'The sound stopped suddenly' - Harvard Gazette

"The sound stopped suddenly. I wanted to use my right foot to hit the drum twice, but I ended with the first try. At that instant, my brain really drew a blank. I thought, 'What's going on?' This was Yamaguchi's recollection of the first symptoms of musician's dystonia that appeared during a concert in 2009, marking the beginning of his five-year journey to diagnosis."

"My children had only ever seen me play the drums on the screen. This was the first time they heard me perform live. Yamaguchi shared this emotional reflection after returning to live performance in 2024 with his voice-activated drum kit, nearly a decade after leaving RADWIMPS due to his condition."

"The effects may seem subtle to the untrained ear. But when symptoms appeared, the researchers confirmed, the drummer fell out of rhythm with a metronome. This finding from Yamaguchi and Fujii's 2024 research paper demonstrated the measurable impact of musician's dystonia on his ability to maintain precise timing and rhythm."

Satoshi Yamaguchi, drummer for Japanese rock band RADWIMPS, experienced sudden involuntary muscle spasms during a 2009 concert. After five years, he received a diagnosis of musician's dystonia, a neurological disorder affecting approximately one percent of professional musicians globally. The condition forced his departure from the band he co-founded in 2003. Yamaguchi subsequently became a visiting researcher and collaborated with scientist Shinya Fujii at Keio University's NeuroMusicLab to study the disorder. Their research documented how the condition disrupted his rhythm and musicianship. Through this scientific work, Yamaguchi developed a voice-activated drum kit that enabled his return to live performance in 2024, allowing his family to experience him performing live for the first time.

Read at Harvard Gazette