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My Finger Span is 7.5" - What's Yours?


bitflipper

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On 3/12/2022 at 2:04 AM, David Baay said:

7.75" and can't reach more the an octave plus a second, either, but I've had no complaints. 

That's about mine exactly.  I can do an octave plus a second, but I have to cheat by playing on the edge of the keys.  Normally an octave is pretty comfortable and most songs if they want the second in the right hand, I drop the bottom note.   Sometimes if the octave is the four note chord with a big split in the middle I'll drop the bottom note.  It usually doesn't make a big difference and it's better than hitting the wrong note.  For me it usually depends how fast it is.

The interesting thing I've discovered at about 4 years of playing from sheet music is sometimes you can cheat a octave chord that has two white keys together by playing two with one finger.  Does anybody else do that?

 

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6 minutes ago, DallasSteve said:

sometimes you can cheat a octave chord that has two white keys together by playing two with one finger.  Does anybody else do that?

Sacrilege!

OK, I'll admit doing that, but usually not on purpose. When I do, I always immediately do it again because anything you do twice in a row  is "jazz" and it's OK.

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On 3/25/2022 at 7:27 PM, DallasSteve said:

playing two with one finger.  Does anybody else do that?

Yeah. I mentioned earlier that I play a lot ninth chords with the second included  and played with the thumb. In fact I do it even on 'shorter' chords where I could easily reach the second with my forefinger, but it's just easier to use the thumb, and usually makes transition to the next chord easier as well. I'm of the 'whatever works' school of fingering.

EDIT: It occurs to me that this all goes back to my affinity for the music of Steely Dan and something I read many years ago about Donald Fagan's affinity for "mu" chords.  I consciously started using them after that and eventually 'doubled down' by adding both the 2nd and the 9th:

https://www.google.com/search?q=donald+fagan+mu+chord

Edited by David Baay
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