...who is a world champion classic jazz piano player, used to tell me that spanning 11 keys with his left hand was part of his success. And being able to spread his left thumb and forefinger very, very wide.

I am a pianist with small hands. I can reach a 9th with my left hand but it is stretched from fiddling. I can only reach an octave with my right hand. My little hands are perfect for violin but not really big enough to play some things like 10ths in Chopin. I knew Rachmaninoff was a huge guy with huge hands. I don't think he's appreciated now except for the 2nd Piano Concerto. I played the Symphonic Dances in college. That is a wonderful orchestral work. Check it out.

I was lucky enough to see the local symphony play it a few years ago.

Interesting to hear that playing the violin seems to have helped with stretching for both violin and piano. I have a young violin player who absolutely loves it, asked to take lessons from age 3, and is completely self motivated. He's no prodigy, but he's doing well. And his stature and finger size are on the shorter end, so I wondered how that would affect him.

Thanks for the great post!

Started piano lessons at five years old, and violin at age ten. I was not quite big enough for a full sized violin, which is rather tiny, as you probably know. I knew this because I would have my right arm stretched out with arm fully extended, elbow straight, and there was still about 4 inches of bow left up at the top of the bow!!!

And it just so happened that my piano teacher was an excellent violinist as well. He taught me both instruments until I finished high school. Talk about serendipity! I dropped the piano lessons after high school, although I still play for my own enjoyment. Continued the fiddle through college and community orchestras. Got tired of it after 15 years and put it up.


I have small bones and I'm five foot two. My growth spurt only was about four or five inches at the most because when I was young I was all of five foot three. And I am much shorter than my parents (((SIGH))) I've seen large guys playing the violin but they had large but delicate hands.


I'm convinced you have to match the hands to the size of the instrument. I see five foot tall women playing string bass in orchestras and I can't figure out how they do it. I tried to play a viola once and thought it was heavy and hard to play. Also, your left arm is stretched farther out, so it's harder to hold up. And my brain can't handle alto clef, only bass and treble. That note on the middle line damned well better be a B or a D, and if it's a C, that fries my brain. I can't think in fourths either. I know people who can play violin and viola both and it baffles me.

Guess they made casts of Franz Liszt's hands and that's how they know.

He started violin at five, and is about to add piano.

It certainly makes sense that one will do better with an instrument that fits ones body size. Still, yeah, I am amazed to see some small people play double bass, as you note. Have you ever seen Black Violin? A very fun combo of two large, well-built men who are classically trained in violin and cello. They add some hip hop to make things interesting. Part of their "purpose," so to speak is to break down the cliches of who should and shouldn't play certain instruments in certain styles. It's quite cool.

Cheers!

My mother and aunt both played (my aunt was First Chair Viola with the Charleston Philharmonic). They both started on 1/4 size violins; then 1/2 and either full or 3/4 (I can't remember who played which size). Bows come in different sizes as well. While I did not play long - perfect pitch but no sense of rhythm - I well remember being fitted for my bow.

This was in the early 1960s, long before anyone I knew had heard of Suzuki method or different fiddle sizes.

The only thing my teacher told me about sizes was that you could string up a violin a fifth lower and get yourself a 3/4 sized viola, but I was not interested in viola. My husband is a guitarist and he was stunned when I got out one of my fiddles (I only have four) and actually played it, because he didn't realize how small it was, especially how tiny the fingerboard is.

My old piano and violin teacher is still alive, amazingly enough. But he's gone to THE DARK SIDE.

He plays accordion. No, really, he does. For money, even!!

He dragged out a huge, heavy 120-button Hohner and tried to get me to play it. He also wrote me a diagram of all the left hand buttons and the chords. It was too big for me to deal with.

I once read about a bunch of accordionists in San Francisco who got together and played "Lady of Spain" in a group on the steps of City Hall. They got tickets for being a public nuisance. I would have been proud.



That's cool about your mother and your aunt having talent. I had friends in orchestra that said "We used to all gather around the piano and sing" and I thought, "What? Other people in your family have talent?"

My parents didn't have any talent but they did enjoy my concerts. My dad was hip. He was into jazz. Loved Bix Beiderbecke, and took us to see Ella Fitzgerald in the 70s before she retired. I came home with an Art Tatum record one day and said, "Dad, do you know who Art Tatum is?" and he did, of course. He and I went to see Stephane Grapelli when he was still around. He finally figured out that there were some people in rock and roll that were talented, but it took him a long time.

Mom was a complete square. She thought that Paul Whiteman's Orchestra (Yes, that was his real name, he was a good buddy of George Gershwin) played proper jazz. I called it "Jazz Sanitized for Southern White Virgins". Grandmother took Hammond organ lessons when she retired, because that is what respectable old ladies did in small towns. Now they call it the music club, named after one of the ladies I knew there when I was a kid, and they get performances imported from the nearest state university which is about an hour away.

I had a first cousin once removed (mom's first cousin) who was a professional trumpet player for the Main Line Symphony in Philadelphia, and my third cousin on mom's side has a heavy metal power trio in San Antonio for fun.

Heavy metal is too obnoxious for me. There's a certain limit on distortion that I just can't cross, and listen to anything that's past a certain point of obnoxiousness. If you want a clue as to rock and roll I like, then I hope you recognize my avatar. Clue: Ph.D. in Astrophysics, Imperial College, London.

?

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/guy-walks-into-a-bar

A guy walks into a bar one day and he can’t believe his eyes. There, in the corner, there’s this one-foot-tall man, in a little tuxedo, playing a tiny grand piano.

So the guy asks the bartender, “Where’d he come from?”


And the bartender’s, like, “There’s a genie in the men’s room who grants wishes.”

So the guy runs into the men’s room and, sure enough, there’s this genie. And the genie’s, like, “Your wish is my command.” So the guy’s, like, “O.K., I wish for world peace.” And there’s this big cloud of smoke—and then the room fills up with geese.

So the guy walks out of the men’s room and he’s, like, “Hey, bartender, I think your genie might be hard of hearing.”

And the bartender’s, like, “No kidding. You think I wished for a twelve-inch pianist?”

No I hadn't heard that one and welcome to DU. Thanks for the laugh.

She can play a damn harpsichord and a piano at the same time. I've seen it LIVE.

But here you can watch for yourself:

And I added this one - wish I could cover the title, but it's so damn interesting.

I have a 9-key reach; at least I used to. Arthritis has probably taken it down to an octave by now. Not that it matters - despite being able to sight read and being born with perfect pitch, I have absolutely no sense of rhythm! Quite the disappointment in my extremely musical family 😜