almost like fingers were being unplugged but in this hand it was much more severe and I was having almost spasms my fingers were like kind of jumping off the fingerboard I'd go to move my index my middle finger here and my little finger would move and vice like think about that you know you go to put your like lift up your middle finger and your little finger moves but it's kind of like it's kind of like a spasm as well almost like your hands are locking up and so this this started happening and again it was very much like this hand started creeping in over time and it got to the point where I was I didn't know what to do um I was going to again physiotherapists acupuncturists chiropractors like everybody I could think of and I was going to the GP and the GP was sending me Here There and Everywhere and nobody had an answer and it actually got to the point where I could barely play they literally couldn't play and around this time I um I thankfully um I just took it upon myself and I booked myself a private appointment with a private neurologist over here in the UK got the National Health that is great until you you're on a million waiting lists and it's like 6 months to see somebody and all of that like that's that's not the great side of it okay um so what happened so I booked myself an appointment with a private neurologist went for the MRI scans and all of that thing right anyway went to his well his office you know went to his office I'm sitting there and he comes in he's like look I've done all of these tests yada y yada it looks like you've got focal Donia I was like focal what he's like focal dystonia he said it's actually nothing to do with the with your body how it's working tendons muscles anything to do with that it's actually to do with your brain and your brain has rewired itself and as soon as he said that I was like this is not going to be a like a a great prognosis and I could tell by the way that he was speaking that it wasn't great as well so he said he went on you've got focal dystonia your brain's rewired itself you've got this front this um part of the brain called The frontal cortex and on the front of this there is actually a film like a jelly-like film made up of honeycomb and each piece of honeycomb if you imagine honeycomb right and each piece of honeycomb an electrical signal can be sent down that piece of honeycomb and does something like this so to move this finger an elect iCal impulse is sent down one of these little hom on the front of the frontal cortex okay and in focal donia's case what happens is the the honeycom start breaking down they start breaking down and merging so instead of electrical signal going down here it starts going down here then goes off down a wrong the wrong honeycomb therefore creating spasms and electrical impulses going to the wrong oh it's a whole mess okay it's a whole mess so at this point he sits me down he says you've got focal dystonia um your brain's rewi him rewire itself he also says I've worked with many people who have had this in the past and they've tried everything to try and fix this and I've not worked with one person who's actually solved it and then he said like what else can you do other than music because right now your career in music is over he said I'm like 99% certain it's over I'm sitting there I'm just like what the just like you know you can imagine it all I've ever done since I was a kid since I was 13 years old I like flunked out of school I did terribly in scho all of that right I did I did nothing okay since I was a kid since I was 13 years old when I first started playing guitar I'd done nothing but music and and I was sitting in front of this guy saying oh by the way your career is over what else do you do because this music thing that you're doing right now that's it it's it's you know you you're going to have to switch that off so I kind of like walked out of that room totally Shell Shell Shocked emotionally completely devastated and but I'm a tenous little and I thought to myself well what I'm going to do is I am going to seek out a specialist I refuse to believe what you've told me and I I'm going to go on a journey to seek out specialist so so I flew around Europe to various Specialists working with them at one point I was tying um blindfold I was sitting there with a blindfold around my face and I was sitting there with dominoes and I had to touch the Domino and match the side of feeling the dimples of The Dominoes with each finger trying to retrain the neural Pathways in my brain the whole thing it actually sent me slightly mad um slightly might not be the word I I basically just went completely mad because I'd had this thing that I absolutely loved freaking ripped away from me and flush down the toilet I couldn't play at this point like literally I couldn't play [Music] this I couldn't play anything so I had no work I'm sitting there with a blindfold on feeling dominoes wasn't a great moment in my life and when I was seeing all of these specialist lists I did see one down in London um her name was Katherine Butler shout out to cathine Butler um and she mentioned randomly in our meeting as I was walk like literally as I was walking like not out the door but I was packing my bag up I was about to go and she says Hey and you know what I've been working with this violin player and the violin player has been wearing like rubber glue tight rub I think she said rubber gloves um latex gloves that's what she said like tight latex gloves and it seems to be easing their symptoms a little bit huh I was like okay now I'd seen etti and mbappe play before and ET mbappe fantastic French cameroonian Bas player like Bonkers plays with John MC glofin all of these amazing artists right I'd seen him play with gloves on for a completely different reason he actually has this condition where his hands sweat a lot so he wears gloves to help with that and they are great for that actually but that's not what I was wearing them for so but I had seen him wear gloves be fine I was like okay um well maybe I like okay latex gloves well I was like that ain't going to work on bass that's definitely like I'm going to I'm going to be like nicknamed all that serial killer Bas playay with the latex gloves on okay so I was like that ain't going to work and also they're going to stick to the strings and stuff like that but I'd seen etm play and he had these tight like Silk gloves or something again this was really before the internet I couldn't really find out couldn't call eten hey eten couldn't email him or anything like that but I looked pictures and I was like okay and I tried to find gloves and I did find some gloves actually and if you go back way like way back when when actually the first time I start making YouTube videos you will see me with some very weird baggy looking gloves because I was experimenting with them because what I found is the gloves stopped or or reduced the symptoms now you might be wondering how they work okay they are a it's like a neurological trick it tricks my brain so so if I take these off you'll clearly see that just an easy one to demonstrate like a another another thing that happens when I don't wear the gloves so you can see right that now and they're like they want to stick together if I put my hand down there like it feels really weird and then it's just a whole mess right as you can see so that's what my finger like now but watch this are you ready I'm going to take my fingers away again so as I touch any area of the skin of my fingers the Tremors and spasms stop okay so check this out so now I'm going to put on the glove you might see a little bit of shaking again going to take it off but you can see these two fingers try stick together I can actually if I do this then they go really far apart oh it's just a it's a whole hot mess and when I put the gloves on it acts as a sensory trick a neurological sensory trick okay that gives me the ability to play so and what I'm just going to pick this one up down here and what that does is it gives me the ability to play it steadies my hands and it also really stops all of the other spasms as well so these give me the ability to play now there's a cavat there's a cavier is that they don't get rid of the focal disia that I have got okay they don't get rid of that um and what happens is they give me the ability to play for around an hour to 90 minutes um maybe two or three days a week maybe like like basically I'm walking a tight RPP that's just let's you know call it that I'm walking a tight RPP and it is easy for me to overcook it and when I overcook it I play too much game over now I'm going to have to sort of like take four weeks off with my hands to recover and all of that and by the way just to put it out there if you know anybody that is having any weird sort of like playin issues or musicians that you think that you should put this video in front of please do like please please share it because this this thing like focal distonia on average apparently from what I've read takes 3 to four years to be diagnosed 3 to four years to be diagnosed now think about that how many people just give up and don't even get that diagnosis probably most okay probably most so it's my belief and the people the Specialists I've talked to as well that many many many more musicians are suffering with focal dysphonia and don't even realize it they don't even realize it um I'm not going to go into sort of like the symptoms of how it kicks off because I don't want to freak anybody out um because well I will say this um what how it manifested with me to begin with is it that some days I'd pick up my instrument and I could play really freely like just it just everything would be working and some days I'd pick it up and I'd feel like I was operating at 50% of where I could usually it was that off it was very strange and that's a really really common thing with focal dystonia and here is the devil in the detail okay you cannot practice through it you cannot practice through focal dystonia in fact the more you practice the deeper it gets in terms of the the the symptoms will start taking over your hands it will get worse because what you're doing by trying to practice through it is actually rewiring your brain so you cannot practice through this thing it is very serious and that is why musicians really get themselves in a freaking hot mess because what do we do when as musicians you and I what do we do when we can't do something when something feels not quite right you feel a bit Rusty what do you do you practice harder you put more hours in you put the effort in you dig in you do it more you do that movement more you keep on going and what that movement what that practice is doing is actually burying this crap even deeper into your brain H so it's it's a real pile of crap it really is so please if you know people that might have suffered with any movement disorders or anything like that and they seem to be hitting a roadblock You Know they' spoken to all of these different you know Specialists like physiotherapists and all of that and they're just you know please share this video with them or share them share it with musicians that can share it with their friends as well because I think that again there's so many more people suffering with this than people know Julian Le or lar um my favorite all-time jazz guitar player just like absolutely Bonkers he came out recently and he had a really bad spout with focal dystonia and there is a a a very famous bass player who does suffer suffer incredibly badly with focal Dison but I'm not going to mention their name because I'm not sure that they've openly stated or anything like that and it's not for me to say it's not for me to to go out there and uh and and state that so yeah it's somebody that everybody watching this video knows and I know that it affects them every every single time that they um pick up the base it affects them and I really do feel for them as well because I have been through that journey and felt that pain that they have as well so this affects a lot of musicians much more than people are aware of now um just um moving on I did mention that um a wearing two gloves recently and um and it's because well you might have uh you might have seen me play live once before on the on the on the interwebs you know I've done various like one-off videos like I've done something like few tracks at Ariel Posen with when he came over to the UK and then Josh Smith and Gary Novak and I got together and did some like really cool Trio thing when they come over and I've done like a bunch of live sort of like stuff that you can see performances on the internet right but I've never released any original album I've never released an album and so many people have said why haven't you not like Please Release some of your own music because when I play in a band people are like whoa you can actually play pretty well and uh yeah and I can play pretty well and but people are like hey why why is he not released any music why you know and uh and the reason is these because for me to get in a studio with a band and play for hours you know on consecutive days is something in the past I'd never been able to psychologically get my head around I just couldn't do it it felt like too much of a risk the downsides are too much and it just emotionally just really sort of like like even saying it now I feel like oh like do you know when you feel sort of like that emotion sort of like going up into your face that you're going to tear up I'm was like H it's just it was it's just too much but like late last year I kind of for whatever reason you know these things Bubble Up don't they for whatever reason I just thought it I need to do something I need to do an album because if if because if I don't I'm going to regret it if I don't put my musical stamp on something I'm going to regret it because I love this I love bass I love music and I I love art and everything that it stands for and everything that it is so I just I reached out to a friend of mine called Simon King and and I was like look man I was like do you fancy doing a project together um and specifically I was like do you fancy doing a fusion album and he was like like hell because Fusion is the music that I grew up on it really is tribal Tech and Brand X chiar electric band The Mishu Orchestra all of these amazing Fusion bands right that us Alain Kanan you know all of the bass players all of the music that's what I grew up on as a bass player and I absolutely love that music and that's what I wanted to I wanted to put my stamp on that music and so I partnered like Simon and I partnered we created this thing called The Divine King project we put together an amazing band for it we've got David biny um New York like legendary saxophone player we've got Scott Kinsey who is in tribal Tech we've got Nate worth who plays percussion in snarky Puppy we've got GGO borai on um on kit and myself like obviously I'm on bass and Simon King he's playing guitar so it's called The Divine King project and we have just released an album if you want to go and check it out it's on all of the places that you will normally find it right Spotify and apple music music and stuff like that so you can go and listen to the entire album on there and also we recorded the entire because I went into a studio and we did it we did it over an entire week we recorded it live we're going to release a documentary about it and we're also going to release all of the live tracks one per week onto YouTube for you guys to check out I hope you really dig it again this is really being holding you'll see on that um you'll see on the video that I've actually I've got both gloves on that because ing because I got myself into a bit of hot water preparing for the preparing for the session and this hand started to melt down and it's all in the documentary I'm also done some podcasts about it so if you check out Scots baseless and podcast I've talked about it extensively on there as well um but go check it out it's on all of the places that you you would imagine and I've also had the entire thing um transcribed so you can get all of the tab and notation for everything I play on the album okay everything I play on the album you can get all of the tab notation we've created an ebook for it and I'm giving it away for free I want to give it away for free because I want you guys to celebrate this music with me um go to Scotts album bonus.com and you can get it there Scots album bonus.com doublt Scots album bonus.com and you can get it there and there's a link down in the description below and Simon's put all of the guitar tab and notation together as well so if you go to Simon Peter King com/ divin King project you can get all of the guitar tab and notation as well badass right now um just to close up this video um I just want to say again uh if you have any musician friends that would benefit from seeing this video if they've had um like movement issues in the past and they've talked about oh I think I've got tendonitis and I think I've got this like it might you know there is a chance if there's no pain involved that it could be focal dystonia so it would be worth putting this video and sharing this video with them so they can check out my story um and then they can go and see a specialist and hopefully it won't take them three or four years to di to be diagnosed and hopefully they haven't even got focal Donia but there is a chance um that you know that they have and if they have it's it's worth going see a specialist um because it's something that you are going to need support with and it's something that you can't practice through that's the most important thing that I want you to take from this video that you can't practice through focal distonia you got to work with the specialist to help you get through this if you can like for me I never got I couldn't like I'm 20 odd years in now I I haven't solved it I wear these gloves um and that solved it for me that was my work around um but some people do like Julian Le he did fix it for himself which is absolutely fantastic and um and and and just and and hopefully more people can do what can do what he did as well so with that said I just want to say thank you again for um supporting me supporting the team here at SP and what we do we absolutely love you um and we absolutely never ever take for granted that um that you let us support you and bring value to you through the content that we create and hopefully the enthusiasm we bring to uh our love of music and our instrument the bass so with that said take it easy and I'll see you in the shed

Channel: Scott's Bass Lessons

Views: 290,784

Keywords: scott devine, bass lessons, bass guitar, beginner, beginners, scottsbasslessons, scotts bass lessons, sbl, electric bass, bass lesson, beginner bass lesson, beginner bass lessons

Id: a4KFCDIYEQM

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2023