Does hand bone structure change if you're been learning piano since childhood?

[ranjit]

This is something you hear commonly, and it seems reasonable. I just wanted to know how exactly this works.

[lostinidlewonder]

No, but all experienced pianists have developed muscles in their hands. I would say also that we can expand and contract our hands a lot more efficiently too.


"Osteogenesis and Bone Modeling and Remodeling Bone structure can be changed in three principle ways: (1) osteogenesis, (2) bone modeling, and (3) bone remodeling."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/bone-structure

[perfect_pitch]

I don't know if this counts, but I suspect that the reach a person has does change depending on whether they play piano.

Someone who's the same size and dimensions as someone else may be able to reach a little further between their thumb and pinky because as they grew up they were playing awkward chords and in some repertoire were forced to reach octaves.

Same with the stretch some people have between their 4th and 5th fingers; their 3rd and 4th fingers. I can reach a 5th with fingers 4 and 5 in the RH. Someone with the same size hand but who doesn't play piano probably can't stretch that far.

[ranjit]

Thanks lostinidlewonder for the link!

perfect_pitch -- Do you think the stretching occurs during childhood though? I started basically as an adult, but I can still technically stretch 4-5 a sixth with my RH and a seventh with my LH.

[perfect_pitch]

I can still technically stretch 4-5 a sixth with my RH and a seventh with my LH.

I'm going to say this in the nicest possible way... You're a freak.

I hate you.

I can BARELY reach a 10th at all and I'm a guy. Did you ever play any other instruments before the piano?

[nw746]

It seems to be mostly down to tendons and ligaments (I'm not actually sure which one it is that we have in our hands) rather than bone structure. For example my dad has significantly larger hands than I do, but I have a 9.3" hand span (and my mom is only just smaller, because she practiced the piano very intensively as a child and never lost the extended ligaments) whereas he's like 8.5" roughly. There's one chord in the Beethoven Hammerklavier that requires a span of a seventh from 2 to 5 (Bb-D-C), and when using that one chord as a hand stretch, I do find it becomes easier and less painful over the course of a practice session, and suspect that if I actually started practicing the Hammerklavier every day over a lengthy period of time I would be able to play that chord cleanly, unarpeggiated and without pain.

On the other hand, there's a limit to how much the ligaments/tendons can be stretched. I'm not sure exactly what that limit is, but I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to gain more than a couple of extra notes from intensive piano practice.

[perfect_pitch]

but I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to gain more than a couple of extra notes from intensive piano practice.

For the last 15 years, my reach has not lengthened in any way. I can barely make a 10th, and that's all it will ever be. It's never gotten any better, no matter what I play.

I figure if I try and spend days, months and years trying to reach an 11th... eventually, I'll develop...











..Tendonitis.

[nw746]

I don't know how old you are, or when you started playing the piano. But I think the main thing you gain is not going to be 1-5 distance no matter what (although I did at some point go from a 9th to a 10th, but when I was much younger, like, 13 ish) but in 1-2 distance, 2-3 distance, etc.

[ranjit]

I'm going to say this in the nicest possible way... You're a freak.

I hate you.

I can BARELY reach a 10th at all and I'm a guy. Did you ever play any other instruments before the piano?

Maybe I just have a bit of extra space between my 4th and 5th finger lol. Of course, that stretch isn't by positioning the hand normally -- it's by positioning the ring and pinky fingers at a kind of right angle and then stretching them.

I think I have relatively normal-sized hands for a guy -- I can just about span an 11th from the bottom of the keys, if you know what I mean. No stretch wider than white key 10ths is usable though.

I did not play any instruments when I was a child. I think that I have had some development of hand flexibility due to playing the piano as an adult though (more a late adolescent though really, college-going age).

[perfect_pitch]

Damnit - I've been playing piano since I was 9 and it didn't help me stretch my hand.

But I do wonder about those who have been playing since they were literally 3 - the Yuja Wangs and Lang Langs (for lack of a better example).

I wonder if they've got unnatural flexibility and stretch in their hands.

[ranjit]

It's actually not quite clear imo. Yuja Wang says her mother used to stretch her hands when she was little, but she's double-jointed anyway, so I'm not sure it matters!

[lelle]

I know I can reach a 10th (which is the edge of my span) more comfortably now at 28 than I could at 19. Since I reached my current height at 16 I doubt that my hands kept growing much after that age, but I suspect its rather that I have gotten more muscular and possibly more flexible hands from developing my technique since then.

It's actually not quite clear imo. Yuja Wang says her mother used to stretch her hands when she was little, but she's double-jointed anyway, so I'm not sure it matters!

I think its all highly individual. I am also double jointed at the same time as having rather inflexible ligaments. I know people who can bend their hands and fingers backwards so that their fingers touch the top of their forearm, I can't even get them to point 90 degrees up relative to my wrist. 

[j_tour]

I doubt there've been definitive studies.

But, just from anecdotal experience:  sure, the flexor tendons can certainly accomodate larger (or smaller!  which IME is even a bit more difficult, leading to cramps or spasms in the hands...whenever possible, I'll play a passage in thirds divided between both hands...not often possible, but it's much more comfortable to play larger chords or intervals in one hand for me) spans.

I don't know about the skeletal bones, but given leg extensions sometimes (rarely) done for people who want to be taller it's certainly possible.

My RH and LH are almost exactly the same size, yet I can reach much farther in LH than in RH:  and indeed have improved over the years without trying, like going from a tenth C-->E (small tenth) to a slighter larger tenth (D-->F#), or (Bb-->D).  Just keyboard geometry and practice, really, without any special effort.

But, I have to use inversions to "fake" playing the really big major tenths, like Db-->F or Ab-->C.  So, at least for me, there are some limits, even with about half a normal lifetime of playing those regularly.  At the widest tenths, where you can't sort of grab the edge of a key or don't want to make an *extremely* fast roll, I think the effect is about the same, at least for improvised music, so I don't sweat it.

I wouldn't surprised if the old proverb "Emergency finds the way" didn't inspire the bass lines in some popular/folk music, at least that was worked out at the keyboard.

[lostinidlewonder]

What's with this alien stretching between 4 and 5? ahah. I tried it for fun and can catch inbetween a 5th and 6th, but honestly I cannot imagine a situation where I've ever had to do something like that. I've found that some people have a short 2nd finger and that can cause a lot of issues, so the intervals between 2 and 5 are pretty important. I have a larger interval stretch between 1 and 4 than I do 1 and 5. I think good piano hands can hold down an octave and then comfortably be able to play each note that is inbetween those octaves.