Ready to quit. Got any advice?
Hello, I'm posting today both to ask for a second opinion but also to vent a little bit. I'm 27, and play the piano as a hobby, strictly only for myself, for fun, since six years ago. I was initially self-taught (big mistake) but currently on my fourth teacher, weekly lessons, daily practice. Initially decided to look into lessons because playing most music would result in various kinds of pain.
I've developed tenosynuvitis the last couple years (wrist, thumb, and elbow) and it's only getting worse. We've made numerous attempts to fix technique and posture. We've stopped practicing music, lessons now resemble physiotherapy and consist only of warmup excercises. I feel like I haven't made any progress. The pains are getting bad enough that they hurt while trying to fall asleep. My doctor insists that it isn't necessary to stop piano but I'm not convinced of this. This pain is partly due to bad piano technique but also from the nature of my day job which involves lots of typing.
After four months of lessons that consist only of hanon 2, scales, finger isolation excercises, wrist rotation all at slow speed, I'm still feeling pain, unable to understand what's wrong about the movements. Whenever we introduce more difficulty, the pain comes back even worse, so we abort and return to the same warmups (and don't even get me started on octaves, those hurt just thinking about them). According to my teacher, I'm unable to feel tension and awkwardness in technique, which is causing the lack of progress. I feel like I've said "No, I don't understand, I don't see what's different or wrong about my technique" way too many times. I can sense my teacher is starting to get frustrated of this situation. He's the best teacher I could've ever had but I'm sure even his patience has limits, not to mention my own. I'm afraid to even look at the instrument; it's a net negative on my quality of life. Even my therapist has raised concerns.
I've learned that piano is deeply tied to body control. My conclusion right now is that I am unable to control my body as required for this activity and that while I could possibly learn, it's too much effort and not worth it anymore. I'm just not built for it. I was also quite bad at the musical part of it too (dynamics, phrasing, rhythm) and had a poor understanding despite repeated attempts from my teacher to rectify this. Every week I get my hopes up only to sit down at the piano and come out defeated. I feel like I'm only sticking to it because of sunk cost fallacy.
Have you overcome a situation like this? I'm still debating whether I should quit, and would like some opinions. Thanks in advance!