BTW: I noticed that all of your posts here are regarding smaller-sized keyboards. Do you have any non-disclosed financial interest?
Is it time for the piano pedagogy and performance community to get with the times by embracing two narrower D.S key widths for smaller hands. Other instruments already come in different sizes.
Is it time for the piano pedagogy and performance community to get with the times by embracing two narrower D.S key widths for smaller hands.
Other instruments already come in different sizes. It's frustrating that the pedagogy community continues to push piano lessons for very young children
Violin sizes do vary according to size. This is not a modern new thing. It has always been so. It is not because of the size of the hand, but the arm. It sits on the collarbone, and you stretch your arm out - if the end at the scroll that you play in first position is beyond your arm's reach, then you literally cannot reach the strings. If your arm is too straight, you also can't play properly. The piano is not attached to you - you can move your body left, right, forward, back. It's a different instrument. Literally.
yet it still advocates traditional adult male-sized keys.
To make piano playing and piano lessons more appealing to the masses, perhaps the establishment and the manufacturers should consider becoming more accommodating into the 2020s and beyond …
Seriously - why hasn't the OP's post been deleted... and his account? He only comes hear to spread his propaganda.
On one hand, hardly any children ever go on to play piano seriously or develop even competent skill, let alone virtuosity, so why don't we give them an instrument that fits them and lets them enjoy the experience? I can see that argument.On the other hand, children get stuck in five finger positions for a long time, sometimes years! and probably won't struggle with octaves and tenths any time soon. So is it really that frustrating? I'm thinking that maybe the niche for a small keyboard is neither the beginner nor the expert, but the occasional advanced intermediate with unusually small hands.
On the other hand, children get stuck in five finger positions for a long time, sometimes years! and probably won't struggle with octaves and tenths any time soon. So is it really that frustrating?
And then there's this:https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/piano/lefthand-piano-christopher-seed/It takes him almost four minutes of talking before he gets to playing but I found it interesting. If you wanted to try what he does, digital is the way to go.
On a recorder, however, the most frequently covered (played) holes are the ones on top, played with the left hand. Is this a sign of music being right brained thinking?
Is this a sign of music being right brained thinking?
No... I think it's simply that 91% of people are right handed, therefore it's easier on a marketing sense to make the instruments for the 91% of people who will use it, and probably not worth making a second instrument that caters for left handed people who will only utilise 9% of the market.
I’m in the LH predominant group, but have no interest in a piano adaptation.
In adapting an instrument, we should probably consider the degree of frustration present.For you, [addressing dogperson] there isn't much. For some with very small hands, or very strongly left handed, there might be a lot. It might be worth it to make what we call "reasonable accomodation" in the workplace. Granted, that would make a later transition to the standard instrument difficult, but this population probably does not contain many of those who will achieve a high level of skill.
You wrote that in response to my question whether the fingering of recorders, which favours the LEFT hand, might be a sign of "right brained thinking". A right brained thinker is left handed. You are explaining about instruments that favour left brained thinkers, so right handers.
What is certainly true is that the motor cortex on the right side of the brain controls the left hand, and the motor cortex on the left side of the brain controls the right hand. More broad generalizations about right brain and left brain thinkers, to me anyway, seem to wander fairly far from actual data.
I am amazed when I see string players doing that rapid vibrato or even trills with left hand fingers. It looks impossible to me.
Can you tell more?Totally anecdotal: In high school I took an experimental creative writing class, a "level 6" that they invented (end of the 60's). The only thing we did was show up, sit at our desks, and spend 40 minutes writing whatever we wanted. Nothing was taught. So it attracted a certain type of mentality. One day there was a guest lecturer, a writer. When he talked, he waved about with his left hand, and somehow after the lecture this left handedness came up. The teacher asked, "How many of you are left handed?" About 80% of us were. This has always intrigued me. How did a majority of left handers end up in this unusual kind of class, when the world is majority right handed?
The decline of motor performance of the human hand-arm system with age is well-documented. While dominant hand performance is superior to that of the non-dominant hand in young individuals, little is known of possible age-related changes in hand dominance. We investigated age-related alterations of hand dominance in 20 to 90 year old subjects. All subjects were unambiguously right-handed according to the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory. In Experiment 1, motor performance for aiming, postural tremor, precision of arm-hand movement, speed of arm-hand movement, and wrist-finger speed tasks were tested. In Experiment 2, accelerometer-sensors were used to obtain objective records of hand use in everyday activities.Principal FindingsOur data confirm previous findings of a general task-dependent decline in motor performance with age. Analysis of the relationship between right/left-hand performances using a laterality index showed a loss of right hand dominance with advancing age. The clear right-hand advantage present at younger ages changed to a more balanced performance in advanced age. This shift was due to a more pronounced age-related decline of right hand performance. Accelerometer-sensor measurements supported these findings by demonstrating that the frequency of hand use also shifted from a clear right hand preference in young adults to a more balanced usage of both hands in old age. Despite these age-related changes in the relative level of performance in defined motor tasks and in the frequency of hand use, elderly subjects continued to rate themselves as unambiguous right-handers.ConclusionThe discrepancy between hand-specific practical performance in controlled motor tests as well as under everyday conditions and the results of questionnaires concerning hand use and hand dominance suggests that most elderly subjects are unaware of the changes in hand dominance that occur over their lifespan, i.e., a shift to ambidexterity.