I have read a lot of posts about small hands. What is a small hand? Is there a standard guage as far as flutes are considered? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I want to buy a flute and had a terrible experience with a Mid East Mfg as far as stretch. Thanks.
Greg
I think you will find some info about this on Casey Burns’ site.
Stretching out your right hand, measure distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the pinky. About 8-9 inches is a fairly normal hand size, I think. Mine is 8.5, and I have no trouble with any D flute I’ve tried.
Mine is 8.5, and I have no trouble with any D flute I’ve tried.
Same size here, and with piper’s grip and some getting used to i can reach cylindrical low B flutes with massive holes (bansuri).
Thanks guys. It IS a stretch for me to get 8.5 more comfortably 8. I’ll probably end up learning piper’s grip and just deal with it. Thanks again.
Eeek, I can only reach 6.5 inches comfortably… and thus it is confirmed that I have the hands of a 5 year old.
Well, size is only part of it. The hand is full of ligaments and tendons, and can be conditioned to stretch further with some exercise. As a new fluter, I did a lot of reverse finger-bending, alternated with clenching, and noticed a difference in strength and flexibility very soon.
If you suffer from small, chubby, baby hands, and short, fat fingers then you can always as a last resort cut the webbing between the fingers to improve your stretch.
If you suffer from small, chubby, baby hands, and short, fat fingers then you can always as a last resort cut the webbing between the fingers to improve your stretch.
Well, Casey Burns has a small-hands flute. I thought there was on his site a measure for
how small your hands needed to be before he recommends it, but I can’t find it now.
Anyhow he’s worth contacting, as his small-hands flutes are very good.
Also ergonomics help. Small differences in hole size and spacing and placement
can be a big help. Casey is the man for that. He can make standard size flutes
more comfortable–short of the small-hands version.
We’ve all webbed hands and feet here, quite common to have to cut the webbing. 
It does slow one down if you cut it however.
That might have been what inspired Casey to make small handed flutes.
It does seem to have quit raining for the next few days. 
Yes, I find that clenching helps me hit the highest notes. Doesn’t always work after a curry though.
I have short pinkies, which were really a problem on the classical guitar. My hands measure 7.5 inches from thumb to the tip of my pinky. Also, on the silver Boehm flute I have trouble with the pinky reaches on the endjoint for the C#, C, and B keys, not to mention the Gizmo key. However, on the 6-hole simple-system flute, where the RH pinky is not used for covering a hole, I can comfortably play the low Bb flute, which is a considerably larger flute than the low D flute. When you have small hands it is important to practice stretching the fingers if you want to play the larger flutes, but most likely you can do it.
Yup, small hands.
I’m never sure why this method of measuring is useful, as you don’t use your thumb to stretch at all - says nothing (directly) about the stretch between your index and your second and third fingers, or how far you can fork your fingers apart. OTOH (left or right), measuring your hand size does approximate finger size, and stretch. As a lead guitar player, my ability to use my pinky for a five or six fret stretch was important, even though other players with larger hands were less flexible in their stretch and had to jump about the board more.
I guess my point is that developing a stretch between fingers, particularly in order to cover large holed flutes’ holes, is partly anatomical, and partly gymnastic - a yoga stretch between fingers - that some can do easier than others, (perhaps) regardless of hand size, or after playing for awhile. If you have small hands - which a person is probably aware of without measuring first - it might be safer to choose a smaller holed, narrower flute, or one customized, or offset, for easier reach.
Yup, small hands.
That’s an Eb flute
he used ta be a piano player
The measurement paradigm of thumbtip-to-pinkietip would certainly be pertinent to piano players. Frankly it’s as arbitrary a standard as any, and for our purposes of no real use to flute players, IMHO.
I have notably small hands for a man - mine compare fairly much with most women in my locale - not to mention unusually short pinkies (“dinky pinkie syndrome”, as I call it; my right pinkie’s tip extends only slightly past the midpoint of my right ringfinger’s midsection), but my thumb-to-pinkie spread at fullest stretch nevertheless measures 8½ inches. Yet this spread has nothing to do with the fact that I can finger most regular D simple-system flutes with little problem.
The reason I can do it has to do with my grip. While what would be pertinent to our kind of fluteplayer is pretty much limited to solely the stretches between only three fingers, depending on grip, and hand size, even that is a negotiable standard. Back to my case: on the right hand between index and middle finger, a stretch of 4 inches from midtip to midtip. Between middle and ring finger, 3½ inches. Just for the sake of considering working a C foot’s keys, between ring and pinkie finger, 3¼ inches. But these are extreme measurements of a flattened hand, and, moreover, static ones that don’t take into account the fact that a stretched series of fingers (mine, anyway) array radially at their tips, whereas a flute’s fingerholes are usually in a straight line. Aha! Now we have a whole new nest of bees to deal with: how, then, do we deal with this?
On the lower half of my flute’s body there is a roughly 1¼ inch spacing, give or take, between the mipoints of of the three fingerholes. Reasoning based on no direct experience would assume that given the numbers, in theory there should be no problem for me in the slightest. But yet a “standard” grip for me is untenable: experience in the form of persistent mechanical difficulty, strain, and tendon damage - reversed over time, thankfully - from trying to force the issue in conforming to a classical standard has proved this. I can only chalk it up to hand size and my particular finger configuration and proportions; it was certainly not for lack of trying, but for the neverending natural resistance of my hands to that method which, in its use of curved fingers and the tips contacting the holes, definitely challenged me with an uncomfortable stretch. As those fingers curve, their freedom to comfortably stretch apart decreases for me.
What has been my solution? A reversion to the so-called “piper’s” grip. What I find fascinating is that while there is measurably less spread between the middle areas of the fingers compared to the tips (of course), given the numbers, spread is not the issue: facility is. So I go with what works for me, offers me my best facility in Irish ornamentation (for that is the music I play), and keeps my hands healthy. Thankfully, on a simple-system flute this option is acceptable.
Mind you, this is not a blanket endorsement of one kind of grip over another. What it is is ONE small-handed player’s solution to a problem, and a perfectly workable and reasonable one. Every grip style will have drawbacks peculiar to it.
There once was a Mod called Nano,
Who attempted to play the piano,
But his ivory-tickling,
Was so cochlea-pickling,
He was banished to El Altiplano.
R
Can’t remember what Casey’s web site used to say. But I read it, measured my span thumb to fourth finger at a bit over 7.5", bought his small handed folk flute and would not want to reach much more. I have picked up various other flutes and been able to stretch my left hand across the holes (‘classical hold’) by planting one first but would not want to go from no fingers to three fingers fast. ‘Pipers grip’ would probably be OK though.