After his injury, Alan had what could be described as a single-minded determination to get back to his passion of composing and producing music professionally. Having very limited movement below his shoulders though, Alan knew that he would have to use some ingenuity to achieve this goal. With help from some friends and colleagues in the music industry, as well as the therapists at the rehab centre, Alan found ways to operate the studio controls that a producer needs to operate. Today, Alan is set up in an accessible recording studio doing the work that he loves.
Go directly to:
Alan uses a power wheelchair controlled through a sip-and-puff system, which means that he drives using breath pressure alone. In addition to actual driving, this controller also provides Alan access to the wheelchair’s other features. An important example is tilt and recline, which allows him to put his body in different positions and relieve pressure on his skin. Alan explains, “You’re in a certain mode, let’s say a drive mode … so what I would do is puff into it and change it into a tilt mode. Once I’m in a tilt mode, I can suck in, which would lean my back backwards or blow into it and I’ll raise my legs.”
Video:
See how Alan controls his wheelchair through sip and puff. Choose a format: |
Alan remembers back in rehab he also had the option of controlling the chair through head movement, but he went for the sip-and-puff system instead. Alan’s decision was based partly on what he knew of these wheelchairs from before his injury. “Right before the accident I had remembered seeing Christopher Reeve with a sipper and I thought, ‘Well, if he’s got one, let me try it. It looks kind of cool.’ I went for that and right now I’m very comfortable with it….” Alan’s decision to drive through a sip-and-puff system was also influenced by the aesthetics of head controls. “I just didn’t like how the head thing looked. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t look good … it just wasn’t for me. I had tried it and I just found it too weird. Not that [sip-and-puff] isn’t, but I just found that the head thing was, I just couldn’t seem to get used to it.”
Having decided on the sip-and-puff system, Alan put several chairs through trials and in the process, learned to drive. “It was a little bit after my accident, so the only thing I was really used to driving was a car. So the concept of moving myself around puffing into something was completely bizarre. Like it had no logic whatsoever. But after a while, after learning how to use it and learning its boundaries, no problem, it’s second nature to me. It’s like I walk, I don’t think about it.” Alan estimates that his learning curve was about six months long. “And even today, there are still times where I’m not sure or I’m not confident in some places. But in general, I don’t think about when I’m driving.”
One thing about the system that Alan didn’t like was the need to wait through a time delay of five seconds or so whenever he wanted to change into a different mode, such as tilt. Alan felt that eliminating the time delay was a logical change that would make his chair behave more like other power chairs do. “The way some electric chairs work, when you’re changing modes, you don’t have to wait.” He asked around and found an engineer at a local rehab centre who was able to make this change to the sip-and-puff system to eliminate the delay. “So let’s say I’m in drive. Now I want to tilt my chair back. If this was from the factory, I’d have to send the command, then I’d have to wait. Basically, what the guy has done is re-routed things, so it’s a lot easier for me to do stuff.”
Alan had his first chair for five years, but he replaced it several months ago. Alan went with the same brand for his replacement chair, but he got the next generation up. Even though it’s the same make, Alan considers this chair more durable than his first. “Since I’m out and about quite a bit, it can take a good beating. It’s a pretty reliable chair.” On the other hand, even the small changes between models present some difficulties for Alan, who was used to the way his old chair felt. But he believes that these problems can be fixed through some minor adjustments. At this point though, he says, “I’m still not 100 per cent comfortable.”
Alan was self-employed in the music industry when he had his injury. “I owned a big studio. No one knew what was going to turn out with my condition, so the studio was kind of on ice.” There were always possibilities for work, but Alan knew that he had a lot of thinking and problem-solving to do before he could turn those possibilities into reality. “Even lying in bed, I was getting calls for work but I had to say, ‘I’m not feeling well, I’m not strong enough, and I still don’t know how exactly the studio’s going to run.’ And on top of all that, I was trached twenty-four hours a day. I was on a ventilator for five months or something like that …. Well, with the whole thing, I was like, ‘This is going to be a pretty serious undertaking.’“
Despite the challenges, Alan was determined, even in the early days. “I always knew that I could play music again after my injury, but I had no idea how. And lying in my bed with a halo on I thought, ‘Even if I have to bang with sticks with my mouth on a piano into a computer, I’ll still do it.’“ Alan was not willing to compromise on getting back to his career. “My expectations were to basically do what I had done before my accident, which is write music, record music, produce and make money doing it, and hearing my stuff on the radio. And music has no wheelchair sounds to it, you know what I mean? So that was my goal.”
Video:
See how Alan operates his head-operated mouse. Choose a format: |
“I knew about my end of the technology, like computers and music and how to kind of marry them together.” What he needed was a way to access this technology without using his hands. Alan started with the knowledge that most music software relies heavily on mouse actions, with little or no keyboard input. “I knew the way I worked … the only way you work it is click-and-drag with my types of programs. There’s no real typing. It’s just a matter of click-and-drag, click-and-drag.” As a result, Alan knew he had to concentrate on finding an accessible mouse. He says, “Someone tried a [head-operated mouse] on me, which basically looks like a Sony Walkman with a little straw on the end….” This head-operated mouse translates small head movements into corresponding cursor movements. While wearing it, the cursor on the screen follows along as he moves his head. “I just look at the screen and do what I got to do.”
Having found a replacement for the mouse, Alan gradually started trying out the process of making music. “I was given the opportunity to have my own little studio up in a room in one of the wings of the hospital. I had a little set-up in the room … a couple of synthesizers, a computer. I started conducting business from the hospital, which is crazy….” Alan says that being able to get back to making music while still at the rehab centre was very important to him on a personal level. “It was like psychological food, man … I can’t sit still so to speak, I always have to be doing something. I can’t watch TV, it’s just too boring. So I just figured, ‘Look, let me get my body, my mind and my career together, and there’s people waiting for me to do work.’” His old studio was not producing much at that time, so Alan took advantage of the equipment there to expand his studio at the hospital. “I had a few friends taking care of it, and not that much business was being carried on over there, but all the equipment was sitting there so I could take some small stuff, and I had some great friends and they brought stuff over [to the rehab centre] and I started working.”
After a while, Alan approached a counsellor to try to get funding to make a permanent accessible studio, patterned after the one he had set up temporarily at the hospital. “I applied for a sum of money to get me a computer and a synthesizer, that’s it. Just to get myself rolling. And I was denied this. The reason was something like, ‘At this time, it’s not important and we can’t really see a use for it,’ whatever it was. So I kind of gave up on it. And then I thought to myself, ‘You know what, what would happen if I tried a different [geographical] area?’ So my social worker worked really diligently with me and we tried in another area and there was a huge amount of money that had not been touched. And I qualified because I had, you know, the fire to work. I really wanted to work and I proved that I could do it…. And in the span of one week, I received everything I asked for.”
This surprising turnaround in funding made it possible for Alan to follow through on his goal of setting up a professional studio. Today, Alan works out of his basement apartment with an integrated recording studio and state-of-the-art digital music equipment. The concept behind making the studio accessible is exactly the same as it was for the experimental set-up he had at the rehab centre, just on a much larger scale: “The whole system is triggered by a sip and puff headset … and that’s what I use to conduct business and to compose music and produce.”
The head-operated mouse is connected to a computer, which is, in turn, connected to all of the devices that Alan needs to control in the studio. Instead of manipulating dials and switches with his hands, Alan manipulates pictures of those controls on his computer screen with head movements. The computer sends commands to the equipment through the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), and the dials move as if Alan were controlling them by hand. “So it’s really an able-bodied studio with a minor change to be adapted for my headset…” Overall, Alan remembers the process as fairly straightforward. “All this was done with one tech and a couple of friends, and what the guy would do is, for each synthesizer he would create for me an environment on the computer. So he would create a picture of the synthesizer. So when I hit a button on the synthesizer on the screen, it would activate the real synthesizer…. He did have to do some modifications to some of the stuff. So that was a little bit of trial and error. But overall, the system’s flawless, basically.”
The same head-control concept applies to recording and mixing. “Now as you can see … you don’t see any mixing boards here, right? The reason is that everything is housed through devices … that do all the work that are also attached to the computer.” So to record someone singing in his vocal booth, Alan sends commands to these recording devices through the computer, the same way he does with his synthesizers. Whether he is producing music electronically or recording it through microphones, Alan can do everything he needs to do through the head-operated mouse.
The entire system is arranged for simplicity and efficiency. “You just flick on a main power switch. Everything turns on and then there’s a couple of little doodads you’ve got to switch on and that’s it. Then we put the [head-operated mouse] on me and that controls everything. I’m using a lot of different programs at once…. It’s involved, but when you do it so much, I don’t even think about it. And I’m getting calls every day for all these different types of jobs, and I guess my uniqueness to be able to do it quick enables me to get more jobs. So the disability doesn’t get in the way much. Only for me, not for the clients; they don’t care.”
Alan believes that he is almost back to the level of productivity he was working at before his injury. “My stuff is mostly hip-hop, R&B, dance stuff. And then I do Latin stuff, rock. It’s mostly dance stuff as far as commercial goes. But yeah, it’s generally more of a couple styles and they’re the styles I love.” He finds medical complications can slow him down a bit, but overall he’s satisfied with his ability to work. “With my health, some days I’ll be in pain, or a bladder infection. Sometimes I have to cancel sessions, or projects take a little longer. It could go a little smoother, but I’m glad the pace it’s going. And even record companies, when I work for labels, they’re pretty flexible too. I’m hoping to be one of the first high quads to win a Production Grammy … I’ll probably, hopefully, maybe get one within the next fifty years….”
Alan really values exercise. When asked what he expects the gym to do for him, Alan does not hesitate. “Keep me in shape for hopefully one day with the stem-cell thing, if it ever comes through, I’ll be somewhat in shape. More importantly, just to keep me in shape, keep my body moving, stretching and getting rid of any contractions, if any build up, and psychologically, it feels great.” For this reason, Alan has converted the room next to his studio into a gym. “I have some pulleys that I use from the ceiling and some hand weights. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that I do exercises in there.” Alan balances exercise with his other priorities by focusing on efficiency in his exercise sessions. “I’ve set it up in such a way that in fifteen minutes you can do it all and it’s really easy.”
Alan would like to be able to do all of his studio work while standing in a standing frame. He doesn’t have the equipment yet, but for now, Alan keeps his legs moving while he is working through a homemade motorized leg-cycle device. “It’s one of those hand bikes and … my father got a friend of his to put a little motor on it, take off the handlebars, make these little foot plates …. While I’m working, a lot of the times I just sit and pedal for hours …. It’s passive motion, but it’s good for blood circulation and it’s good. It makes me feel better, like you know, I’m doing something.”
Alongside Alan’s studio and gym is his living space, which he has carefully designed for function and aesthetics. “I don’t want it to look like someone disabled lives here, do you know what I mean? That is important to me, the aesthetic you know. It just looks like a normal place of business and dwelling.” Alan has a lot of people around him on a typical day, so he finds it is not really necessary to have an independent means of doing everything. In the early days, he tried to find an environmental control unit for controlling the electronic devices in his apartment, but this experience was not positive. “I had some environmental controls, which I got through the government, and they just didn’t work. I didn’t like them and I just kind of gave up on them. I had an electric door opener that was always busting on me. Since I have a lot of people in general usually around me, I really don’t need them. Like a girlfriend, it’s not a problem to ask her, ‘Can you turn this?’ And when I’m alone, I make sure that somebody sets things up for me. So if I’m working and I want to get off the computer, I kind of do like a primitive thing where I shake my head and the thing comes off my head. And I can roll let’s say into my room and watch a little tube. Or I can go out or whatever through the door.”
Alan found the price of adapting a van is very high. Again opting for a problem-solving approach, he decided to see what minimal modifications he could do to make an ordinary van accessible for him. He remembers that he and some friends went out and “got the strongest truck we could get…. We didn’t lower the floor. We did nothing but put tie-downs in it and took out all the seats….” Alan had a vendor install the lift, but there were no other modifications. Alan says he had to learn how to get himself into the van, but he is able to do everything he needs to do to get in. “Oh, it’s a sight. There’s like a couple of manoeuvres I’ve got to pull. But because my chair reclines it’s not a problem.”
Alan prefers a “try-before-you-buy” approach, but he acknowledges that trials are not always possible. “Sometimes we can’t, you know. If we go into [the auto shop] and there’s a particular muffler that I want to get, it’s not like I can throw it under my car and go, ‘Let me try it, man.’” Alan says that on the occasions when he can’t try something first, it’s very important to do your homework and comparison shop. “In general, you can take it home or on loan, but if you can’t, thoroughly compare this thing that you want to get or need with three other things or two other things.”
On the professional side of his life, Alan has learned that making music with a high-level spinal cord injury is possible. “If someone wanted to play music, not professionally, but just you know, to play computer-generated music or play music with your computer, very simple man. The only difference that makes it more challenging for a disabled person is your accessing method. Then it just depends on your knowledge of music.” He acknowledges the importance of doing good research and talking to people to master the technology. He says, “The technology can be easily learned through watching other people, which I did. I never went to school for this stuff. Just reading about it or you know, seeing other people do it.” However, Alan warns that there are dangers to people’s time and wallets if they don’t take an active role and do their homework. “You need to be guided in the right way, or else you’ll be spending money or you know, wasting your time. You should be talking to people that are in the biz. Just because you sit in a wheelchair does not mean that your intellect is any less, so don’t let them talk you into buying something you don’t need.” Finally, Alan has encouragement for anyone considering a similar path. “I would tell them it is completely possible no matter what your injury is—I’m a testament to that. And yeah, I mean anything can be done now with technology and with music and the way computers are, it’s fairly simple. It’s really not that hard.”
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Home © 1999 - 2009 All Rights Reserved |
