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Comment by dengsauve | Hacker News Reader

The 3 suggested sizes are large (current standard) and two smaller keyboards.

I would like to humbly submit a 4th change. The large keyboard, but with narrower black keys. I have the hand size and range to play well on a large keyboard, but my biggest struggle has been my wide fingers being unable to fit between the black keys (only by a few millimeters).

I have large hands and I used to be able to play very well, but in college it began to get harder and harder to get my fingers between the keys.

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I have a Chromatone, which has a different key layout I think would solve that problem: https://www.chromatone.jp/

Unfortunately, they are no longer for sale. I got mine really cheap, while they were getting rid of old stock.

I have commented in detail about it in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21842632

I think the movement is about standard not just one or two, a bit like 4/4 1/4 etc size of violin but not just for kids.

I played Russian accordion with this type of a layout (EDIT: not the same as chromatone, which uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard ), and I think it is superior to the piano keyboard. But the piano layout seems to be the default for almost any modern digital instrument/device, so you need to play piano anyway to use any of them. And this uniformity was not a thing in the past, when people designed all sorts of "analog" instruments (violins, guitars, trumpets, etc.)

I was looking for this comment. I played the piano as a child and, as an adult, bought a well-used Clavinova as soon as I could afford it.

It wasn’t long before I had to admit I had a problem with getting my fingers between the black keys.

I have found some people suggesting altering playing style so that the fingers don’t play between pairs of black keys. I can’t find a way to do this that feels right at all.

Another suggestion was that some pianos have slightly more space between the black keys so larger fingers can fit in the gaps. I’m hoping there is an electric piano with this larger gap.

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