How will this effect me playing the piano?

[palmtigre]

Okay, so I just started playing the piano not that long ago, and I have a question. How would my hands effect my technique? Before I played the piano I played violin, and my hands made it so much harder because my thumb span was just too much. So yeah, please answer my question, because I'd hate to get into an instrument that'd just get ruined when I get farther into it.

[j_tour]

It can be done, but there's a resident expert here on moving from string instruments to piano, and so forth.

outin!  Give a hand here!

[outin]

Well...such thumbs are not optimal for piano playing just like they are not with many other instruments. But still people can learn to play with all sorts of paws and it will not be the only difficulty you'll face.

I won't say it is going to be easy...no-one else fully helped me to figure out how to use my thumbs efficiently. Mine are somewhat similar to yours and also my hands are small. People will keep telling you hand size of shape don't matter when they indeed do. A lot. A teacher helps as long as they except your limitation and don't force you to practice in a way that will cause you tension.

It won't hurt to be creative...I use many unconventional fingerings just because of my thumb. For the cello bow I actually designed a special thumb support for myself.

The good thing about piano is that there's room to develope a personal technique of your own to overcome most physical restrictions. There is not just one way to work the keys. There's the pedal and the amount of literature allows one to make choices and skip pieces that you cannot play convincingly because of limitations in span. So you may not become a virtuoso but if you really want to, you can play lots of great music.

[jlmap]

I'm not sure that this is the answer you are looking for, but, from my experience as an old amateur pianist, playing the piano is not so much about dexterity. It is MUCH more about listening and understanding music. The instrument that you have to really learn is your brain. You have to be able to listen to each note in the scale, and to listen to as much notes as you can (even the most deep notes within the chords). You have to sing the notes as you play them, and to find the poliphony that is everywhere in good music. As you do this you become a better pianist. If you dont' do this, no amount of dexterity will make you a good pianist.

[palmtigre]

I mostly meant, if the shape of my hand would get in the way, or if my hands were too big, and stuff like that. I didn't particularly mean dexterity, but thank you for the valuable information.

[jlmap]

I don't think your hands would be any problem.

[lostinidlewonder]

One way to test if you have good piano hands is to play an octave with your thumb and pinky and then try to play every single note one at a time within those bounds together with the octave. If you can reach all the notes you are in a pretty good position.

eg: (CC#C) (CDC)(CD#C)(CEC) ....... (CAC)(CA#C)(CBC)

It is not uncommon for people to have a short 2nd finger which makes some patterns challenging at the keyboard but not impossible to deal with, I face these challenges with a number of my students.

You can try this also with some black octaves, this will pose more problems for people with thick fingers since they may find playing between black notes problematic while controlling black position outer notes.

Dexterity and velocity comes with appropriate training and experience and even stretching your hands at the keyboard becomes easier over time. Give it a go, piano is one of the more forgiving instruments to play.