The PERFECT Piano Hands | Can I Play Piano With Small Hands? This gets personal...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ย. 2019
- In this video, I am looking at different types of hands and what benefits and qualities each one has. I share a bit of my story, few personal experiences, and get to the conclusion of the important characteristics your hands and fingers need to have and what makes the perfect hands for piano. Which type of hands do you have?
At the end of this video, you can see me play an excerpt from Liszt's Après une lecture du Dante - Fantasia quasi Sonata, S158c. An exciting, beautiful, and sometimes scary piece inspired by Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy'
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Thank you so much for watching! If you enjoyed the video it would be amazing if you could also share it with your friends 💯And if you haven't already, check out the other #SweetStruggle videos and my live performance clips! Much love to y'all! 🎶❤️🎹
I struggle with hand independence
This video is inspiring.
*"As long as you can stretch an octave, you're fine"*
...heartbeat suddenly fastens
Try narrow keys
I recall a rather important quote: “It’s not the size, mate; it’s how you use it.”
Haha a wise man indeed 😜✌🏼 it’s both the size and the use 🎹
How do you play a straight 10th or even 11th if you can only stretch a 9th?
@Daily Dose Of Stupitity I knew someone would say that
@@EvgenyGenchev Are you aware of narrow keys?
that's what people with small penis say
I have teeny tiny hands. I am 4'11" and my handspan is just under 7 inches, making them barely able to reach an octave.
However, I've been playing piano for over 20 years and I don't plan on stopping :) Hungarian Rhapsody is challenging for me, but I can play Jeux D'eau without too much difficulty.
...or maybe the piano keyboard could be available in multiple sizes like many other instruments can. Keyboards used to come in various sizes before they were standardized around famous concert pianists' hands of the time, which at the time were mostly men (still are). Each key being a little smaller leads to a bigger difference when playing a block chord over a larger number of keys. The Pianists for Alternatively Sized Keyboards is a group pushing manufacturers to make keyboards with narrower keys to be ergonomic for more people, in particular, keyboards with a 5.5-in octave or 6-in octave (compared to the standard 6.5-in octave). More ergonomic piano keyboards means less chance of injury for everyone.
you cant...standard is better, if you practiced in your small piano, you can play in any other pianos
The problem with that is playing in a place that has a regular piano and you’re accustomed to one made for smaller hands.
Thank you for shattering the myths, limited thinking and family criticisms.
Evgeny, this is absolutely WONDERFUL! I have an average to large hand, with longish fingers. But you make SO MANY valid points, and express them so eloquently, I wish every pianist would listen to this video. THANK YOU THANK YOU!!
The proof is in the playing. Fact: Alicia de Lorocha performed the Rach 3, and listen to the huge volume of sound she achieves with the Goyescas. Barenboim performed all the Beethoven sonatas as well as a large repertoire. And I doubt Argerich has enormous hands, yet look at what she does.
Thank you for this video! You address very important issues, not just for musicians but all people, because it's almost universal for us to doubt our physical capabilities. THE DEMONS OF DOUBT. When I first played piano in my teen years my idol was Arthur Rubenstein. I read that he had incredible reach and his little finger nearly as long as his fourth. Since I had short fifth fingers I immediately began doubting myself. I recently began playing again after decades. I realize now that not even Chopin and Liszt had "perfect" hands, but they had brilliant technique. Barenboim and Josef Hofmann have/had small hands. Most female pianists have smaller hands than I. I no longer look for excuses that can be used to hold myself back.
I have fairly small hands for a pianist (I can quite comfortably reach a 9th), but I’m also not the tallest (164cm). But my hands is very stretchy, so I found that I can still play whatever I want. It‘s about so much more than just hand size.
Mules are you asian? (No racism I love asians btw)
@@calin4598 Nope, I’m from Europe
@@calin4598 shut up nazi!
A 9th isn’t such a small hand dude, it’s quite decent. A 10th is to me the best but 9th is okay. There’s to me a huge difference between reaching an octave and a 9th.
You got it!! Way to go Evgeny. So many have been so critical of others who are good at something. Must be they wish they could do what you do, or atleast as well.
Why can't people just be glad for others success & appreciate their unique contribution to us all.
We must encourage eachother like you're doing.
Thanks again
I have a friend who is majoring to be a concert pianist. I have small hands, but my friend has smaller hands than me. And, dang, she is really good at playing the piano.
I have tiny hands and thought it was hopeless to play. Then, I realized that Mozart was only 5’4. Imagine how small his hands were. Would anyone dare criticize this man to his face and tell him to play another instrument due to his size? I think not!
When your hands are so small that Ravel's descendants sued you for changing the title of his Piano Concerto from Left to Both.
Thanks for this video. My first teacher had very small hands and mine weren’t much bigger.
She told me EVERYTHING YOU SAID. I can now easily make a ninth it just took time and practice. Just loving you and your site. Thanks
Your uncle is probably a naive non-musicians. I like you special effects. Great sense of humor.
Finally found a video that consoled me.Thank you for the video
Glad to hear! It's really how things are 🙌🏼
I love the comment about their all having five fingers : )
Listo! Súper! Congrats!
Thanks a lot Alba! ✌🏼🎶😊
I just discovered you through Luka Sulic. You're absolutely amazing. I watch first 8 seconds of Hungarian Dance over and over to see your hands play so briliantly. I'm now digging TH-cam for more of you:) Absolutely love everything about your style of playing, you're brilliant.
Dante sonata , so lovely, thank you.
Great msg. When I was younger I used to listen to something like that... but not because of the size of my hands, but because I started playing "late"... Cuz of that, I should choose another instrument. Thankfully I never changed my mind and was able to do many good things in music. 😊 ah, I loved your Liszt! Bravo! And also loved how Ciro wants to participate too. 🤣
Complimenti per il video! You're a great example to follow!
Thank you Aurora! I am glad this resonates with you 😊🙌🏼💯
So great this and the other videos too!This month, is celebrates the Piano Month and every Pianists, for me you are a great example to follow ! And I give to you my congratulations😊 you are so Amazing! I wish God to continue Blessing you 🎹🎶 🌹🙏
Thanks for the super sweet comment! I am happy to share what I know and help. Glad people find inspiration in that and can acquire tools to develop 😊🙏🏼❤️🎹
Your playing is so wonderful. 👏👏👏 👍 And so sweet.💓💓💓
Happy you enjoyed it 🙏🏼😊❤️
What a great Video!!
I always felt bad about having smaller hands and wished if my fingers were longer it would have been easier. Truly came out of this with a new perception and appreciation of my hands lol since i almost gave up piano and went for violin.
Thank you so much! ❤️❤️❤️
I am really happy to hear! Glad to share what I know 🙏🏼🎶💯💙
Hello! thank you for this video! vers good
Thank you for watching 🙏🏼🎹
Great Video, thanks! And the bird singing in the background... so lovely
Ahh he got excited about Liszt as well 🙈 happy this didn’t bother you. Thanks so much for watching ✌🏼🎶💯
Hey Evgeny. Great video for people with small hands.
I really enjoy listening to you playing the piano at the end of your videos.
God gave you an awesome gift.
You are really blessed!
Greetings again from Germany 🇩🇪, Wolfgang
th-cam.com/video/H4FHSvboh-w/w-d-xo.html
Thanks a lot Wolfgang! Happy you enjoyed the performance 🙏🏼🎹😊 I think it’s important to give perspective regarding playing with different sizes of hands. Later on I would also like to share some tools and tricks that are useful to have for people to tackle problems with smaller hands 🤟🏼💯
Here’s a link of one of our older concerts with my ensemble Agape Harmony (my wife, son and niece). I need to load up newer stuff. Love to compose music and also arranging known songs.
The quality is not the best. Sorry.
Szia
Thanks for sharing. I will check it out ✌🏼
@@EvgenyGenchev It is also important to give perspective regarding playing on different sizes of KEYBOARDS.
I have slightly smaller than 8 inch span and my hands are not too flexible. Unfortunately, I think for the standard piano size (DS6.5), you gotta have 8 inch span to be comfortable or very very flexible. getting DS5.5 for myself this weekend, so I'm super excited about it. I also put in DS5.5 digital keyboard waiting list. hopefully this hand size thing no longer become an issue in the near future for everyone.
The Dante gives a pianist free reign to be as creative as possible. Volodos does a wonderful interpretation.
Volodos is pretty good in anything 😜
I can stretch a 12th which I can say has really been an advantage in a lot of ways. However, with composers like Mozart,I feel my large hands are cumbersome and sometimes not as dexterous as a smaller hand would be with those type works.
This was very interesting to hear you break down hands as a pianist.
Lol break down hands is what I do 😜 🙌🏼thanks for watching ✌🏼
Haha your uncle spoke about switching over to violin so easily... but it's ridiculously hard to play violin well
Had to come back and subscribe 😊
That's awesome! Thanks a lot 😊
@@EvgenyGenchev You deserve more.Best wishes to you
It'd be nice to include in the montage, the remarkable hairy ape-fingers of the wonderful Shura Cherkassky! Enjoyed this very much. You could also do a video on hand/finger positions; flat fingers, curved fingers etc...….
Thank you, David, happy you enjoyed the video!
Haha Cherkassky's hands would have been fitting yes, didn't think of that. I will definitely dig more into the topic hands and how to handle different types
I´d certainly love to have a shorter middlefinger and a slightly longer pinky.
Fortunately, it is now possible to buy keyboards, and whole pianos too, with narrower keys that are specially MADE for pianists with small spans.
I've got big hands with long fingers is that good lol I want to learn how to play.
👏🎶🎹
I’ve always felt like my hands were just too small for most Rachmaninoff pieces cause I can just barely reach a ninth and there are tons of tenths in Rachmaninoff and even some twelfths. And with some composers, I feel like arpeggiation, breaking the chord is not the best solution cause I don’t know, it just doesn’t sound right. Like when I get a tenth in a chord in Beethoven, I can’t reach that tenth, but I feel like arpeggiating it is just wrong, so I omit the tenth and add the octave instead and I barely notice the change. With Rachmaninoff, I’ve felt like I can’t even do that though, so I’ve felt like I’m basically restricted to those few pieces that don’t have tenths like the G minor prelude.
Liszt, I feel like arpeggiating the chord will just add to the already existing virtuosity. Beethoven, I feel like the sounding of notes at the same time is more important than having the tenth, so I omit the tenth and add the octave. Rachmaninoff, I felt like whatever I do for the tenths, it’s not going to sound right. But now that you told me that Rachmaninoff himself arpeggiated those chords, I’m not as worried about not being able to play most Rachmaninoff repertoire because of my reach.
Michel Petrucciani. That's all the needs to be said.
I think you didn’t tell us eventually or I may have missed it : how big are your hands? What notes can you reach?
I have the opposite problem. I am starting piano and my hands are huge. I keep fumbling around and hitting unnecessary keys.
Why not just get a smaller piano keyboard?
Absolutely correct. The piano world is just oblivious of these.
❤👏
Danielle Gomes 🙏🏼❤️💯
In the XIX century the keys of the pianos was a little bit narrowed... ? Mmmh... afaik F. Listz have had very big hands, maybe double sized than Chopin ones and I guess his difficult in hitting between the black keys :)
Steinbuhler still makes narrow keyboards btw
My left hand span is about 9 inch and right hand span is about 8.7 inch. Can I play piano.And I just reached 17 (male and I am still growing in height(my current height is 5'7")) Please reply🙏🙏. By the way love your vedio.
@Jarrel Redoblado thank you.
Ok but how big should my feet be , I play a bit different than other people
🧸❤🧸
It's very interesting to watch (or hear) top-level pianists perform the intro to Rachmaninov's 2nd concerto. Rubinstein (audio only) breaks the left hand chord with that 10th stretch (F-A). It's very quick and subtle, but it's definitely a broken chord. th-cam.com/video/u9QLiefnoDE/w-d-xo.html. Yuja Wang either drops the bottom F or breaks the chord. th-cam.com/video/NsqXCO0ADwM/w-d-xo.html. Helene Grimaud (th-cam.com/video/1GLSHtDzg5o/w-d-xo.html) clearly breaks the chord as does Wael Farouk th-cam.com/video/b-k45PyB8-0/w-d-xo.html. Anna Fedorova plays the whole chord, but her finger catches a bit of the neighbor G when she plays the F th-cam.com/video/rEGOihjqO9w/w-d-xo.html. Lang Lang plays to whole chord. th-cam.com/video/e-x01ddG0x4/w-d-xo.html. Of all of these, I actually prefer the sound of the broken chord myself.
Pianist here - hand size isn't what bothers me. While my hands are average in size, my thumbs are very short. This means when I play arpeggios very fast, or any runs that have lots of thumb tucks (basically all runs, let's face it) I can never each the speed of other pianist my short thumbs require so much wrist turning to connect notes.
Palm size is another issue. I have a large palm and short fingers - I see pianists with small palm and long fingers, and improve at a much faster rate because of it. Sorry, but a small palm and long fingers is just plain better than the other way around when it comes to piano
Sorry to hear you feel this way. I am someone who's palm is also bigger than the fingers. Some of my favourite pianists have similar hand structure too. I think it has many advantages and although I would have found it super useful to ALSO have at least half a centimetre longer fingers, I have learned to be happy with what I have and make use of it to the best of my ability.
There just needs to be a solution found uniquely for what works for you
@@EvgenyGenchev thanks for your reply. what are the advantages of a pig palm though... it's easy to catch baseballs? lol... for piano it seems to reduce flexibility, maybe I'm going crazy thinking about this
@@brianbernstein3826 Hahaha that's alright. Think of this as your foundation and the fingers as the columns on top of it. If the foundation isn't strong, then the columns will cave and collapse
@@EvgenyGenchev thanks so much for your kind words. True story: I ran into Evgeny Kissin at a bakery, he was waiting to perform Chopin Concerto in E minor with the BSO just next door. We spoke briefly and I shook his hand - I have NEVER felt a hand like this in my entire life. It was like it was made out of rubber. It did not feel like human hand. Like total elastic. It was actually scary! haha I'm serious :)
Sees title
*dirty ass mind has entered the chat
Do you have the right sized hands? The answer is, go watch a 5 year old playing The Moonlight Sonata. Then tell me you don’t have big enough hands.
You have quite long fingers. I can see from here. I can't spread enough between index finger on the d and pink on b. So I can't play amelie well.
Josef Gat had a photo of the Goldhammer graduated keyboards available for children to learn correctly and your mention of historical smaller octaves is also an argument for ending the one size fits all mentality. Your hands seem slightly above average for a male and yet your family thinks they're too small for you to get to the top! I hope you'll lend your support to the Facebook PASK group campaigning for choice in keyboard size. I found your comments and transcription of Rachmaninoff's approach most interesting!
Yes, good. And Goldhammer wasn't even the first to suggest this. We now notice Steinway finally, finally at least giving some passing credence to reduced-width piano keyboards.
no mention to Sergei Rachmaninov or Franz Liszt
Thank you for your kind video
Did you know that these days you can get pianos with Narrower keys?
I've got them, both for my accoustic and electric.
The biggest mistake in the history of pianos was to make a standard keyboard size.
Makes no sense, and I made a video about it here: th-cam.com/video/TfdNxbHl_40/w-d-xo.html&t
Don't dare to switch to another instrument and give up playing piano! 🙃😜
#humblebrag LMAO, I wish I could play twinkle little star with 2 fingers
haha why would you want that though? 😜
@@EvgenyGenchev cause i would be a prodigy in my opinion if I do it. I lack so much skill😔seeing you play the piano makes me excited and depressed in the same time lmao
I can play it with one
Or you know...piano makers could make different sized keyboards. PASK, pianists first alternatively sized keyboards is a great resource. They advocate for piano makers to provide ds 5.5 keyboards.
If they have different sized violins, they can make different sized keyboards.
@@delisa52 They have different sized violins to grow with the violinist from childhood, but all violinists end up playing a full sized violin. I get your point tho
@@delisa52 you nailed it! th-cam.com/video/-JegHkuMMKY/w-d-xo.html
Easy 11th, 12th outside the keys, not on top... 6'1" / 185cm (I am a guitarist)
Now now... no need to show off 😜
Let's face it - basketball players have a real advantage when it comes to height, pianists have an easier time with long fingers and larger hands
Not only long, but heavy fingers
Narrow keys…
the real piano black pill is thick fingers. My father literally can't fit his finger between two black keys without pressing one of them. That's MUCH worse than not being able to hit 10th.
Yep, slender fingers is really the only requirement.
I have big hands...its about your brain/ear believe me.
Are yaar Bhai Kya bola kuch samajh nhi aaya India se koi ho jisko English aata hai to samjha do yaar
This video is so irritating. Constantly droning on with no breaks between sentences. Switched it off in the end.
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