The Feel of Our Keyboard
See our best description of the keyboard action in our recent blog post.
NK5.5 at the Stretto Festival for Narrow Key Pianos
Watch Kathryn perform in the 2023 Stretto Festival. All online concerts are free to watch this year. Find the concerts at this link.
From a pianist's perspective, the best parts of this concert can be found at the following times on the video:
35:00. -- Kathryn plays Rhapsody in Blue by George Gerschwin on her Yamaha C7 piano with a DS®5.5 keyboard. Watch her relaxed hands soaring over the keys in this piece.
1:10:00 -- Kathryn plays Un Sospiro by Franz Liszt on her NK5.5 keyboard. This piece is both delicate and fast with lots of arm crossing. Kathryn does a beautiful job (it truly took our breath away) and we thank her so much for her kind words about our NK5.5 action.
Kathryn expects to use her NK5.5 keyboard during upcoming concert tours. We hope to hear more beautiful music from her in coming months.
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Linda plays Georgia on My Mind
with tenths like Oscar Peterson played it!
First Contact
Take things step-by-step the first time you try Narrow Keys. A little practice time on simple skills, feeling the comfort in your hands as you adjust to the new spacing on the keyboard, will speed you along to more advanced music and mastery of this instrument. Let Linda explain.
The NK 5.5 lets you play everything! Hear its range in the videos below.
Gershwin has big chords and my sister, Susan Gould (we perform as the Dragonfly Sisters) was blessed with a large hand. Now I can keep up with her!
Grieg is very expressive and uses a full range of dynamics. An acoustic piano is the ideal, but when we toured with our digital pianos we got a terrific response.
I always wanted to play Chopin Etudes but most of them (especially this one) were unplayable. What a difference narrow keys make!
The 5.5-inch octave allows a small hand to play with a relaxed hand position (compared to the norm for a piano, the 6.5-inch octave). This allows much greater control while playing. It gives better control over voicing, dynamics, touch, etc. We are most often asked “What does it feel like?” While the touch and feel of a piano is very subjective, the NK5.5 is very responsive to the pianist's touch -- thanks to a combination of advanced software and proprietary key sensing technology. You will hear that it offers a wide range of responsiveness to classical music.
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Once you adjust to Narrow Keys, you will be surprised to find that you can still play the big keys as well as you ever did. Watch Linda play Maple Leaf Rag on four different keyboards, from 6.5 to 5.5 inch octave widths.
