'Wonderful' keyboard innovation for small hands helps Calgary pianist play

The first time Monique Fournier sat down to play at a small piano keyboard, her fingers finally felt no pain. 

The Calgary-based piano teacher and composer typically could play only 10 to 15 minutes on a standard grand piano before the strain forced her to stop.

Her hands are too small for a regular-sized piano keyboard. They barely stretch an octave.

But then she tried a small keyboard, modified to be 7/8ths the size of a regular one.

"It was one of those, 'Where has this been all my life?'" kind of moments," Fournier told the Calgary Eyeopener.

"I have so long wished that I could just stretch a tiny bit further, just have slightly bigger hands — or the piano could be smaller.

"Unfortunately, I couldn't do those first two things, so it was wonderful when the third one came to me."

Fournier has had her grand piano retrofitted to have the small-sized keyboard.

Instead of an octave being a six-and-a-half inch stretch, her new one is only five-and-a-half inches. She's no longer missing notes.

"It's much easier to reach," she said.

"The one thing I always notice when I go back to the regular keyboard after playing my small keys is that the keys look like giant marshmallows."

She shipped her grand piano to a U.S. business in the small city of Titusville, Penn.

The owner helped create the Donison-Steinbuhler Standard for pianists with smaller hands.

For $10,000, David Steinbuhler replaced her piano's keys with smaller ones. Other times, he replaces the action — the mechanism that holds the hammers that strike the piano strings — with a smaller one he made, as well.

"I'm wanting to encourage the world to adopt them. There is a profound discrimination," he said by phone from Titusville.

 "Very often, it is life-changing for them."

Steinbuhler has sold at cost only 125 such adapted keyboards in 26 years.

One helped a piano student who was suffering carpal tunnel syndrome return to studying.

Steinbuhler started building the keyboard as a hobby after seeing one played in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., in 1991.

• Listen to Monique Fournier playing her small grand piano keyboard

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Since then, he's developed two standard small sizes, and several universities are teaching with his product.

Now he's aiming to change his business into a non-profit to bring costs down.

Fournier says if anyone is interested in getting an adapted keyboard, she would be open to letting them try hers first.

She's holding a 7/8 keyboard demonstration at Michael Lipnicki Fine Pianos Ltd. on Friday at 7 p.m.

With files from Kathryn Marlow, Monty Kruger and the Calgary Eyeopener