I was reading all about Casio PX S1100 or S1000 over the week as I was going to purchase one. There were huge critics against the action of the digital piano – namely, the pivotal length of the black keys are too short and it harms the technique of the pianist who plays on it. I think it’s an exaggeration, at least for advanced or professional pianists who adapt to what they have. There are worse pianos out there with worse actions. I should know this as my first acoustic piano was really bad in terms of evenness of the touch of the keys and my piano teacher asked me about it and eventually bought me to purchase another piano, with my mum’s knowledge and permission of course. I was about 17 or 18 then I think.
Anyhow, I was learning bars 4 to 9 and initially and intuitively I played the left hand above the right hand. I could get the left hand going quite quickly, but not at the performance speed. Then it occurred to me to try it the other way round – play the left hand below the right hand. That worked too. Then I remembered all that I read about pivot lengths of keys etc and realised that it’s easier for the left hand to nearer the edges of the keys so that it would be easier to play. This means that the second approach i.e. left hand below right hand was what I ended up with.
This might be trivial for a lot of you and even common sense. But I was fascinated that I worked out a question and had a logical response to it. Isn’t that part of piano practice? To figure out problems.