Width keys.

[neel1]

Hello,
First of all I want to apologise for my probably defective english.

I recently got my Yamaha psr-225 keyboard back from under the dust.
I started searching google for free keyboard sheets of popular songs etc.
At first I wanted to play the way i am familiar with. (A staff with the melodie and above a chord, that you play holding 3 or 4 buttons with the left hand.)

Eventually I ended up watching video's on youtube of people playing the piano.
I became totally fascinated by someone playing "La Valse d'Amélie" and found the sheet.

I knew it would take lots and lots of time for me, but it didn't scare me of.
The beginning worked out pretty good (it isn't very hard  ).
But when I got to the faster part I became totally desperate.
I had to play 1/4 notes on the left and 1/8 on the right, which probably is a piece of cake for most of you, but after the playing my right and left hand again and again, combining them was still impossible.
Then i found the tip to start as slow as necessary, and it worked indeed.
I can now play a couple of measures fluently, which is not much but it's given me new hope  .

But actually all this has nothing to do with my question.
Here it is:

In the beginning i have to play an A and a C  with my right hand (the C an octave higher so 8 keys in between if my brain doesn't let me down. )
I have to put my pink and thumb as far as possible to reach from the A tot the C.
Knowing i have pretty big hands, it looks obvious to me that someone with smaller hands (e.g. most girls) can't play those notes on my keyboard.

So i think i have rather wide keys. I measured them and they are about 21 millimeter.
I'm wondering what the widths of the keys of your pianos are.

Thanks in advance.

Greets Neel
(Belgian, 19 years old)

[oller]

The white keys are 22.8 mm on my Tecnics PX55
olle

[syncope]

22 mm on my Yamaha grand piano

[neel1]

Wow, if my keys were any wider, I guess I couldn't play the 2 notes  i mentioned in my previous post .
There is quite much space between my keys, maybe that's the difference.

[oller]

There is some interesting info on historical and current keyboard sizes and key widths on Wikipedia. Look for "Musical Keyboard"
olle

[timothy42b]

I played an organ in church this Sunday that seemed to have very wide white keys, though the black keys were normal.

I hadn't seen an organ like this before.  It had one manual, no pedals, four stops, and a blower under the seat.  I thought it played quite well.  I appreciated the wide white keys, I didn't catch the black ones by accident (no pun) as much as I usually do.

If you make the keys much bigger you can't reach some chords.  I think we should make black keys much narrower so there's room between them for my fingers.  You could do that and maintain the spacing easily enough. 

[neel1]

There is some interesting info on historical and current keyboard sizes and key widths on Wikipedia. Look for "Musical Keyboard"
olle

It is ofcourse more significant to measure an octave instead of one key. I should have thought of that before.
Mine is between 159 and 160 mm, which is small as I read the article on wikipedia.
I shouldn't be so proud of my 10th after all then  .

[syncope]

octave? key? whats the difference? my octave would simply be 7x22 mm=154mm

[oller]

My Technics PX55 has key width 22.8 mm That would be 7x22.8 = 159.6 for an octave. But if I measure the octave I get 164 mm. That is almost half a centimetre difference! This is because of the space between keys.
olle

[syncope]

Oh I see.
Also, i was mistaken, its 8 times, not 7 times for an octave so 8x22=176mm , and measured 183 mm

[oller]

But there are still 7 keys in an octave. If you reach from C to the next D you reach only one key further, but you use two keys, the C and the D. And so on. The wonder of mathematics....

[syncope]

yes but if you want to know the width of the key then pressing one key is one key. Pressing an octave is 1-8 keys. From c to b still is not nearly an octave