lomaprietasolo

Question: How many piano tuners are there in Seattle?

Answer: 10

I won't be asking Galactica to stand in for my next job interview.

I completely agree.

So I just turn off the video and treat these presentations as podcasts. I find the audio content is informative and doesn't need the visual distraction at all.

Randall Munroe covered this in his Mole of Moles thought experiment.

"What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?"

https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/

No you can't.

As a pianist with relatively small hands I understand the motivation behind this.

But:

1. At the vast majority of gigs I play (cocktail piano, big band, accompanying singers for auditions, etc), I play whatever piano is available. If I had spent my practice career on a smaller gauge instrument, I would be hobbled on any house piano.

2. I believe one can be just as expressive a pianist with smaller hands. There are several amazing smallhanded pianists to prove this. Keith Jarrett comes to mind. Sure, maybe some Rachmaninoff is out of reach, or Teddy Wilson's walking tenths, but there's effectively an infinite selection of other music to play.

3. If smaller pianos become popular, how long before modern repertoire starts including 13ths and other fiendish intervals?

Last year I was in a church basement in Greenwich Village and encountered a Steinway Model B (my alltime favorite instrument). It was humiliating: I could barely play without fumbling and hitting wrong notes all over the place. I soon realized that the piano was small-scale like those mentioned in this article. While it was fun to suddenly be able to reach any tenth with no effort, otherwise it was not really enjoyable to play at all.