I think harpsichords definately have there place
i find that harpsichords can be enjoyed very easily
hey eddie here is a neat fact. When pianos first came out very few people liked them. When one family would buy one and just utterly hated it they would do some remodeling and turn it into a harpsichord. In fact, they liked the different sounds that were now coming from the different shaped harpsichords. People would buy pianos just to remodel them into harpsichords.
true, but harpsichords to have a place and that place is not in hell.
There was a famous French jazz pianist who died a few years ago( whose name eludes me) who was a dwarf and Steinway and Sons had to make a special lyre for him to reach the pedals of the piano. His hands were very small and yet his playing was loved by so many. Enjoy your playing...
correct me if im wrong but you still are growing after you hit puberty. how old are you?? Im 22 and people still think I grew a little since the last time they saw me. Im almost 6'4" and have average sized hands.
One thing i've seen mentioned a couple of times in this thread is stretching. I can understand the need to stretch to be able to reach better between fingers 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 2 and 4 and so on... but the 1 - 5 reach?I don't know if i'm unusually built or something, i have never streched my fingers (apart from what comes natural while playing) and i have for as long as i can remember always been able to "shape" fingers 1 and 5 to a near perfect line. Meaning, the only thing i would get out of stretching them would be the ability to go beyond 180 degrees separation. For me to be able to reach more with 1 - 5 i need to have longer fingers, there's no other way!
I can reach a 10th btw, my teacher from when i was young could only reach an octave and she played absolutely wonderful. I'd switch hands with her right away if that'd make me play half as good as she did!
Don't worry, Idil Biret has small hands too, she can barely play an octave.
Are you sure? Some accounts of Alicia Della Rocha say the same thing, but in fact (according to a completely reliable authority, pianist Dean Elder who interviewed her for his book "Pianists at Play") the stretching exercises she started doing as a child worked so well she can easily do 10ths.I have trouble imagining anyone playing the repetoire Biret does if they can't even do 9ths. Could Hoffmann do 9ths at least?
Don't worry, Idil Biret has small hands too, she can barely play an octave. Look at her repertory:https://www.idilbiret.org/ENG/IBe09frame.htm
In her 20s she could barely reach a an octave but stretching exercise can't add up three tones to your reach, because despite stretching how the length of your fingers remains the limiting factor in your reachAfter all she is 4.9 feet tall and her hands are clearly small and under average size
i don't know how she solved "the 10th problem". however, you can get from hardly-reaching-an-octave to reaching-certain-10th by stretching exercises.
the ones i know are different from the ones you mentioned, but i guess this is irrelevent to the topic.
But I wonder if this workd only when your hands are very smallI mean: if with stretch exercises you can get from an uncomfortable octave to a comfortable tenth, does that mean that someone who can reach a tenth can get from reaching a comfortable tenth to reaching a comfortable major twelfth?And someone already reaching a 12th could get from reaching a 12th to reaching a minor 15th with stretch exericises?The bigger the hand the stranger it seem the possibility to elanrge your reach so much
Do you know of pianists who got from reaching an octave to reaching a tenth using stretching exercises?
Did you use the exercises yourself?Can you share the exercises with us?
What I found, just by chance, to be working in enlarging my span is weight trainingThe more my hands become stronger the more my span stretch and I measured it and now it's widerBut I just got from an unconfortable 9th to a confortable minor 10th