If you're going to make such a drastic change to the piano, at least cut the keyboard into two halves at middle c, then invert both halves.
Now when the right hand starts at what used to be middle c and plays a chromatic scale upward, it's going from high pitches to low pitches. E.g., middle c is now the highest sounding c on the instrument.
(For purposes of this thought experiment, suppose there are two middle c's. I'm describing the middle c to the left below...)
Mirroring that, when the left hand starts at what used to be its middle c and plays a chromatic scale downward in the lower half, it's going from low pitches to higher pitches. That is, what used to be middle c is the lowest sounding pitch.
Benefits:
* when the right hand plays a melody the strongest fingers-- thumb, index, and middle-- are most likely to be playing. The ring finger and pinky-- the weakest fingers-- would be relegated to inner voices most of the time.
* the bass notes-- the most important notes of the accompaniment-- are played with the strongest fingers of the left hand. Again, that's thumb, index, and middle. Ancillary notes, and inner voices of chords, are played with the weaker fingers-- ring and pinky (and possibly middle if thumb is playing the bass note).
That way you vastly improve the ergonomics of the instrument. Otherwise you're just normalizing a big, expensive instrument so that it is guaranteed to be equally uncomfortable for all sizes of hand.
This reeks of the silicon valley stereotype of "I don't know why you're doing it this way, let me come in with zero experience and tell you how to do it better, with technology™. In this case, it's really clear that you are not a piano player, and have not attempted to learn in any serious way.
In the case of the 7/8 piano, there have been case studies, physiological research, actual testing of different sizes of keyboards, etc.
Remember, if you're successful in pushing the 7/8 piano you're going to have both sizes in production for at least a century.
taking something built using relatively coarse tolerances by today's standards and scaling it down by 1/8" is a 'enormous waste'?
if this is the case, human manufacturing technology is in serious trouble.
i don't think anyone is arguing to simply toss out the existing pianos, but to standardize on the smaller one and gradually replace them as time goes on..
How do you make it so that a generation of pianist mustn't learn to master two different sizes of piano?
I've played guitar, I've played drums. Not at the world class level of course, but enough to have a sense of adapting to different layouts/sizes/shapes, etc.
While yes, one has a preference, it's not like this is changing from being a race car driver to a commercial airline pilot - also, plenty of these know how to drive/fly several types. I believe this is a fairly apt analogy.
That isn't true with regard to the virtuoso repertoire.
We're talking about players who make close to 0% mistakes in their daily practice regimen. And when those players perform the most physically demanding pieces-- Chopin etudes, Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Ravel's Gaspard, etc.-- that is still no guarantee they will be able to play with perfect accuracy in a given performance. It's that technically demanding.
There are even some pieces like those Godowsky mashups of Chopin etudes which most players simply cannot perform with any accuracy at all. I think even Jorge Bolet would make a disclaimer before he played them that they could break down at any moment.
Players at that level are indeed as methodical and detail-oriented about their performance regimen as commercial airline pilots are about theirs. The only way to adapt that kind of virtuoso repertoire is to actually practice for hours a day on the 7/8 piano. And given that the current musical world values virtuoso repertoire most highly, there's simply no way around it.
If you don't believe me, try telling a concert pianist the day before the concert that you heard the venue sold the Steinway for a fascinating new piece of technology: a 7/8 piano! I guarantee you they won't mince words about their risk assessment.
I'm not saying that virtuoso pianists aren't able to adapt to different key sizes. But there's an obvious cost to doing so, and current touring pianist would be extremely unlikely to take that on.
Edit: clarification
I have been learning to play piano later in life after growing up playing violin and viola. Although virtually all professional adult violinists play a "full size" violin, smaller sizes exist for children, and I remember wondering as a child whether smaller pianos existed as well. Now, as an adult, I wish there were larger keyboards---the best-practices techniques that my teacher with average hands shows me are physically not possible for my larger hands. So I can easily imagine the inverse would be true.
Violas are an interesting case where, in contrast to the violin, many "full" sizes exist, anywhere from 15 inches to 17 inches to accommodate arm length. I would be curious to see a comparison of whether female violists are better able than female violinists to compete with their male counterparts given the size range of professional violas in contrast to the standardized violin (although I suspect the sample size of violists could be too small).
No, only strawman made-up gender politics is like that.
As it stands, women are just not as interested in watching sports as men are, with some exceptions like figure skating and gymnastics.
Also, the audience=the customer, so isn't this true for almost all fields? If we are OK with wildly different pay scales in sports because of audience preference, couldn't Hollywood claim the same?
Isn't that the way it is though, movie stars are paid tons more than the rest ?
This is a good point, but it seems to be determined by the fundamentals of pianos. Moving a piano is difficult enough that I wouldn't expect this to change. We could all switch to keyboards...
what you may not know about pianos is that the "action", the keys-and-hammers bit, is a totally separate piece that can be removed in about 3 minutes. Most of the 7/8 keyboards manufactured today are actually just smaller actions that can be swapped into normal sized grands.
Also, is there an explanation for "dominate in representation at the academic level"? Does it need one?
Piano playing.
It all comes down to the shape of the instrument, and hand-span, which is unquestionably (and uncontroversially) larger in men than in women: http://www.smallpianokeyboards.org/uploads/3/4/1/6/34165129/... (from http://www.smallpianokeyboards.org/hand-span-data.html)
The interesting thing is that there is a solution to the problem, the 7/8 piano, which has an octave spacing of 5.5" as opposed to the 6.5" on a typical piano.
The thing is, no one really takes it seriously outside of a few universities and a dedicated group that's trying to advance this cause.
Even women who learned to play long ago grouse that "I can play a regular piano, you just have to use different technique!", but won't admit to themselves or to others that the technique they're required to use is a detriment to playing the instrument with ease.
The other issue is that these pianos are hard to come by, since almost every manufacturer makes pianos of the same keyboard size, and pianists are one of the few musicians expected to play on whatever instrument they're given.
The other interesting thing is that the majority of men would actually play better on these pianos, because they would suddenly have "rachmaninoff hands", but the legacy of having hundreds of thousands of existing pianos just sitting around prevents progress from being made toward this goal.
P.S. if anyone wants to make a startup company for building 7/8 digital pianos (of which there are none currently on the market), hit me up.