I have really small hands. Sometimes when I want to play pieces that require large stretches, I have to leave some notes out. I wonder if any of you have this problem and what do you do about it. Also, any suggestions from you big hands people?

One of those big hands people here. Sorry, no suggestions :p


Kidding. Just use size to your advantage. People with small hands are often very good at playing impressionistic and baroque music. So just play what you play well.

I agree. The piano literature is VAST, covering over 4 centuries of music making. There's plenty there that will fit your hands.

Thanks guys....any literature suggestions then?

Hand transplant?

That's hard to say without knowing what pieces you are working on now/what you have performed in the past.

I have this problem myself even though my hands
are not considered small, comfortable with a 9th
stretch from white note to white note or black
note to black note, but not mixing up from white
to black or vice versa.

However, I also prefer Chopin, Liszt, Rach to
others and those composers usually have large
stretches so to keep me inspired and motivated, I
still prefer to focus mainly on those composers,
although I also like Mozart, Beethoven and Bach.

I don't skip any notes, but just roll the chords
most of the time. But my problem isn't just that
alone. It's when even some appreg passage itself
is written with large skips, take for example
Chopin Etude Op10 No.1, there are some pretty
large stretch between finger 1 and 2 ....I ended
up needing to practice 12 and 13 to find the
most comfortable and natural fingering and also
the wrist/arm movement to help, which I think is
inevitable even with large hand since it needs
to be played with the continuous flow driven
mainly from the arm/shoulder.

But that's just my unique case that I need to
experiment to find out what works and what
doesn't.

Nope....checked the list for transplants and no hand transplants are available. Guess I'm gonna have to find some other way....

Thanks for the input....I bet Chopin Etudes are the best to work out whatever hand problems we've got.

Find out where you can get some of these!

Ted

(I know it's been linked here many times, but I just couldn't resist.)

What kind of things do you play now?

I came across some Sweelinck in an mp3, that prompted me to track down the music. And lately I've been collecting scores of Soler sonatas, they're not too hard.

Alicia de Larrocha has really small hands but she compensates by being amazingly agile. Her left hand can jump two octaves, play bass and trills all in presto. Small hands have this advantage over big hands. And she is not the only one.

Anyway most music I have seen, and I have seen tons of it, employs twelfths but rarely - even Rachmaninov's so I must express a degree of "so whatness?" about this query. (Unless of course your hands are really titchy and you're some kind of freak)

I'm working on Rach Prelude Op. 23 No.4, Debussy's L'sle Joyeuse, and Saint Saens g minor concerto. I have been working on Chopin's black key etude (and want to do more... ) and his 1st ballade....stuff like that. What do ya'll think?

Or you could replace your keyboard with one which fits your hand better. See:

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

It's a weird feeling at first, but historically, harpsichords and pianofortes had smaller octave spans than today's modern grands.

What's wrong with rolling the chords? It's no big deal, pianists do it all the time.

Surely some pianists roll chords using artistic freedom, even when it is completely possible for them to play all notes simultaneously.

On the other hand, rolling of fast repeated large chords is impossible.

And sometimes e.g. in a funeral march, the character would be destroyed by rolling....

Leaving out a note can be the only possible solution, and depending on the actual note, it might not even be noticed by the audience.

Finally, we have to accept our shortcomings. There are hundres of pieces out ouf reach for 99 % of all piano players, be the reason small hands, or clumsy fingers, rigid wrists, lack of enough basic technique.

But, as has been pointed out earlier, there are thousands of pieces, that are musically interesting, whithout being a challenge for the average pianist.

Find them and bring them to life, rather than spend a a lot of time on a hopeless task. The beauty if music is not correlated to the technical diffculties.

You can overcome it, there are a few things you might have to "cheat" on a bit, but with work you can get past those kinds of things.

Look at Abby Simon, for example. He has very small hands, and he's probably the most fantastic player I've ever seen.

I too have small hands and I could only span 9th and stretch a bit to span a 10th and I'll really have to struggle to span an 11th. Now, even if my hands still aren't that big, I could span a 10th easilty and stretch a little bit for an 11th.

However, I find that hand span is not the problem but finger flexibility. Your fingers couldn't stretch out that much which is why you are having difficulty with those large chords.

And in some cases, there are pieces which may appear to require big hands but aren't necessarily all finger work but shoulder and wrist work (La Campanella is an example)

To improve your finger flexibility, I'd suggest playing Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# minor and if you really want to challenge yourself, Chopin's Etude #1 op. 10. I used to have rock hard fingers who couldn't stretch and now I could play chords and Rachmaninoff fairly easily.

P.S: It is reported that Chopin had small hands himself and he slept with corks in between his fingers.

This is good advice, and in another sense also. I am baffled by all the pianists who have the technique to play intermediate pieces easily, yet seem to look down on them and only practice virtuoso pieces that take them six months to learn. To me, this is not even being a real musician. A real musician plays music. He doesn't spend all of his time struggling to learn mind-bending difficult pieces.

I'm coming from a pop/rock background in this opinion. If Beatles followed the approach of many classical pianists, they would have never released any albums, except perhaps, Sgt. Pepper, because they'd always be chasing some holy grail of virtuosity.

There are tens of thousands of great, accesible piano pieces out there that aren't mind-bendingly difficult to play. Enjoy!

You know, alot of times, musicians stress the playing of all the difficult repertoire, but they never considered playing or learning the easier ones. We mock people who are playing pieces like Clementi Sonatinas, Kuhlau Sonatinas, and others that are easier to play. Have we ever considered playing these pieces to play them well? Thanks Jan-Erik and cjsm for that advice. Brings in a whole new perspective to playing piano and music as a whole.

I have really small hands for my age, my hands can only stretch an octave and it still tires me sometimes. Do finger exercises and stretch your hands daily.
for example open you hand, close fingers 2,3&4 and see how far apart you can stretch 1&5. DO the same with the rest of your fingers.
Despite my small hands, I still challenge myself and as you can see from the list of my repertoire, i'm not playing any repertoire that's actually well suited to my hands, instead I play pieces that many people with big hands play.

My theory is that small hands are generally more powerful than big hands.

Try this:
-Find a table
-place your thumb and 4th finger about 10cm apart on it
-Using wrist motion, play a tremelo with these 2 fingers
-Now bring these 2 fingers much closer together, say, 2cm apart, and try the tremelo again.

The second time is much less powerful, which shows that the hand is more powerful when expanded. Small-handed people must expand their hands more to play what big-handed people play, meaning they can do it with more power!

Bottom line: Stop ya bitchin' and play!

Hi.

I can reach from C to Fis,
and almost never I found that so needed that small hands people can't play it.

Of course, it is a lot easier when you have big hands. But it is not impossible when you have small.

Please, take a look at Mikhail Pletnev. He has a very very small hands. And yet, his playing is amazing!

Don't be discouraged.
Listen to him more, and find out how he decides to play stretches that he can't.

sorry...double post.

To find out what a Steinbuhler modified piano would be like, go to a store that sells inexpensive digital keyboards (such as Casio or Yamaha) that have typically 61 keys and many functions, and try your hand span on them.

Their keys are narrower than full size "Grand" keys, and will give you an inkling of what a Steinbuhler-modified piano would be like.

The problem with the Steinbuhler approach is that just about every piano you might come in contact with will not be Steinbuhler equipped. They will have regular-sized keys, so you would not be able to play the same on them.

A much more practical suggestion is to work on stretching your hands. There are two approaches to this, and both can be used simultaneously.

First, gentle stretching expercises (emphasis on gentle) can work wonders. Several of my students have increased their span using them. The Alfred Adult comprehensive piano course has a few pages on this in the first section.

Second, there are piano exercises specifically designed to "stretch" the hand, by working on increasing the span between specific fingers.

Joseffy has some, as does Pischna. (Both are advanced technique exercise books).

One caution...If you do not have a qualified piano teacher that is well-versed in technique training, (it is amazing how many are not), I advise finding one who is to help you with proper usage of those books.

Best wishes

I really would'nt reccomend the 1st option. What if you choose to be a pianist, you would struggle playing octaves on a normal piano and that would make matters worse.

As rocket said, it's very important to have a teacher who is well versed in technical training so no matter what problem a student has, they will know what to do about it.

Just to get maximum stretch, I have some posts that illustrate how to do the stretches for the 4th-5th fingers (put thumb on wood below the keys, and play 4th finger on middle 'F', then 5th finger on 'C' above that. Go chromatically up the keyboard using this perfect fourth stretching exercise). The diminished seventh chord stretch can be found somewhere amongst my posts if you do a search. It will help to give you power within your own reach and slightly stretch the span over time.