|
As a piano player from young age, for a while recently I thought there was something unfair about piano key sizes: if keyboards were narrower, wouldn’t it be objectively easier for more people? Besides, my fingers are thin, why do I need all that area? Lately, I’m tending to think otherwise. If narrower keyboards were to start being manufactured, people with longer fingers would just write arrangements with wider chords for these keys—and people with shorter fingers would be none the better. We cannot demand progressively smaller and smaller keyboards forever. Furthermore, upon reflection I realized that for some techniques, especially those involving wide staccato jumps, larger keys are actually beneficial even for people with shorter fingers—as you throw hands around, larger keys provide more forgiving “landing pads”, allowing for higher speed than if you had to be precise so as not to accidentally trigger a neighbouring key. In fact, I suspect smaller keys would benefit one or two specific scenarios (e.g., a wide one-hand chord), while being detrimental to other techniques. All in all, I do not believe it is a handicap. Pick arrangements that work for you. Adapt arrangements to your physique. Narrower range chords do not even remotely imply unimpressive arrangements! Yes, if there is something you want to but cannot physically play, that sucks—but we all have to pick our battles; I have seen pianists with less reach than me demonstrate mind-blowing technique that is beyond my capabilities, and by now I guess will be so forever. |