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That would be an enormous waste of institutional knowledge and technology (in the form of extant pianos and pianists).

If you're going to make such a drastic change to the piano, at least cut the keyboard into two halves at middle c, then invert both halves.

Now when the right hand starts at what used to be middle c and plays a chromatic scale upward, it's going from high pitches to low pitches. E.g., middle c is now the highest sounding c on the instrument.

(For purposes of this thought experiment, suppose there are two middle c's. I'm describing the middle c to the left below...)

Mirroring that, when the left hand starts at what used to be its middle c and plays a chromatic scale downward in the lower half, it's going from low pitches to higher pitches. That is, what used to be middle c is the lowest sounding pitch.

Benefits:

* when the right hand plays a melody the strongest fingers-- thumb, index, and middle-- are most likely to be playing. The ring finger and pinky-- the weakest fingers-- would be relegated to inner voices most of the time.

* the bass notes-- the most important notes of the accompaniment-- are played with the strongest fingers of the left hand. Again, that's thumb, index, and middle. Ancillary notes, and inner voices of chords, are played with the weaker fingers-- ring and pinky (and possibly middle if thumb is playing the bass note).

That way you vastly improve the ergonomics of the instrument. Otherwise you're just normalizing a big, expensive instrument so that it is guaranteed to be equally uncomfortable for all sizes of hand.

> That would be an enormous waste of institutional knowledge and technology (in the form of extant pianos and pianists).

taking something built using relatively coarse tolerances by today's standards and scaling it down by 1/8" is a 'enormous waste'?

if this is the case, human manufacturing technology is in serious trouble.

i don't think anyone is arguing to simply toss out the existing pianos, but to standardize on the smaller one and gradually replace them as time goes on..

What's the plan for this gradually phase-out? Especially considering that even the heterogenous timbres of pianos of the 1800s are now largely gone with everything standardizing on the Steinway timbre?

How do you make it so that a generation of pianist mustn't learn to master two different sizes of piano?

> How do you make it so that a generation of pianist mustn't learn to master two different sizes of piano?

I've played guitar, I've played drums. Not at the world class level of course, but enough to have a sense of adapting to different layouts/sizes/shapes, etc.

While yes, one has a preference, it's not like this is changing from being a race car driver to a commercial airline pilot - also, plenty of these know how to drive/fly several types. I believe this is a fairly apt analogy.

> While yes, one has a preference, it's not like this is changing from being a race car driver to a commercial airline pilot - also, plenty of these know how to drive/fly several types.

That isn't true with regard to the virtuoso repertoire.

We're talking about players who make close to 0% mistakes in their daily practice regimen. And when those players perform the most physically demanding pieces-- Chopin etudes, Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Ravel's Gaspard, etc.-- that is still no guarantee they will be able to play with perfect accuracy in a given performance. It's that technically demanding.

There are even some pieces like those Godowsky mashups of Chopin etudes which most players simply cannot perform with any accuracy at all. I think even Jorge Bolet would make a disclaimer before he played them that they could break down at any moment.

Players at that level are indeed as methodical and detail-oriented about their performance regimen as commercial airline pilots are about theirs. The only way to adapt that kind of virtuoso repertoire is to actually practice for hours a day on the 7/8 piano. And given that the current musical world values virtuoso repertoire most highly, there's simply no way around it.

If you don't believe me, try telling a concert pianist the day before the concert that you heard the venue sold the Steinway for a fascinating new piece of technology: a 7/8 piano! I guarantee you they won't mince words about their risk assessment.

I'm not saying that virtuoso pianists aren't able to adapt to different key sizes. But there's an obvious cost to doing so, and current touring pianist would be extremely unlikely to take that on.

Edit: clarification

...so your 30 second idea to ruin the keyboard by making it impossible to play a melody that crosses middle C with one hand is better than simply making each key a little more narrow?

This reeks of the silicon valley stereotype of "I don't know why you're doing it this way, let me come in with zero experience and tell you how to do it better, with technology™. In this case, it's really clear that you are not a piano player, and have not attempted to learn in any serious way.

In the case of the 7/8 piano, there have been case studies, physiological research, actual testing of different sizes of keyboards, etc.

And this research suggests that a concert pianist who can play the virtuosic repertoire on the modern piano can play that same virtuosic repertior on both types of piano with the same accuracy?

Remember, if you're successful in pushing the 7/8 piano you're going to have both sizes in production for at least a century.

So interesting, thanks for sharing!

I have been learning to play piano later in life after growing up playing violin and viola. Although virtually all professional adult violinists play a "full size" violin, smaller sizes exist for children, and I remember wondering as a child whether smaller pianos existed as well. Now, as an adult, I wish there were larger keyboards---the best-practices techniques that my teacher with average hands shows me are physically not possible for my larger hands. So I can easily imagine the inverse would be true.

Violas are an interesting case where, in contrast to the violin, many "full" sizes exist, anywhere from 15 inches to 17 inches to accommodate arm length. I would be curious to see a comparison of whether female violists are better able than female violinists to compete with their male counterparts given the size range of professional violas in contrast to the standardized violin (although I suspect the sample size of violists could be too small).

I can relate to that. I am male but I have pretty small hands. When I tried to learn piano and guitar I had a lot of trouble reaching keys that were really easy for others in my group. I remember wondering how I would do if I didn't have trouble already with the most basic chords.

Guitar is definitely similar. Look at most world famous guitarists & you'll see big hands. John Mayer, Jimmy hendrix, Steve Ray Vaughn, etc

This could go the other way, like you might be seen as saying that women don't have hand-spans as big as men, meaning that they're not as good as men when it comes to their physical capabilities and as such "providing" them with smaller pianos might be looked at as "demeaning" towards said women (you're thinking about them as not being as good as men are). Gender politics can be fun like that.

So producing shoes or coat's in women sizes is also "demeaning" towards women? I can't imagine why producing smaller pianos would be any different.

Because someone would say that it shows that a woman cannot play a proper piano like a man can - she has to be provided with a smaller(and therefore obviously inferior) one.

This was certainly why no teenage boy wanted to be seen playing a 3/4 size guitar! But one would hope that adults could behave better.

But it's important to keep in mind no one is saying that. It's dangerous to get wrapped up in what people might say because that relies on your imagination, not reality.

At least some companies (Meral - cycles Cyfac) are producing bicycles in women's sizes which are not just their male counterparts painted in pink and turqoise.

This isn't an issue in the WNBA and Women's basketball in general where the ball is smaller than the men's ball.

Are they paid the same? Are they the same level of famous? I don't really watch basketball, but I don't think they are, and a "they are not as good as men" bias could very well be at play here.

The economics of sports are dominated by one factor, the size of the audience. If women started to watch female sports in anywhere near the numbers men watch male sports then the economics would change.

As it stands, women are just not as interested in watching sports as men are, with some exceptions like figure skating and gymnastics.

This leads to a couple of questions: Why do men prefer to watch men sports, why do women prefer to not watch sports, and is the "watch same gender preference" the same for men and women? For the latter, my impression is that women mostly prefer to watch men teams too.

Also, the audience=the customer, so isn't this true for almost all fields? If we are OK with wildly different pay scales in sports because of audience preference, couldn't Hollywood claim the same?

>If we are OK with wildly different pay scales in sports because of audience preference, couldn't Hollywood claim the same?

Isn't that the way it is though, movie stars are paid tons more than the rest ?

> Gender politics can be fun like that.

No, only strawman made-up gender politics is like that.

> The other issue is that these pianos are hard to come by, since almost every manufacturer makes pianos of the same keyboard size, and pianists are one of the few musicians expected to play on whatever instrument they're given.

This is a good point, but it seems to be determined by the fundamentals of pianos. Moving a piano is difficult enough that I wouldn't expect this to change. We could all switch to keyboards...

pianos have had different sized keys throughout history, the recent standardization came about in the early/mid 20th century, and the size that we see today was actually driven mostly by piano companies competing to see who could produce the piano with the loudest, fullest sound.

what you may not know about pianos is that the "action", the keys-and-hammers bit, is a totally separate piece that can be removed in about 3 minutes. Most of the 7/8 keyboards manufactured today are actually just smaller actions that can be swapped into normal sized grands.

I think that's probably why GP is interested in making 7/8 digital pianos (as seen in the "PS"), which are much more portable

This is really interesting. I had no idea about 7/8 pianos but I’m certainly going to Google then up now.

Thanks that's interesting. I'm astonished there are no 7/8 digital keyboards.

Also, is there an explanation for "dominate in representation at the academic level"? Does it need one?

From the website I linked: "Christopher Donison (1998) has commented on the relatively small proportion of female piano competition winners at a senior level, given that they generally greatly outnumber male students in universities."