Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Different Sharps width?

Funny, this.

I have a particular affection for vintage (Boston) Mason & Hamlin keyboards, as the accidentals (sharps) feel wide and oh so comfortable to me.

Amongst modern pianos, Fazioli, in particular, feels very narrow, with sharp, uncomfortable edges.

I'm told that the old Masons could be problematic for pianists with thick fingers, one Boston shop specialising in changing the Mason accidentals for those of slightly narrower dimensions.

Karl Watson,
Staten Island, NY

I have a friend with a Baldwin Acrosonic console piano from, probably, the 1950's and the entire keyboard is narrower than normal, making the whole piano slightly smaller, width-wise. It is disconcerting to play to say the least when the muscle-memory is accustomed to 'standard' dimensions.

Here I am wishing for smaller keys. 45" or 46" inch compass, as opposed to the regular 48"and spacing between sharps and naturals to my liking.

I could get a custom keyboard, or even modify one myself. Lots of time and money involved.

In the meantime, I work with what I got.

M&H with Rosewood keys has a wider gap (narrower keys).

Men typically have much wider finger widths than women, so you and your teacher might have to find different fingering for you on some of those troublesome chords. We all have to struggle with our finger and hand dimensions. Big hands can reach big chords but have a harder time squeezing between the sharps.

My hands are larger, but I still struggle to reach a 10 key chord.

Best of luck!

Of course you did!



Absolutely nowhere in this thread did rxd make any such ridiculous suggestion.



How would you ever know?

Besides, rxd indicated that wide fingers are a common problem, and that many a good instrument is passed by a good player because of this. It's not as though his comments on this state of affairs, or suggestions on possible remedies, are totally harebrained.



rxd already indicated where the configuration of the three adjacent sharps can be problematic, and how it can be adjusted within reasonable limits. There was no talk of "insisting on a new piano".

And then you top it all, by suggesting



As rxd said: reductio ad absurdum.

It stinks.

I'm still waiting to hear what rxd is suggesting the teacher do (see my previous post).

As far as the comment about wide fingers being a common problem, I have been teaching piano for 13 years, and I have only ever encountered one student whose fingers were wide enough where there was an issue. It wasn't just on my piano, but his own as well where he ran into this problem (as soon as we started playing chords like E-flat major). I had him play the chord with 1-2-4 fingering as finger 2 wasn't as wide as 3. Other possible solutions would be to redistribute the chord among the fingers so that one hand plays the black keys and the other plays the white, or even dropping the unimportant 5th of the chord. None of these options are weird contortions of the hand as rxd assumed, and they are the same kinds of things that we with smaller hands have to do when we can't play what's on the page.

Of course, any such solutions would have to be the only way the OP practiced, even on his piano at home otherwise other problems with muscle memory could arise. So the decision to do this would have to be weighed against how much the OP cares about the problem with the teacher's piano, or if he could potentially be playing this piece on an unfamiliar instrument for a performance and should therefore plan on there being this issue just in case.

The solution all depends on the person and the piece of music in question, so I suggest the OP informs his teacher of the problem if he hasn't done so already. I'm sure she'll be able to figure something out.

Morodienne

I will grace your question with an answer.

I hope you will note that, as a seasoned professional musician, teacher and counsellor, I make a point of never giving advice. I am usually careful to only outline the possibilities and let others take from what I offer as they will. You may wait for ever to hear me give advice concerning what others should or shouldn't do.

Do me a favor, Please read my post again, accurately, as you would a piece of ultra-modern music, and, if at any point I have actually given anybody any concrete advice, please inform me, quoting the exact terminology I have used. I am not infallible and I am always open to a bit of proof reading, particularly when there is a cultural difference.

" The whole ludicrous situation in the profession and trade reminds me of an hilarious joke but it's not PC so I can't repeat it."

We`ll not sleep tonight if we don`t hear it . . .

It is fun reading through these. Like being at a "debate" in the House of Commons. .. .!

The solution is simple. A small grinder . . . and a steady hand!

But if I told it, someone else might not get any sleep for laughing.

Thanks, Mark. R

You have a fine analytical mind.

rfd,

When descending from your throne of pomposity, you might deign to spell the names of your subjects correctly.

I am aware of what I did and I did not find it important enough to change. What surprises me is that you didn't spot the other one I put in there for you. How can you let me have this much control over your mind????

It look like you have hit the bottom of the barrel with nothing constructive to say so now you're just being silly.

Not until someone gets called a nincompoop!

Ohmygoodness, I hope not. I have not read any actual name calling in these forums for a long time. We are, hopefully, above the level of the politicians we elect to govern us.

It's OK for Marty to say I was being pompous and imply that I am capable of eventually climbing down from my throne of pomposity because I deliberately chose to be pompous in that one sentence. Similarly, I think Marty was deliberately injecting a note of silliness into the whole thing which it needed at the time.

For either of us to say 'you are silly' or 'you are pompous' is totally different. That implies a total dismissal of another person and to begin a sentence with 'you are a....,' is only heard, as you say, in political 'debate' and on the playground.

Marty and I know each others posts to be mostly serious and genial. We are both free to inject silliness or pomposity at will but we would never descend to name calling.