How to play octaves with small hands that are too small to play in the middle of the white keys

[@CoolFiPiano]

Thank you so much! Finally really useful advice for small-handed pianist, I have been so frustrated for not being able to play moving octaves neatly, and this just might be the solution 😃 will give this a try, thank you again!

[@TheMarionettePianist]

@@CoolFiPiano I hope it works for you!

[@giantclaw138]

Thank you. I'm a jazz organist of 2 months and getting certain chord inversions have been annoying as heck. I'm persevering ✊️

[@Rachelsfunvideos]

You. are. a. lifesaver to so many people! tysm

[@TheMarionettePianist]

Thank you! Glad it helps

[@DilanMaia]

That's adorable, you really have small hands, but you didn't give up and overcame that to learn this instrument. I will never complain about the size of my hands again and I can comfortably do 9ths.

[@TheMarionettePianist]

@@DilanMaia Good. I’m annoyed by people who can reach 9ths and complain about it 😉

[@stevesomerdin9928]

Since it was historically correct to change a piece (performers did regularly), octaves could be changed to smaller intervals. Thank you for this video, I think your demonstrated technique is very helpful. Chopin's piano was narrower as I've viewed online. In any event many historic pianos had narrower keys.

[@TheMarionettePianist]

@@stevesomerdin9928 I wish we had the piano key size of Chopin’s time 😭

[@Benjamin-dr6el]

Im so glad someone else actually has small hands like mine. I can only reach an octave going off the keys as well! Thank you for sharing! When it comes to large chords where octaves are the two outside notes, how do you tackle that, especially being chords with both white and black keys? I have no trouble if it's all black or white keys usually, but with a mix I have a considerably difficult time.

[@TheMarionettePianist]

@@Benjamin-dr6el do you mean 4 note octave chords? It varies for me. Some 4 note octave chords I can reach all four notes, but others I can’t. So sometimes I end up having to leave out one note of the octave chord.

[@Benjamin-dr6el]

@@TheMarionettePianist yes that’s what I was referring to, but yeah that makes sense! Thank you

[@ST52655]

@@TheMarionettePianist Sometimes 2 adjacent keys can both be played with the thumb.

[@LogioTek]

Cool! What if you separate the 2 notes in the octave and play them like arpeggiated chord? And work on trying to reduce the time between the 2 notes. Yea it will sound different but I bet also unique. Kind of like La Campanella bells!

[@TheMarionettePianist]

Hmm that’s a mental hack I could try to see if that might help accuracy when there’s huge leaps of octaves. I’ve been having a hell of a time getting Robert Miles’ Children up to speed.

[@paacer]

Great but you should have demonstrated how your technique works then in playing some piano pieces like the Chopin you mentioned . Too late for this video but please demonstrate in another video .

[@TheMarionettePianist]

@@paacer if you want to see this demonstrated in tempo, then watch the video that’s already posted of me playing this piece. This technique is visible in that video performance.