Mine are only an octave, but my teacher can do a 13th!

Octave here too...

11th here.. what's the point of this topic? Everyone is going to say how big their hands are??

Mine are only an octave, but my teacher can do a 13th![/b]
From C to A of the next octave??

I have a 10th.

I don't have to roll the ending of the Bartok Op. 14 suite.

I can do C to E. General body proportion might have something to do with it. I'm 6'1", which is taller than average I think (at least for Chinese).

10th here too. I can take the opening chords of the Rach 2 without breaking them, though it is a "stretch", so to speak.

If a person says that he can reach a 10th, does this mean on the top of the keys or the side of the keys?

I can't imagine how big of a hand would be required to reach a 13th!

To me, it means you can play the interval reliably at whatever tempo and dynamic level you want without sounding the adjacent notes.

Exactly. Playing the opening of the Rach 2 with unbroken chords would be just too risky for me in performance. (For musical reasons, they should be broken anyway, IMO.) My hands aren't that[/b] big. Whilst I can take a 10th with either hands at slow speed, they have to be broken at higher speeds.

I would say from C to ?? 5'6" and one octave only.

I'm glad I have no difficulty playing big spans, jumps etc.. Rach 2 unbroken chords are easy thank god.

I can just scrape a very stretched 10th - certainly couldn't play a series of 10ths without adding an unintentional 9th or two

Watching someone like Marcus Roberts at the keyboard consumes me with jealousy - his hands give the impression that he's playing on a miniature keyboard. I reckon he could easily stretch two octaves - seeing him play an octave with thumb and 4th finger coming down perpendicular to the keybed made me do a double-take. That can't be an octave!



(click for big)

*cough cough* .. no :rolleyes:

IMO :p

You should start a thread about that and watch all hell break loose!

NEWS FLASH!!! I've grown! My parents and friends can agree that I have been getting taller. Yesterday I noticed... HEY I can stretch a 9th! I'm not just c to shining c anymore! I'm c to shining d!!!

I love the fact that I am still growing

Matt

hey Debussy great .. did you discover this yesterday??

Gather your gang .. and I'll gather mine

(tip: let us open a poll on it, a kind of yes/no poll .. and see who will pull this thing )

And remember it was you against me in the first place

I can stretch an 11th in both hands but can't just put one down without splashing a few notes.

I love playing the Franck Violin Sonata and the Prelude, Chorale, et Fugue. Tenths galore.

Not to mention Franck's Prelude, Aria et Final. 12ths galore.

Indeed, and what an underrated piece! I've been meaning to get to it for a few years now. In some ways I find it more musically satisfying than the PCF.

I totally agree with you! For the life of me, I cannot understand why this magnificent triptych is so seldom played. Someday I would love to tackle it, though I don't really have the hands for it. I did learn the PCF several years back.

5'6" and a good reliable 9, sometimes a very strained 10

10th, 11th if really stretch hard

11th. No idea why this is important. I have never needed more than a 10th and rarely more than an octave.

I can reach an octave with my first and second finger.

I think I can do a tenth... but I like to think my hands still have growing to do.

5'1" and arthritic fingers - an octave is my limit. Fortunately that's all I've needed so far.

Look at the chords at the beginning of the original La Campanella. I can hit tenths but I can't play those chords.

This guy hits an 11th with ease:



I can do a tenth fairly well on black keys, quite a bit more difficult on white. I tend to think I have great piano hands, though, octaves are super natural to play.

My left hand can easily take the 10ths at the opening of Rach 2, but I cannot do those in the Ab minor version of La Campanella. (I just tried. )

From what I have read about Liszt (just covering the 10ths at the close of the slow movement of Beethoven's Opus 106 without breaking), he certainly wouldn't have managed those 10ths in La Campanella either.

Can anyone here take the left hand 10th's in the 6th Rhapsody (Presto section- measure 57) without breaking them? Argerich would seem to be doing that in her recording (which I've listened to a billion times), yet I've heard that her hands are not particularly large. She must be breaking them at supersonic speed.

I can only stretch an octave.

I wish I had big hands.

There's an Ab minor version of La Campanella? Apart from the key signature, how does it differ from the "conventional" G# minor version?

Regards,

The first version is in A flat minor.


Mel

It is practically a completely different piece.

I tried playing those chords. Not hard at all.

Now, the rest of the piece... Much thicker than the revision.

brojek.

Since my right hand is less flexible than my left [it should tell you which hand I write w/], I can reach an octave, but barely b/c my hands are small. It's rare I get those fast notes [that are an octave apart] just right. I have no problem whatsoever w/ the octave-apart note w/ my left hand, though. In spite of my flexibility, I guess my right hand is as flexible as it'll ever be.

Hi folks - I'm new round these parts, so Hello!

I suspect that as important as overall stretch is the reach between fingers. For example, it is possible to reach a 10th, but still not be secure on the opening chords of Rach 2 (sorry, I have to disagree argerichfan - IMO they really should not be spread- the build up of the sound from chord to chord carrying the line - not relying on the spreading! ). Rather, it takes the ability to reach well between fingers. I suspect this generally becomes quite important in all kinds of passage work as well, as it simply enables a wider range of useful fingerings to be used.

Mine is 11th. The first edition La campanella chords are in reach, so are the Rach 2 opening chords. But there's one catch - it makes a difference if the chords have middle tones inside, or there just a plain stretch - 2 notes! For instance - F# to A: no problem; but then, Rachmaninoff F# minor prelude final chords...

Only an 8th. Hate it. :p

I can only stretch an octave too, but my teacher says that its enough to play most songs, she couldn't stretch any further than me herself!!

I can just barely reach a 10th with left (ie. I can do it for a single chord, but not with 16th notes!), easy with right hand, which stretches an extra cm.

I can reach elevenths but not comfortably and certainly not rapidly. I am glad I can play fast, filled tenths in stride, particularly in the Waller solos. On the other hand, it has to be admitted that breaking these in various off-beat ways can often create rhythms more interesting than those obtained through playing them straight. The only classical example I play is the Ab Polonaise, in which I play all the tenths straight because I think they sound better that way.

In improvisation it's handy to be able to expand a chord into a form within a tenth in the left hand because, in general, widely spaced forms in the bass seem to sound more harmonious than clumps - unless you want a solid effect of course.

I can do 10ths easily on the piano, and I can do 12ths on the clavichord.

John

I can barely reach an ocave, I'm a girl, can any girls here stretch over an octave?. I get jealous about other people's hands, for instance I was standing in the line at McDonlad's and I kept wanting to tell people they had pianists hands! There was a girl there with really long fingers and I ended up telling her..has this happened to anyone else?

Hei SallyF !

I am a girl and I have tiny hands, I can reach C - Eb with my left hand and Bb - C with my right, but I have gained flexibility from practicing.

Be careful, though.

I use to look at peoples hands all the time, and when I see people with strong hands and long fingers who does not bother to play the piano, I find it hard to understand.

There must be other things to piano-playing than just finger size....

Ragnhild

Really? From what I have read, Liszt didn't have SUPER big hands, but he had practically no webbing, meaning that he could stretch a lot further than normal, some say even a 12th...

Anyway, I'm fifteen and can play an 12th at a stretch or an 11th with no hassles, but the most I ever use is about a 10th, so the extra finger length basically only aids in getting my fingers in the way of each other!

Oh, and while I mention it, is anybody else cursed with having tiny pinkies? For most people, their pinky reaches up to the last crease (looking at the palm side) on their 4th finger, whereas my pinkies only come to halfway between the 2nd and 3rd creases on my 4th finger.

It's annoying because it means that I have to play all my stretches (ie, 11ths and 12ths) with my thumb and 4th finger.

Does anyone else experience this?

Rachmaninoff had HUGE hands. I have been told that Askenazy can only span an octave. Doesn't seem to matter, if they get the job done. I can reach a tenth comfortably. I have piano playing friends with larger and smaller hands. We all do the best with the "hand" we've been dealt. Generally the repertoire is sized to an average hand. After all, the composers actually DID want their compositions played. I had a girlfriend in college that was 4'10" and could barely span an octave, that played wonderfully. I have taught students the A major polonaise that could "just" reach the octaves, and they played it wonderfully. My teacher in college (Abbey Simon) once imparted that "what you do at the piano is all a question of desire, if you really desire to do it you will find a way". Just because I can span a tenth does not mean that I wouldn't swap hands with Askenazy!
John Pels

I do rach 2 with solid chords... so i guess some 10th some 11th
some 11ths are smaller than some 10ths..

My hands stretch to an octave and 1. (9th)

It gives me trouble sometimes...

Just noticed now, I can do from C do Fis in the next octave.

I can do C to E with ease, C to F with a little stress. C to F# with pain. :p

Then you'd have small hands, and the same brain.

At a garden party, Godowsky and Hofmann were standing together, and a woman came up. "Why what small hands you have Dr. Godowsky. And you, too, Dr. Hofmann!" Godowsky responded, "Whatever made you think, madam, that we play the piano with our hands?"

palindrome, that's a funny story
so many pianists have been successful with small hands... personally, I think it may even be an ADVANTAGE in certain repertoire, eg. much of the Classical era. However, in 19th and 20th century rep, having a big span rules.
My girlfriend has tiny hands... and although her playing is wonderful, it seems like I can always hear her the things she does to make up for her small hands.... breaking chords which should be solid, doing weird fingerings, etc... and ultimately, the music suffers.
Sometimes MY fingers feel too big for certain pieces...

I can reach 10ths. Somehow my left hand can stretch a little bit longer than my right hand.

11th for me, pretty good seings i'm 15 and still growing

Chuang C. Chang's Method book has some stretching excercises and techniques for big stretches that look pretty promising...