Average Reach?

[Awakening]

Just out of curiousity, what is commonly considered the average reach (interval) for a pianist?  I know Rachmaninoff could reach a twelfth.  I suppose I'm more interested in males, because I am one, and wondering how I match up to others of my gender.

Respond to this topic by saying what you would consider the "average" reach, tell whether you're male or female, your age, and then give the largest interval you can play with one hand. 

I'm 17, and can reach a 10th.  A 9th is comfortable, and a 10th feels like a bit of a stretch.  I find that if there's a 10th in a piece I'm playing, I have to really concentrate on playing it cleanly in order for it to come out right.

So what interval can you reach? 

[steinwaymodeld]

Just out of curiousity, what is commonly considered the average reach (interval) for a pianist?  I know Rachmaninoff could reach a twelfth.  I suppose I'm more interested in males, because I am one, and wondering how I match up to others of my gender.

Respond to this topic by saying what you would consider the "average" reach, tell whether you're male or female, your age, and then give the largest interval you can play with one hand. 

I'm 17, and can reach a 10th.  A 9th is comfortable, and a 10th feels like a bit of a stretch.  I find that if there's a 10th in a piece I'm playing, I have to really concentrate on playing it cleanly in order for it to come out right.

So what interval can you reach? 

I think 10th is an average and that's what i can stress comfortably too.

[jazzyprof]

So what interval can you reach? 

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

[rachlisztchopin]

i can barely...and i MEAN barely reach a 10th

[donjuan]

I am male and can reach an 11th

perhaps this scale is not the same for everyone, but I can press the "tab" and "]" keys with the same hand quite comfortably.  Now, if everyone here had the same keyboard, we could use that as a way of saying a span of 11.

[Liween]

Can I know what do you exactly mean when you refer to the 10th, 11th or twelfth ? Does it mean that if you thumb is on C and you count all the white keys to the pinky ?

[rachlisztchopin]

yea basically
C and C is a 1st
C and D is a 2nd
and so on

[Daniel_piano]

I can barely reach a 10th
Anyway, I think it will enlarge as I progress in my studies
My teacher had an hand far smallr than mind and could barely reach a 8th in his teen years but now has the same reach that I have yet with a smaller hand than mine

Daniel

[Mycroft]

I can reach a 10th with my left hand, but I can only make a 9th with my right.

[rachlisztchopin]

hm that seems odd mycroft

[Daniel_piano]

I can reach a 10th with my left hand, but I can only make a 9th with my right.

Me too
I can barely reach a 10th with my right hand
but I can easily reach a 10th with my left hand
My left hand is always more easily stretched than my right hand
Also, my left hand is bigger than my right hand
The pinky nail on the right hand is very small like a child one, but on my left hand is larger

Daniel

[Tash]

i can reach a 9th, or 9 1/2 if you do C to C# for my right hand, left i can do a 10th but hey i'm a girl and thus probably have smaller hands than all you males so that's not bad
and rachlisztchopin and half you other teenagers you'll probably be able to reach further cos you're still probably very much growing children!

[Floristan]

I'm male and could reach a 10th since high school.  It comes in useful in Brahms and Rachmaninoff especially.

[rachlisztchopin]

yep im still growin!! 

[Daniel_piano]

i can reach a 9th, or 9 1/2 if you do C to C# for my right hand, left i can do a 10th but hey i'm a girl and thus probably have smaller hands than all you males so that's not bad

No, that's surely good
Majority of girl I know could reach a 8th and nothing more
Anyway I don't think there's any difference between male and female in the hand size
I don't think girls have necessarily smaller hand
It depends on their body frame
Now a girl with large bone and 6,2 feet tall can have hand larger than a lot of male
it depends on constitution, frame and height not on gender

Daniel

[allchopin]

We've already been through this.  Check out the poll here:
https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2220.0.html

[Mycroft]

"hm that seems odd mycroft"

Yeah, I thought so.  My right hand has this tendon or something that seems to connect from the base of my thumb to my middle finger.  Anyway, when I stretch out this hand, that tendon can be felt quite easily and I can even see it through the skin.  I can feel the same tendon in my left hand, but not nearly as distinctly.

Also, I've always been very flexible with my left hand.  For example, I can bend it down so that my thumb is flat against the bottom of my forearm, but I can't do that with the right hand.

So far, the only piece that needed more than an octave has been with the left hand, (Christmas Time is Here), so I haven't hit the limitation yet.

[Daniel_piano]

"hm that seems odd mycroft"

Yeah, I thought so.  My right hand has this tendon or something that seems to connect from the base of my thumb to my middle finger.  Anyway, when I stretch out this hand, that tendon can be felt quite easily and I can even see it through the skin.  I can feel the same tendon in my left hand, but not nearly as distinctly.

Now, are we twins or what? 
I had this strange very visible tendon in my right hand
You can feel it in the surface in my wrist
It's more like two tendons with a space in between so it seems a big unique tendon
However there no this strange tendon in my left hand
Or better I can see it but not so distinctly and it's more in deep in my flesh and not so in the surface
I ask other people if I had this strange stuff in their arms and hands but they keep saying that they don't have anything like this that I'm weird (also because my left hand is bigger than my right hand)
Now I know I'm not alone

P.S. I'm also really, really thin; and maybe if I put a bit of weight on the tendon will be less visible

Daniel

[alvaro_galvez]

Well, I broke the pinky finger in my left hand a long time ago and that sorta affected my reach. I can reach a 12th comfortably with my left hand but with my right its a real strain to reach that same interval.

[Glissando]

Well, I'm a 16 yo girl. I can reach an 8th comfortably and if I stretch reaaally hard I can reach a 9th.
The size of your hand doesn't necessarily control your span. It's the webbing in between your fingers that controls that. I had a friend who has a friend who got the webbing of her fingers slit so she could reach further.  To me though, that seems way drastic.
Here is something an old teacher of mine taught me. It's an exercise that will slowly wear down the webbing so you'll eventually be able to reach more.
Interlock your fingers very tightly so the 'base' of your fingers on each hand are touching the base of your fingers on the other hand. Hold your hands up, and slowly alternate pressing down with your right hand and with your left hand. When you press down with your right, you'll feel pressure on the webbing of your left hand, and vise versa when you press down with the left hand.
Seems to help!
Personally, I'd rather have small hands with a large span than large hands, because it's so much easier to play Bach/Mozart/Scarlatti/etc. with small fingers than with large ones.

[janice]

Well, I broke the pinky finger in my left hand a long time ago and that sorta affected my reach. I can reach a 12th comfortably with my left hand but with my right its a real strain to reach that same interval.

Wow!!!!

I can reach a 9th with my l.h. (I need to stretch though) but only an octave with my r.h.  I'm left handed, so I just figure that that is the reason.  Tash, I think that a 10th is quite good for a female.  Do you have long fingers or are you tall?

[Tash]

well i'm 5'8 and i'm a pole (ie. quite small frame except for the height) so no big bones there!no my fingers are just nice and skinny and long i'm very proud of them

[donjuan]

I had a friend who has a friend who got the webbing of her fingers slit so she could reach further.  To me though, that seems way drastic.

gak!  waaay too Robert Schumann style for my liking!

[piano_learner]

I've got girl hands! I can only play a 9th 

[galonia]

I can only reach an octave, and that's stretching as far as possible - it's never affected my choice of repertoire (well, not much, my teacher does discourage me from playing Prokofiev)

And my LH can reach the octave more easily than my RH; I think it's because when I was younger, I had more octaves to play in the LH, so I stretched that hand a little more.  Or maybe it was from playing string instruments, where a big stretch in the LH is needed.

[pianobabe56]

Well, gee. Now I feel better! I'm a 15-year-old girl, and I can reach a 10th. I can reach a 9th comfortably enough to play it in a piece, but I'm working on a tenth. Unfortunately, I think my growing days are over, and I'm stuck at a 10th for the rest of my life! 

[Daniel_piano]

Well, gee. Now I feel better! I'm a 15-year-old girl, and I can reach a 10th. I can reach a 9th comfortably enough to play it in a piece, but I'm working on a tenth. Unfortunately, I think my growing days are over, and I'm stuck at a 10th for the rest of my life! 

So what's the problem?
I don't think you would like to have a 12th
To what? To look like a freak with bigger than her body hands?
Hands so bigs can only hinder your piano playing and this is what everyone with a 12th will tell you, and that's what Rach himself used to say

Daniel

[ted]

I'm glad I can play straight, filled tenths with my left hand because it means I can play the stride pieces of people like Waller more or less as written. However, even within this specialised area, breaking stretches in various ways sometimes leads to more interesting spontaneous rhythmic counterpoint than if they were played straight. Billy Mayerl, who had small hands, was a case in point.  Although I can play straight tenths I often choose not to do so. There are three ways to break them; up, down and central, each way leading to different melodic and rhythmic effects. Downward breaking tenths, in particular, with a strongly emphasised top note, slightly displaced from the beat, give a very distinctive effect, a sort of third rhythmically independent melody sounding through the right hand melody and the left hand beat. I found this by accident and consider it most attractive.

And look at the rhythmic complexity and variety of Jarrett, another man with small hands. It's one of those areas where necessity is really the mother of invention, and some of the inventions can sound exceedingly well.

[fnork]

I can reach an 11th with my right hand with little trouble. With the thumb on C, 2nd finger on A, 3rd on C and 5th on F, it feels quite comfertable and I don't have much trouble.

The left hand isn't as good though, but I can reach a 10th with little trouble. An 11th is hard though.

I'm 17 by the way, male from Sweden. Hope my hands will grow some more

[bernhard]

The size of your hand doesn't necessarily control your span. It's the webbing in between your fingers that controls that. I had a friend who has a friend who got the webbing of her fingers slit so she could reach further.  To me though, that seems way drastic.

I would take tales of web cutting with a very large pinch of salt. They have all the marks of urban legends:

1.   It always happens to a friend of a friend.

2.   I find extremely doubtful that any medical doctor would do such an operation and not be accountable for it.

3.   Contrary to what you may believe, unless one is a duck, the webbing between the fingers does not interfere at all with the span of the hand. You can easily ascertain that by observing your own hand. In fact your span is controlled exactly by the size of your hand and nothing else. Your largest span is always going to be the distance between the tip of your thumb and the tip of your little finger when they are in a straight line. All the stretch you need is the stretch necessary to have these two fingers in a straight line. That will be your maximum span (unless you find a way to grow your fingers/hand). You may not be able (if you have not trained yourself to do so) to achieve such a stretch just using the muscles of the hand/forearm, but you can easily achieve it with the help of your other hand. If you try you will be able to see that the webbing does not prevent this maximum span at all. You can even stretch your thumb and little finger further from each other, but that will actually decrease the span, since they are no more in a straight line.

4.   So, even if the friend of your friend had found a surgeon willing to perform such an operation, it would have no discernible effect on the hand span: a waste of time and money.



Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[xRhapsodyx]

I'm a 16 year old female and I can only just reach a 10th, the most I can reach comfortably is a 9th. Really inconvenient when trying to play Rachmaninov or Chopin's Raindrop Prelude!

[Glissando]

2.   I find extremely doubtful that any medical doctor would do such an operation and not be accountable for it.

Hahaha, but this girl lives in Alabama! I used to live there and I would say yes, it is possible. Actually if my friend had told me herself I doubt if I would've believed it, her mom told me though- so I figured it was probably credible. But again, they were Alabamians, and you really never know if they're taking you for a ride or not. (want to hear some funny stories? Just ask- living in the South was interesting, lol)

3.   Contrary to what you may believe, unless one is a duck, the webbing between the fingers does not interfere at all with the span of the hand. You can easily ascertain that by observing your own hand. In fact your span is controlled exactly by the size of your hand and nothing else. Your largest span is always going to be the distance between the tip of your thumb and the tip of your little finger when they are in a straight line. All the stretch you need is the stretch necessary to have these two fingers in a straight line. That will be your maximum span (unless you find a way to grow your fingers/hand). You may not be able (if you have not trained yourself to do so) to achieve such a stretch just using the muscles of the hand/forearm, but you can easily achieve it with the help of your other hand. If you try you will be able to see that the webbing does not prevent this maximum span at all. You can even stretch your thumb and little finger further from each other, but that will actually decrease the span, since they are no more in a straight line.

I can't get my thumb and 5th finger in a straight line- when I stretch as far as I can, they are still slightly V-shaped if you know what I mean. I figured that was because of the webbing. How do you get your hand to stretch that far? Also, how do you get the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers to stretch further from eachother?
Thanks!

[tocca]

I can reach an 11th with my right hand with little trouble. With the thumb on C, 2nd finger on A, 3rd on C and 5th on F, it feels quite comfertable and I don't have much trouble.

The left hand isn't as good though, but I can reach a 10th with little trouble. An 11th is hard though.

I'm 17 by the way, male from Sweden. Hope my hands will grow some more

Hey, nice to see some fellow Swedes here at the forum.
A 10th is good enough, that's what i've been able to reach since i was your age. I can just barely squeeze down an 11th if i use the tips of the fingers...not doable in a piece.

I wouldn't want bigger hands, it would hinder more than it would help i think.

[bernhard]

Hahaha, but this girl lives in Alabama! I used to live there and I would say yes, it is possible. Actually if my friend had told me herself I doubt if I would've believed it, her mom told me though- so I figured it was probably credible. But again, they were Alabamians, and you really never know if they're taking you for a ride or not. (want to hear some funny stories? Just ask- living in the South was interesting, lol)

That explains it!

I can't get my thumb and 5th finger in a straight line- when I stretch as far as I can, they are still slightly V-shaped if you know what I mean. I figured that was because of the webbing. How do you get your hand to stretch that far? Also, how do you get the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers to stretch further from eachother?
Thanks!

The same way porcupines make love: Carefully, very carefully!

This is a tricky subject to explain in writing, and you are far better off under the personal supervision of someone who knows about this stuff.

I will give you a few pointers:

1.   You must differentiate between dynamic, static and passive flexibility: they are all different, their training is different and the end results are different. As pianists we rarely need passive flexibility, we never need static flexibility and we definitely need dynamic flexibility.

2.   You want to acquire flexibility by stretching and elongating muscle, never tendons or ligaments.

3.   Never rush flexibility training: you want to do it slowly gradually and carefully. In yoga it takes 5 – 10 years to fully stretch, not 5 – 10 weeks. Injuries in this area are amongst the worse (another reason I feel reluctant to suggest actual exercises here).

4.   There is no need for extremes of flexibility in piano playing; in fact most people are already flexible enough in the hands/fingers to tackle most repertory without any need for additional flexibility training. Think about it: How many pieces do you play actually have extensive passages in tenths? Most likely you will be dealing with octaves, and most likely you can manage those even without your thumb and little finger being in a straight line (unless your hands are diminutive). Accurate hand displacement is usually what is needed not hand span.

5.   There are a number of books that have “gymnastic” exercises for the fingers away from the piano (Note: flexibility is to be acquired away from the piano, not at the piano by trying to reach tenths and the like). Try:

Seymour Fink – Mastering piano technique (Amadeus) – make sure you get the video where he demonstrates the exercises, since it is really easy to do them wrong.

Thomas Fielden – The science of pianoforte technique (MacMillan).

Madeline Bruser – The art of practising (Bell Tower) also has a chapter on stretching – but for the whole body. I encourage you to take up yoga classes.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[MrRonsMusic]

I wouldn't be so concerned with your "stretch"...  It's not about the size of your hands, it's what you can do with them!

Mr. Ron
https://www.mrronsmusic.com

[etudes]

11th
you could try something
press the chord G Bb Eb G Bb that is the most tension that my RH can play

[Chrysalis]

Left hand : C+ F+ Ab+ #C+ E
Right hand: C + F + Ab + #C + E

cool chords try those.... both left and right

i can reacht from c to f with left....
almost from c to g with right but from c to f with not much trouble

[etudes]

Left hand : C+ F+ Ab+ #C+ E
Right hand: C + F + Ab + #C + E

cool chords try those.... both left and right

i can reacht from c to f with left....
almost from c to g with right but from c to f with not much trouble

ok i give up
but can take your chord my not really easy
u have very big hand

[Awakening]

11th
you could try something
press the chord G Bb Eb G Bb that is the most tension that my RH can play

I can do that but it's exceedingly uncomfortable. 

[practice]

I'm 6'0" (182 cm) male, but can only reach a tenth. I can do it comfortably with my left hand, but for my right hand it's a stretch. I play guitar and used to play bass as well, so that might explain why.

[ahvat]

21 otoko!(male). I can reach a 10th, 11th is uncomfortable for me. I don't think I want Rachmaninoff's hands, but sometimes I do.

[bapdoo]

I am a 12 year old (almost 13) girl. I can reach a ninth comfortably in both hands, but I can't even reach a tenth yet.

[hmbeffort1985]

I am a self-taught pianist, and can only reach a 9th I'm 29 years old too; but I think through fingering exercises and stretching one can at least reach a note higher

[gregh]

I'm at a beginner level but I have pretty big hands compared to other people I've had a chance to compare with. I can reach an octave comfortably, a ninth clumsily, and a tenth only from the edge--not a performance interval. Maybe that will improve with time, but there you go.