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Hi everyone.

My name is Carolyn. I'm a 27 year old piano teacher. I've played piano my whole life, and majored in it in college. And yet, I can barely reach an octave. I can reach it only by grabbing the corners of the keys, so it works for sustained notes, but not running octaves. In my piano lessons in college, we worked on this extensively--trying different stretches and exercises so that I could expand my repertoire. This failed, and only caused my hands to swell up to the point that they were unusable.

I have to simplify so many songs that I play to drop out one of the octaves. I'm learning a couple Scott Joplin rags right now, and they don't sounds very "filled out." Does anyone else have this problem?

It's quite frustrating, because I teach children with larger hand spans than I have. (I show them how to play running 7ths, and they practice with octaves.)

Thanks for any feedback.

Given your background it seems you have done all you can do, so you are left with finding an instrument with a somewhat smaller keyboard to better fit your hand. They do make 7/8 sized keyboards that can be fit right into a grand. If you do a search on this site you will find a lot of "small hands" threads and some info on smaller keyboards.

Carolyn, when I started out (as a teenager) I could play octaves, both hands, with no problem and could barely stretch to make a tenth. I could play a tenth by just catching the edge of the key, nothing that was doable on a regular basis.

From having played so much ragtime-like music (as well as popular\jazz music) where you fill up the sound with your left hand by playing tenths, my left hand now has a greater stretch than my right hand. I can now easily play major tenths (white key to white key or black key to black key) in my left hand though I couldn't many years ago even after I stopped growing.

So, your hands will stretch out a tad more than what you presently have. This won't happen overnight though.

I once shook hands with Andrés Segovia when I was a teenager and was struck by how fat and stubby his hands were. It didn't seem to affect his career.

Three weeks ago I had a chance to play for about 3 hours on a piano with a 7/8 keyboard installed. Although it takes a little getting used to (I often would play a 9th when I reached for an octave with my left hand), for some things it was close to miraculous. All stretches were gone. Octaves became 7th. 6ths fingered 2-5 became comfortable. For me, fast filled-in chords with octaves became easy, as well as filled in 10ths. If you can afford it, a 7/8 keyboard is something people with small hands should look at.

You do get used to smaller instruments. I bought a guitar with a narrower neck last year because the normal neck of a classical guitar is really huge and worse than a keyboard because if you stretch you numb the strings...

I have small hands too. I started with an octave and now I can reach a 9th or an easy 10th (not all 10th are the same).

You could try a smaller instrument, or maybe, as you are a teacher, also try your own arrangements for certain tricky passages.
(And of course you can always roll chords.)

Good luck!

Here's your solution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKKlhYF53w

I'll add my voice to the choir - a 7/8 keyboard would be a great investment. They're made by the Steinbuhler company:

http://www.steinbuhler.com/index.html

I know of two teachers who are familiar with the 7/8 keyboard. If you ever get a chance to get down to Texas, look up Carol Leone (Southern Methodist University) or Lora Deahl (Texas Tech University).

Carol wrote an article on the subject in American Music Teacher:

“Goldilocks Had a Choice.” American Music Teacher (June/July, 2003)