I think I found a good resource

keystring · 2025-11-12T17:41:18+00:00

This came into my feed recently, and she addresses every single thing that I've worked through or am working through in my playing. This is her channel: ht...

twocats

ShiroKuro OTOH (har) she told me that when she went to music school for college (this was in Japan), one of her teachers pressured her to have some kind of hand surgery that maybe cuts the "web" between index finger and thumb to help yuo increase your reach. She declined, but she said other students did it! 😬

Eeeeeek!!!

ShiroKuro

twocats IKR?!!

I remember being horrified!! By the time she was my teacher, she must have been in her 50s.... so I would guess that she was in college in the mid 1970s ... or maybe 1980s, i'm actually not sure how old she was when she was my teacher. Anyway, she said at the time people thought that was safe and that was part of what you did if you go into music school but your hands weren't big enough. Now, she said no one does that any more and there's no pressure to do it. Thank goodness!!

Also thank goodness she didn't give in to the pressure!!

rsl12

ShiroKuro I feel sorry for those that have difficulty reaching an octave... So many pieces become unnecessarily difficult if you have to struggle just to reach. For my recital piece I picked a piece with lots of 10ths. After a couple months of stretching (though not as regularly as I would have liked), I went from almost being able to play a tenth to barely being able to. And it consumes much of my brain power, just making sure I'm getting my hand wide enough.

ShiroKuro

rsl12 I feel sorry for those that have difficulty reaching an octave

Me too, that really limits things!

I have a pretty good reach, my left is better than my right, I'll have to check later but as I recall I can comfortably reach a 10th with my left, uncomfortably with my right.

rsl12 After a couple months of stretching (though not as regularly as I would have liked), I went from almost being able to play a tenth to barely being able to. And it consumes much of my brain power, just making sure I'm getting my hand wide enough.

I know what you mean! And it's not just octaves, when there are more complex chords and harmonies, it's all the other notes as well.

A piece I'm working on now has a spot where the RH plays chord F Bb E and then you need to keep the top E and play (still with your RH) D E G at the bottom.

I could easily play that 9th (D-E) if it was only those two notes, but to pull off the three-note cluster at the bottom, without releasing the top E, I need to have my hand positioned just so... and it requires a lot of attention and as you say, brain power.

pianoloverus

rsl12 Yes, I think playing lots of tenths in a piece either stretches one's hand slightly or just makes one more used to playing tenths. I've noticed that playing tenths with my left hand is generally easier than with my right hand, and I think this is simply because tenths tend to occur a lot more in left hand.

rogerch

ShiroKuro A piece I'm working on now has a spot where the RH plays chord F Bb E and then you need to keep the top E and play (still with your RH) D E G at the bottom.

I could easily play that 9th (D-E) if it was only those two notes, but to pull off the three-note cluster at the bottom, without releasing the top E, I need to have my hand positioned just so... and it requires a lot of attention and as you say, brain power.

When faced with playing a note with pinky and then two far away notes that are next to each other I play both notes with my thumb because it’s much more comfortable than trying to get my index finger all the way over there. I’ve accidentally fat fingered so many neighbor notes that it’s fun to purposefully play two notes with one finger!

Adding the G may add additional complexity. I wish I could try it but sadly I’m away from my piano right now!

ShiroKuro

rogerch yep that’s how I play it, thumb on two notes. But to get that G as well, it’s harder and I have to not have my pinkie too far in.

BTW I have to correct my comments above. I cannot play a 10th with ease. I can barely play it w my LH and not at all with my right.
I’ll fix that comment tmrw. I’m on my phone right now, plus it’s time for bed here. 😅

rsl12

ShiroKuro BTW I have to correct my comments above. I cannot play a 10th with ease. I can barely play it w my LH and not at all with my right.

Sounds like we are in the same boat, in terms of genetic predispositions!

keystring my hands are very flexible so that I can make pinky and thumb make a straight line, and that gives my a bare tenth at the edge of the keys

Well, that sounds about the same as the two of us.

keystring The point here, however, I think, is not to stretch the hand, but to move the hand.

Sorry, I came in and joined the derailment of the thread. The original topic had nothing to do with increasing one's reach. Sorry about that!

iternabe

twocats One thing that I've noticed when teaching my student is exactly what you said, you shouldn't prepare your fingers for what's coming next.

This is also something @Seeker is reminding me almost every lesson. It's also a key point in Peter Feuchtwanger's teaching. I find this concept, although not too difficult to understand at first, takes time to fully comprehend. But the fact that I need to be constantly reminded points to a kind of hurdle that plagues me (and maybe other beginners) - to play with the rest of the hand in neutral relaxed position requires moving the entire hand (and the wrist, arm following) laterally and freely, something that I am subconsciously reluctant to do.

twocats

iternabe But the fact that I need to be constantly reminded points to a kind of hurdle that plagues me (and maybe other beginners) - to play with the rest of the hand in neutral relaxed position requires moving the entire hand (and the wrist, arm following) laterally and freely, something that I am subconsciously reluctant to do.

The more you practice it, the more it will be built into your muscle memory and then at some point you won't even have to think about it anymore. Just keep working at it and give yourself patience 🙂

keystring

iternabe This is also something @Seeker is reminding me almost every lesson. It's also a key point in Peter Feuchtwanger's teaching. I find this concept, although not too difficult to understand at first, takes time to fully comprehend. But the fact that I need to be constantly reminded points to a kind of hurdle that plagues me (and maybe other beginners) - to play with the rest of the hand in neutral relaxed position requires moving the entire hand (and the wrist, arm following) laterally and freely, something that I am subconsciously reluctant to do.

In some ways we may be on similar paths for different reasons. It's debatable which is harder: being a beginner needing to form technique; or being someone who learned on their own as a child decades ago with engrained habits and replacing those. The latter is my situation. The minute music is in front of you, milliseconds before starting to play, your body primes itself to do what it has always done for such music, and then a bunch of notes come out with the body automatically doing what it has always done. If what you're doing by automatic reflex inhibits how well you might be able to play, then you need to change that by replacing it with a good thing. The remedy is sort of the same: learn to do that good thing.

You are learning the thing you described. I'm learning counterparts that may be similar. What I'm working on right now goes to very bad habits that I want to replace, which inhibit the playing of certain kinds of music. My approach is to work with a small part of music at a time. I go through the same steps each day. For my situation: am I sitting comfortably? check. Move my hands in circles checking that I'm not snagging in the shoulderblades check. Take the range of notes and the notes in a given measure of this etude, notice going in and out of black and white keys, distances, comfortable angles - and am I moving rather than stretching? check. Do so HS. Relate the same thing HT and how does it feel when the hands are close or far away from each other? Then all of it. ....... Move to the next measure. Same thing, same steps. TRUST the process. Let go. Over a number of days, what you've built mindfully starts becoming part of your new reflexes.

Things I can't fix yet: accept it. Easier said than done.

(Also sometimes one thing you fix, also fixes another thing since all things relate.)

iternabe something that I am subconsciously reluctant to do.

Some of these things feel so counter-intuitive. I hear you.

keystring

twocats keystring so when I practice this etude it's not a full circle (only half circle, going back and forth with my wrists higher up), it is impossible with a lower wrist. It is also very good in the right hand to practice travel to those very high notes.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I was thinking how best to answer this. So, writing about any kind of motion in the playing of a piece risks becoming formulaic, turning the student into a self-programmed robot that says "I must do circles." A single shape like a circle is also simplistic, because there is a host of subtle and varying motions and paths that a pianist does as they play. Then if only circles, along which plane are we talking about? Another important thing is that things pianists do can be subtle and miniscule, but the difference between those micro-movements, versus a rigidly held position that might look the same, makes every difference in mobility and ease. For example, you might have micro-movements or in other words, you're not holding anything rigidly. Those were all thoughts.

My situation was that I tended to move along a narrow plane. First there was little "higher and lower" as my hands moved. There was also little "in and out" in the sense of in toward the fall out, out toward the edge. The circle is a first means of getting out of that flat plane from the very act of going higher and lower. First it was artificial, and then I started to get a feel for it. This also goes with the actual shape of our hands, the length of our fingers.

The etude came to my attention after I had fixed a first major problem, and I saw Woroniki demonstrate circles and this etude was part of one of those demonstrations. (He also showed other movements for this etude.) I knew it was something I didn't have. I was "locked up" in the arms, and there are complicated reasons why that was so. In the course of working on and with this, I am able to play a measure of the etude at a 60% tempo, without anything locking up or getting tense, and making the melody note louder, the other notes softer. A whole bunch of things have fixed themselves by making that (and a few other things) the central focus. But I don't literally "do circles" in a programmed way.

This has helped me for where I find myself, and the ongoing remediation and relearning needed because of my beginnings.

I hope this makes some sense. 🙂

twocats

keystring I hope this makes some sense. 🙂

It makes perfect sense, and kudos to you for improving your technique on your own!

keystring my hands are very flexible so that I can make pinky and thumb make a straight line, and that gives my a bare tenth at the edge of the keys - they are not large hands.

The funny thing is that I was just talking about this. I can do the same flexible span but I can barely reach a 9th. I thought I had small hands, but I have two friends whose hands are so tiny that they can play octaves but not really anything else. So I was very pleased to learn that my friends think I am lucky with my hand span, and you can consider yourself even luckier! There's no way I can reach a 10th.

keystring

Regarding large hand spans (@twocats, @ShiroKuro, @rsl12, @pianoloverus) - my hands are very flexible so that I can make pinky and thumb make a straight line, and that gives my a bare tenth at the edge of the keys - they are not large hands. The point here, however, I think, is not to stretch the hand, but to move the hand. @twocats , that's the thing we were talking about earlier, learning to not "stretch over" while staying in one position, but to move over to the next place, and maybe optimum angles. The habit of having the hand in "a position" and stretching the fingers over from that position, fingers pre-placed, is a hard one to overcome. (Actually, that's the point I came in with the video by the Rebecca where she discusses that phenomenon.)

(The surgery idea .... e-e-e-e-e-k-k-k-k!)

@twocats , I did not know the size of Rubinstein's hands and what you say makes sense watching him play that etude. He still doesn't stay static, but the amount he moves might be what us mortals with smaller hands might do for music with smaller spans.

keystring

twocats It makes perfect sense, and kudos to you for improving your technique on your own!

Thank you. I'm not entirely on my own btw, but the teacher I interact with the most is in another country and we gravitate toward other aspects of playing and music on the cautious side; but I do check about things and we have discussed and explored these matters on and off. tbh, because of my experience with in-person lessons on another instrument, I lost a fair amount of trust.

keystring

rsl12 Sorry, I came in and joined the derailment of the thread. The original topic had nothing to do with increasing one's reach. Sorry about that!

Not at all. 🙂 I wanted to make sure that folks caught the part of getting to those distant 'reaches' without reaching, because that's what I learned and find it awesome. But the question of stretches is also important. For example, twocats pointed out that Rubinstein's easy flowing motion is also aided by a large hand that doesn't have to travel as far.

Regarding stretches, I had a bit of learning growth recently. In my history, I started off with a rather immobile arm, and fingers that were these perpetually round hammers, with the hand rather tight and closed. The way we found to get out of that was to go for chords that were wider (you don't "hammer" individual notes with chords) and wide stretchy things "stretched out" those squished hands. I never considered that stretching is also muscular activity and when muscles work, that brings in tension. I think that because the music I played tended to change spans a lot, I never noticed it much. Recently (long story) I picked up the Faber-Hanon, and then the preceding 4 technique-companion books to their series right down to beginner, and picked up some missing things from there. In there; what your hand is like when it hangs there relaxed, and when you stretch to reach something, to sproing back into that relaxed state. This was new to me, and made a difference.

Like, I had stretched my way out of the tense small hand which was one kind of tension. Now I'm learning to sproing back into the natural relaxed hand from the opposite action. In fact, the little video I shared in the beginning, in the 2nd half that's part of what I'm trying to get to. Stretches are part of the conversation, I think. 🙂

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