On Monday, May 5, 2003, at 09:07 PM, David M. Porritt wrote: > Following up on this key size thing; I just measured and a typical > Steinway white key is 148 mm from the lip to the fall board. The > Mason & Hamlin CC I mentioned in an earlier post is just 142 mm from > the lip to the fallboard. It's amazing that pianists can adapt to > these things as well as they do. Some -- not all -- notice these > things but they seem to cope with them ok. Judging by the posts there is some uniformity over keyboard length- my Bechstein B keyboard measures 48 inches and my Broadwood U/R 48.3 overall. But speaking as a pianist with fat fingers, it has always puzzled me why the gaps between the sharps vary so much and even on the same piano- e.g. the C#-D# gap is nearly always larger than the F#-G# gap which is usually larger than the G#-A# one. On some pianos I cannot play on the tails of the white keys (between the black keys) which is a great problem with some chord shapes. One would have imagined these spaces to be uniform in the interests of pianists' finger accuracy. Or is it aesthetics coming into play here? James Perkins 42 Marlee Road Parklands WA 6210 Australia 08 9581 6354 Mobile 0401674447
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