Saving your hands/wrists?

[alex1fly]

Curious about any tips for saving one's hands during production sessions - stretches, Logic specific controllers, ergonomics, etc.

 

I work on a computer for most of my job, and then do music at night a few days a week - whether it's playing my instruments, recording, songwriting etc. The last time I was heavy into production was before I had a computer-based job and I could rock and roll on the DAW for hours. Nowadays I'm back in the DAW world but am having a harder time of it with little aches and pains in my hands and wrists. So I'm hoping to glean any tips for keeping healthy while working on a DAW after emailing/coding all day. I do have a left handed module at my work that lets me do a bunch of functions when I need to rest my mouse hand.

[fisherking]

a trackball. an ergonomic keyboard. breaks every 15 minutes, and gently massage your hands & wrists. a good egonomic chair. stand up & stretch. (lol the only thing i do in that list is, i have a great chair).

really, google for tips; these are good general practices, not tied to music-making or anything in particular (ie hitting the heart on instagram for hours... which i never do) 🙃

[gkletch]

I use this mouse and I love it: https://amzn.to/3Ps2x2C

[wonshu]

Keyboard Maestro to automate as much tedious work as possible... Difficult for us as a lot of tasks are unique for every situation, but some things can be automated.

[RobertAnthony]

Elbows at 90° when sitting at my desk.

Apple Trackpad (I’m sure there’s arguments to be made between a trackpad and trackball, but the point is something more ergonomic than a basic mouse).

Wrist pads. They help me not bend my wrists or rest them on the hard desktop, since with your elbows at 90° and your fingers being slightly bent to use the keyboard and trackpad/ball. This causes your wrist to slightly bend up to accommodate, which is enough to cause strain and lead to injuries. The alternative is to be ever aware and like hover your hands/arms, which, nah.

without wrist pads:

 

with wrist pads:

 

maybe a Trackball style mouse helps with this but the same issue with the keyboard, thus I’ve got two wrist pads. Maybe this is all caused by Apple’s low-profile hardware lol.

Edited July 5, 2022 by RobertAnthony
Typos and added last paragraph.

[kerochan]

magic trackpad, best move I ever made,  no mouse and no DAW controller. Magic Track pad is the business

[wonshu]

I agree about the trackpad. Swiping and three-finger-swipe-selecting (even though it has a latency) are huge relieve for the mouse finger...

[David Nahmani]

I love my magic trackpad (would never go back to a mouse now) but I often end up with wrist fatigue after extended scrolling sessions (for example when proofreading my 600 page book pdf docs). I need to give this wrist pad a try @RobertAnthony! Thanks for the suggestion. 

Other things that are very important for me:

1. Turn off all force touch features,
2. Turn on "Tap to click" in the trackpad preferences
3. Enable "Three finger drag" in Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options.

[guavadude]

Logitech MX3 mouse made a HUGE difference for me. Solved all my wrist pain and is just a great piece of hardware. The magnetic scroll wheel is brilliant. Just spin and it scrolls until you stop it. Perfect for large track counts. 

I also use a 3m gel wrist rest mouse pad but I think they've discontinued this particular model. But some sort of wrist rest is needed, as show above. 

[cleamon]

On 7/5/2022 at 8:03 PM, gkletch said:

I use this mouse and I love it: https://amzn.to/3Ps2x2C

I have a friend who swears by these mice.  He's at the DAW all day, every day.  I find it clumsy, but I'm sure it's a matter of getting use to it.
+++ on the magic trackpad - I use the mouse less and less, maybe 10% of the time.