4 ms·
I'm assuming that since you bring up Rachmaninoff, you know that he reportedly had freakishly large hands, and was in the habit of writing things he could play,
by npsimons 13y ago
I'm assuming that since you bring up Rachmaninoff, you know that he reportedly had freakishly large hands, and was in the habit of writing things he could play, but others considered "impossible". To me, that's significantly different than black MIDI, which just seems silly, albeit vaguely amusing.
- bryanlarsen 13y agoI'm actually only referring to a couple of places in Prelude in C# minor. Most of the song is "almost impossible" for one reason or another, but there are a couple of places near the end where the lower octaves and the upper freakish chords are played simultaneously. The 9th and 11th measure from the end, to be precise. Even Rachmaninoff with his freak hands had to roll that.
- avdd_ 13y agoIt's not a song, it's a prelude. And actually not very technically difficult, one reason for its immediate and enduring popularity. The simultaneous chords are just played very quickly one after the other and not "rolled".
- bryanlarsen 13y ago"not very technically difficult" is a matter of perspective. It's about as difficult a piece as any student or amateur is ever going to play or be exposed to and few students or amateurs are skilled enough to play it. But it is accessible to amateurs, and sounds very impressive. Which is, as you noted, a good reason why it's so popular. It's a good piece to pull out when you want to show off.
- ars 13y ago> large hands Can't they make the piano keys a little smaller (narrower)?
- nitrogen 13y agoSure, but it could take considerable time to adapt one's muscle memory to the different key spacing.
- ars 13y agoThe keyspacing is identical on all pianos?
- nitrogen 13y agoFor the most part, with the exception of toys and some compact synthesizers and MIDI input devices. Edit: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_keyboard#Size_and_historical_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_keyboard#Size_and_hist...
- gtani 13y agoYup, there's a company that does this, can't google it tho http://books.google.com/books?id=IbZOJIpgnNwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=IbZOJIpgnNwC&printsec=front... Thing is, players with broad fingers have trouble negotiating between black keys as it is now.