This is a concern I hear from people who think their hands aren't big enough or that their fingers feel too wide for the keyboard. Though the range of notes you can play and the height of an electronic keyboard can be adjusted, it is one of the very few instruments where the size of the key (your point of contact with the instrument) is one size. Let's start with a comparison of some other popular instruments. Virtually every other instrument has options to make it more comfortable to play. The guitar is a perfect example of this. You can choose the overall size of the body, the width and length of the neck, the height of strings from the neck (the "action"), the density of the strings, and even if you want to play it upside down or left-handed. The modern drum set goes one step further. You can not only pick the size and style of each component, you can also place each piece of hardware anywhere within reach and create a completely novel configuration. (Some of the most innovative drummers like Trilok Gurtu and Marilyn Mazur have done just that). Other instruments may not have quite that flexibility, like a flute, but instrument makers are finding ways to make them more comfortable, including reconfiguring their basic design as seen with the new "bent flute" models. So why are the keys of the piano stuck in a "one-size-fits-all" model? Eighteenth century instruments have smaller keys than the modern piano, namely clavichords, harpsichords, and organs. The size of the key, most importantly the width, was likely created for the ease of the typical European of that era. In my teaching practice I find that 90% of the time that there's a problem it's due to crowding when playing in the spaces between narrower black keys. Modern Americans are, in fact, generally a little larger than 19th-century Europeans and this has not been taken into account from a design standpoint. According to a 2004 study from the Federal Centers for Disease Control, the average American has grown one inch taller and 25 pounds heavier from 1960 to 2002 (SF Chronicle, p.G7, 4/15/07). Think about the difference in finger width given a span of more than three centuries!

When I tell my students about this inflexibility I remark that any bass player suddenly left without any choice of their instrument's strings, action, neck, etc. would probably haul off and punch me out! I have half-jokingly threatened to start a piano company that specializes in slightly larger keys and if someone would fund such a venture I would probably make a fortune. (Steinbuhler & Co. in Pennsylvania already makes a 7/8 size keyboard, see www.steinbuhler.com). Actually, the cost of creating alternatively-sized electronic models would be a tiny fraction of the cost of re-tooling a traditionally constructed acoustic piano. This is due to the relatively inexpensive key parts of an electronic instrument versus the elaborate key mechanism and string-and-harp construction of a traditional piano that has developed for over two hundred years. And while the re-tooling of such an acoustic instrument might be significant, so too would the potential profits!

In the vast majority of cases that I've seen a larger or smaller hand can be accommodated at the keyboard with careful supervision. Setting up an optimal height and making sure that the hands are parallel with the arms will go a long way to making any hand more comfortable. The actual span of the hand, though, does have bearing on how passages are fingered and how the hand is balanced. And there are certainly cases where a small hand will not be able to play things exactly as written and adjustments would have to be made to prevent twisting or collapsing of the wrist and possible injury. For example, chords that span more than an octave could be 'broken', or arpeggiated in a variety of ways and very involved single note patterns could be distributed between both hands. Those who focus on improvising or composing, this seeming limitation can actually inspire new sounds and solutions to compositional challenges. Though history is replete with keyboardists who had very long and slender fingers, there are plenty of modern masters who have small hands (Keith Jarrett) or plump hands (Kenny Werner) and it doesn't seem to get in their way at all. Contemporary pianist/composer Myra Melford actually takes advantage of her small hands by incorporating the Indian reed organ, the harmonium, into her performing. This instrument uses keys that are only slightly larger than half the size of normal piano keys and for many keyboardists extremely difficult to play without twisting the wrist. Since the keyboard’s inception, there have been alternative solutions to the keyboard design. There are several contemporary inventions using a non-traditional keyboard. One is the Axis 64 MIDI Controller, which uses a hexagonal grid based on the ‘harmonic table’. The instrument’s inventor, Peter Davies, describes the harmonic table as “…a map of musical structure where visual pattern translates into sound pattern and vice versa.” Its keyboard resembles the button layout of an accordion, in the size of a pizza warmer. Like traditional keyboards, the size of the ‘buttons’ (or keys) is fixed, and therefore possesses an inherent ergonomic limitation. Another idea is the Dodexaphone, invented by Jason Martineau, which is a keyboard design based on the dodecahedron, one of the five regular solids (which somewhat resembles a soccer ball). The advantage to this design is that it fits neatly into the hands like a fruit, variably sized, and has one face for each of the 12 notes in the Western equal-tempered scale. Centuries ago the piano replaced the lute as the instrument that was expected to be a part of any 'cultured' upbringing throughout the Western world. There is mounting evidence of how piano playing many different kinds of learning, including fine motor skill coordination, foreign language absorption, and mathematical reasoning. Through the advent of recordings, film, and live performances most of us have been exposed to large amounts piano music—from Beethoven to Billy Joel to boogie-woogie. And this has all come at a price in terms of what we think anyone should sound like on the piano. Consider that someone who has never been exposed to this tradition might not be encumbered by such expectations, like the Filipino musician who treats the piano more like a rapid-play series of gongs or the Western-trained composer who requires ten musicians to literally bow a grand piano in a myriad of different ways.

• ALL LEVELS Taught
  • from beginners to pros
    
    
• ALL STYLES Covered
  • jazz / classical / Latin / blues /
    gospel / funk / pop / rock /
    'new age' / free improvisation
    
    
• ALL SKILLS Enhanced
  • stress-free technique / improvisation /
    reading (note & chord notation) /
    theory / ear-training / songwriting