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More with less: A comparative kinematical analysis of Django Reinhardt's adaptations to hand injury
Michael Wininger and David J Williams
Prosthet Orthot Int published online 25 February 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0309364614523173

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research-article2014
POI0010.1177/0309364614523173Prosthetics and Orthotics InternationalWininger and Williams

INTERNATIONAL
SOCIETY FOR PROSTHETICS
AND ORTHOTICS

Case Report

Prosthetics and Orthotics International

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Reinhardt’s adaptations to hand injury DOI: 10.1177/0309364614523173
poi.sagepub.com

Michael Wininger1,2 and David J Williams3

Abstract
Background: At the age of 18 years, jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt (1910–1953) sustained significant burns to his left-
hand ring and little fingers; yet, subsequently, he relearned to play and achieved international fame, despite his injuries.
Case description and methods: Archive film footage and novel motion analysis software were used to compare movements
of Django’s fretting hand with that of six other guitarists of the same genre.
Findings and outcomes: Django employed greater abduction of index and middle fingers (−9.11 ± 6.52° vs −5.78 ± 2.41°; p < 0.001)
and more parallel alignment of fingers to the guitar neck (157.7 ± 3.37° vs 150.59 ± 2.67°; p < 0.001) compared to controls.
Conclusion: In response to debilitating hand injury, Django developed quantifiable compensatory adaptation of function of
his remaining functional fingers by developing an original playing technique.

Clinical relevance
Hand function following injury may be optimized by maximizing latent degrees of freedom in remaining digits, rather than
through extensive surgical reconstruction or complex prostheses. Further study of adaptation strategies may inform
prosthesis design.

Keywords
Guitar, kinematics, Django, Django Reinhardt

Date received: 23 May 2013; accepted: 16 January 2014

Background
Jean-Baptiste “Django” Reinhardt (1910–1953) was the
pioneering guitarist most responsible for the advent of the
Gypsy Jazz genre. His first instrument was the violin,
though he was a proficient guitarist by the age of 12.
Django’s story is of exceptional clinical relevance on
account of his attaining global acclaim for his technically
masterful style of play, despite sustaining a debilitating
burn injury to his fretting hand early in his career. Thus,
Django provides a unique case study in high achievement
despite disability. He remains an inspiration to both the
international music community and to patients with com-
promised dexterity.
While Django’s biography and injury are well docu-
mented in the literature,1 there is scant insight into how
(2D) motion tracking paradigm to measure the movement
of the two active fingers on Django’s fretting hand during
melodic play. Whereas there is no known film of Django
pre-injury upon which to make comparisons, we make
comparison to six other guitarists of similar skill and style.
Here we ask, “how did Django do it?” We believe that the
answer has implications for both clinical practice and pros-
thetic design.
1Prosthetics& Orthotics Program, University of Hartford, West
Hartford, CT, USA
2VA Cooperative Studies Program, Department of Veterans Affairs,
West Hartford, CT, USA
3Department of Anaesthetics/Welsh Centre for Burns, Morriston

Django adapted his playing technique following his injury. Hospital ABMU NHS Trust, Swansea, UK
Although we can no longer evaluate him in a modern clini-
Corresponding Author:
cal setting, some (albeit preciously limited) film footage of Michael Wininger, University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Avenue,
Django exists in circulation. Here, we analyze this film West Hartford, CT 06117, USA.
record frame by frame via an adapted two-dimensional Email: wininger@hartford.edu

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2 Prosthetics and Orthotics International
Table 1.  List of videos acquired for use in this study.
Artist Origin
Django Reinhardt Belgium
Angelo Debarre Romani Gypsy
Fapy Lafertin Belgium
Robin Nolan The Netherlands
Stochelo Rosenberg The Netherlands
Michael Santifaller Germany
Richard Smith United States
Video ID provides the YouTube identifier for each video; paste these characters at the end of the base URL—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=—
in the web browser address bar to view video.
Case description and methods
Case description
At the age of 18, Django suffered burns over 7%–15% of
his body area following an accidental home fire. As a
result of conservative wound management, he was left
with an ovoid mass of scar tissue on the dorsum of his left
(fretting) hand measuring approximately 30 × 20 mm2,
overlying zone 6 of the tendons of the middle and little
fingers. Two thick contractures extended from this area to
the base of the proximal interphalangeal joints (PIPJs) of
the little and ring fingers resulting in fixed hyperexten-
sion of the metacarpophalangeal joints (MCPJs) and
flexion of the proximal and distal interphalangeal joints
(DIPJs) of the ring and little fingers. An extended discus-
sion of Django’s injuries is provided in a supplementary
Appendix.
Video attainment and selection of comparison
cohort
The video of Django in live play was found within a pub-
lic content repository (YouTube) and acquired via Easy
YouTube Downloader Mozilla Firefox extension (Version
6.7). This is the only known video depicting Django in
live action play with synchronized audio to ensure veridi-
cal playing. No footage of Django playing prior to the
injury exists; therefore, in order to contrast Django’s kin-
ematics against a comparable cohort, videos of other gui-
tarists skilled in the same genre were sought with the
following criteria: (1) playing an acoustic guitar, (2)
playing in an ensemble and not a solo setting, and (3) of
a “right-hand” playing arrangement, that is, strum with
the right hand, fret with the left. Videos were only ana-
lyzed during melodic—and not rhythmic—play, and
where possible, videos were sought featuring the same
song as played in the Django clip (J’Attendrai Swing).
While the “goodness” of a given musician-as-comparator
cannot be measured, candidate comparators were initially
screened by the investigators for apparent skill; both
investigators have >15 years’ experience in guitar
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Title Code Video ID
J’Attendrai Swing JASDR u71ITb7_U9Q
Maneges MANAD uQPj6Zw4nTc
Django’s Tiger DJTFL 7_I5vXzckFk
J’Attendrai Swing JASRN aLuyB7pZ0MI
After You’ve Gone AYGSR iB6NLA6SffM
J’Attendrai Swing JASMS 4AuNB6wvszM
J’Attendrai Swing JASRS OsJUDRYZr58
playing, including training by professional musicians.
This preliminary assessment was augmented by a survey
of each candidate’s Web presence: a well-regarded acu-
men among the online community and/or estimable fan
base suggest that the player may be professional or semi-
professional and thus would be tenable for use in com-
parison. The comparison cohort was intended to comprise
a diverse sample of comparators (Table 1). No informed
consent was obtained, as this study used videos existing
in the public domain, and there was no direct involve-
ment with human subjects.
Video processing and data extraction
Videos were processed into clips showing scenes with a
clear view of the PIPJs and finger tips of the first two
fingers on the fretting hand. Coordinates of the PIPJs and
finger tips were extracted using a custom MATLAB
(MathWorks, Natick, MA) graphic user interface that pre-
sented the raw image frames one at a time, and solicited
four clicks from the investigator (one for each of two
landmarks on two fingers). These coordinates were
proofed for accuracy, that is, visual concordance with the
anatomical landmarks.
Distortion of finger angles due to shift in reference
frame was corrected via a three-step coordinate transforma-
tion, comprising two rotations and a translation. First, loca-
tion and orientation of the guitar body were extracted, from
which a three-dimensional (3D) coordinate rotation was
constructed via an Eulerian transformation. The instrument
perimeter coordinates were rotated into an orthonormal
projection by optimizing the Eulerian rotation angles such
that the area of the polygon defined by the guitar perimeter
was maximized. This optimization was performed in
MATLAB via the fminsearch routine for each frame in the
film clip. Subsequently, all coordinates were rotated in 2D
space so that the guitar neck axis was aligned with the hori-
zon. Third, the coordinates were translated such that the
coordinate where the guitar neck meets the guitar body (at
the bottom edge) coincided with the origin. Finger coordi-
nates were transformed identically prior to analysis (Figure
Wininger and Williams 3

Figure 1.  Workflow of finger coordinates rotation. In summary: (1) Movie clip is divided into individual frames; (2) instrument
coordinates I are rotated into orthonormal projection via 3D Eulerian transformation matrix R1, found via functional optimization
search for maximal polygonal area A of the instrument coordinate set; (3) orthonormally projected instrument coordinate set (R1
× I) is rotated via 2D rotation matrix R2 until the coordinates of the neck joint (meeting of the neck to the guitar body near the
thin string, yn1, and meeting of the neck to the peg board near the thin string yn2) are at the same latitude, that is, the bottom edge
of the neck is parallel to the horizon; and (4) coordinate translation of the projected and rotated coordinate set is (R2 × R1 × I) so
that the neck–body interface coordinate yn1 is moved to the origin. (5) These three transformations are then imparted on the finger
coordinate set (F* = (R2 × R1 × F) − T), yielding a registered data set suited for cross-image analysis. For extended discussion of
analytical methods, including supplemental MATLAB code, see supplementary Appendix.
3D: three dimensional; 2D: two dimensional.

only the most extreme 10% of angles were retained for

Figure 2.  Diagrams of measurements taken from fretting
hand. Interdigit angle between index and middle fingers (i.e.
abduction, left), and angles of index and middle fingers relative
to the long axis of the guitar neck (i.e. ulnar deviation, right).
1). This approach is adapted from similar techniques with
established validity in extracting finger position from video
during stringed instrument play. Extended discussion of the
methodology and its basis for validity are included in the
supplementary Appendix.
Analysis
We measured the angle of the index finger relative to the
middle finger (i.e. the “interdigit angle”; Figure 2(a)), and
the angle made by the fingers to the axis of the fretboard
measured through the PIPJ and tip of each finger (Figure
2(b)). In order to maximize the specificity of this analysis,
comparison. Our aim here was to uncover kinematical
aberrations arising in moments of extraordinary play with
minimal risk of obfuscation by the ostensibly homogenous
hand postures of the guitarists in the bulk of their play,
which we anticipated might “regress to the mean” de
rigueur. An additional, exploratory analysis of the “violin-
like playing” hypothesis1 is described in the supplemen-
tary Appendix.
Findings and outcomes
Within the 2 min and 20 s of film of Django playing
J’Attendrai Swing, Django’s melodic play extends from
0:40:00 through 1:45:00; that is, approximately 65 s of the
film met the basic criteria for inclusion. Of these frames,
approximately one-third (20.5 s; 990 frames) showed
Django at a sufficiently “orthonormal” (i.e. not overly
oblique) angle with full view of the fretting hand. Among
these 990 frames, more than half (N = 546) survived the
quality-control screening on the basis of sufficiently clear
vantage of all four landmarks (PIPJs and finger tips).
The primary objective of our investigation was to ascer-
tain whether Django exhibited any unusual hand postures
in the extreme-most 10% of frames, as compared to those
postures observed of similarly skilled but fully fingered
guitarists playing in a similar style. We note that neither

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4 Prosthetics and Orthotics International
Figure 3.  Box plots of study findings. Interdigit angle shows Django’s propensity for abduction between index and middle fingers (p
< 0.05, left), and propensity for ulnar deviation (p < 0.05, right). Total number of frames analyzed is annotated above the box plots.
the final subset of analyzed frames nor the frames within
which a “very extreme” posture occurred represent a con-
tiguous set of frames; these data subsets comprised frames
from across the entire time span of usable film.
The results show that Django indeed showed a predi-
lection toward more abducted finger postures: −9.11 ±
6.52°, with a maximum abduction of −14.5°, versus six
comparison (−5.78 ± 2.41°). The effect on means was sig-
nificant p < 0.001, and the effect was significant to p <
0.05 in a multiple comparisons pair-wise test against each
other players’ data via Tukey’s honestly significant differ-
ence criterion (Figure 3(a)).
In a separate analysis of fretting finger orientation with
respect to the long axis of the guitar neck, Django again
showed a substantially more parallel hand orientation than
all other comparison subjects: 157.71 ± 3.37° versus
150.59 ± 2.67°. Here again, the effect was significant at p
< 0.001, and survived a multiple comparisons test at p <
0.05 (Figure 3(b)).
Discussion
Biomechanics of the hand during guitar play
The biomechanics of a guitarist’s hand are complex, and
a thorough treatment of this topic would be beyond the
scope of this article. However, we summarize that the
left-hand finger movements can be described in three
general ways: (1) position of the hand on the guitar neck,
(2) finger span, and (3) speed of hand repositioning.2
Hand size; hand width; wrist width; interdigit spans;
flexion, extension, and rotational movements under pas-
sive movement and maximum voluntary effort; and
MCPJ movement (both laterally at standard torque, and
extension at low and high torques) are relevant
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considerations of anatomy and excursion in fretting
activities.3 Notably, Django’s apparent ulnar deviation
contradicts the dogma of conventional guitar instruction,
where music teachers often make the point that sus-
tained, wide stretches of the hand should be avoided, and
the posture of the hand should be such that the hand,
wrist, and fingers are in a neutral orientation whenever
possible.3
Django, DOF, and device complexity
Our analysis suggests that Django expanded the range of
a limited number of remaining degrees of freedom (DOFs)
in a way that is significantly different from a cohort of
comparators. While Django was not a candidate for upper-
limb prosthesis, this observation may have implications
for prosthetic design. For instance, it is conventionally
thought that despite the mechanical elegance of many
modern prosthetic devices, none of these methods permits
the “natural” control of more than a very small number of
DOF.4,5 While device complexity alone cannot explain
device abandonment,6,7 our findings echo a question often
asked among both roboticists and clinicians: would device
acceptance increase with a reduction in end effector
complexity?8,9
Several hands already in the research stream feature an
abduction freedom, however, not necessarily in a way that
exploits the DOF seen of Django: the Michelangelo Hand
uses an underactuated abduction as the hand opens, and
the I-Limb Ultra Revolution has abduction at the thumb
only. Several studies have investigated posture control via
the Shadow Hand, highlighting abduction in grasping
activities.10,11 In this light, we propose that it may be
important not only to ask “how many DOFs are best?” but
also “which DOF is best?”
Wininger and Williams 5
While we report on a narrow set of hand postures in
this study, previous research regarding postural synergies
of the hand suggests that a simplified control paradigm
with limited DOF may be tenable for executing many of
the grasp types essential to the activities of daily living
(ADLs). Indeed, the 16 postures of Cutkosky’s grasp tax-
onomy can theoretically be performed using only three
different control strategies,8 and among 15 joint angles
measured in the fingers and thumb, two principal compo-
nents account for the vast majority (up to 80% or more)
of variance in dozens of grasp types.12 Admittedly, a hand
designed on this principle may be less likely to appeal
cosmetically; however, this may not prove impactful in
device adoption: among amputees rejecting upper-limb
prostheses, “Just as or more functional without it,” is the
most common reason for disuse (98%), where appear-
ance of the prosthesis was only the 10th most frequently
reported factor in the decision not to wear a prosthesis.13
For both prosthetic replacement of missing hands—but
also for surgical restoration of injured hands—even mod-
est loss of function can prove to “interfere” with the use
of the remaining healthy effectors, burdening the
patient.14
Rehabilitation, training, and hand study
Beyond prosthetic design, what wisdoms are reinforced or
gained anew from this study? Perhaps the most accessible
connection to clinical intervention is this study’s support
of the existing research asserting the importance of focused
therapy, retraining, and corrective devices, that is, splints
and orthoses,15,16 and that any quality outcomes might be
more likely to result from surgeries planned to yield func-
tionality in a preferred activity, rather than cosmetic
appearance or anatomical “position of function.”14
Furthermore, Django evidences both the idiosyncrasy and
the potentially unlimited power of neuroplasticity: recov-
ery (reappearance of elemental motor patterns following
injury) and compensation (appearance of new motor pat-
terns via the adaptation of remaining motor elements) can
be radical, particularly when ADL are integrated into the
therapeutic regimen.17
Finally, we propose that this methodology may be useful
in a broader range of clinical researches. In order to analyze
pre-existing raw video record of a subject with arbitrary
film angles, we created a clickable graphical-user interface
to extract joint coordinate data frame by frame, and per-
formed a standard affine transformation to reconfigure the
data into an orthonormal planar coordinate system. We
believe that this paradigm could be applied easily to many
different settings where it is preferred to capture movement
data in a naturalistic setting with the absolute minimum of
constraints on the actor, for example, anatomical markers
that might compromise hand comfort.18 While a two-
camera method would be required in order to eliminate the
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presumption of planarity, proper lighting and subject framing
would improve both the efficiency of our method, and may
support more sophisticated image processing enterprises, for
example, automatic identification of hand segments.
Conclusion
Unusually, this case study does not report on an anonymized
living patient, but on a well-known individual of high his-
torical importance. Here, we applied modern image pro-
cessing and kinematic analysis in order to draw clinical
conclusions from the very limited surviving film record of
Django Reinhardt in live action play: only a few minutes
of film exist, the footage is of only modest quality, and not
all of the footage showed Django in a freestyle play where
his kinematics could be assessed “in the raw.” Given these
limitations, this report cannot be considered a definitive
treatment on the subject of Django’s injury or his recovery.
However, this is the first study to address the question of
“how did Django do it?”—a matter of interest to many.
Our preliminary conclusion is that Django appears to have
adapted to debilitating injury by making use of latent,
atypical DOF (finger abduction and ulnar deviation).
Extended discussion of our methodologies and analyses is
provided in the supplementary Appendix.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Troy Shinbrot, PhD for helpful
commentary.
Conflict of interest
None.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency
in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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