Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Different piano feel screws me up!

I'm wondering if I'm the only with this problem. I practice at home on a digital and during lessons, we use an upright. I find that at home, I can play the pieces fairly well, but I seem to screw up more on the upright when i play for the teacher. The piano feels so different to my touch that I can't seem to adjust the dynamics or even hit the notes correctly because of this. Is this normal and how do you compensate? I only get to practice on the upright during our 30 min lessons every week so I really don't get much time on it.

I have purchased a grand piano and the keys on my grand feel very different from the upright in the studio too. I'm afraid this will keep screwing my playing. Have others encountered this problem?

It's actually fairly common when one starts on the piano. The only solution is to play lots of different pianos (visit a piano store and spend a few minutes at several different pianos). What's happening is that the muscles in your fingers are sending signals to the brain about what they are sensing. The different pianos cause the muscles to react differently and this is affecting your playing.

Not to worry, this can be corrected with time and exposure to other pianos.

Ed

I agree with Ed. I play on a variety of pianos every week, and they all feel and sound different. With practice and experience you learn to adapt to the instrument.

The Baldwin studio upright at my Church has a key touch so light that it affects my playing too, not that I can play all that well to start with.

The key touch on my grand piano is medium heavy and I love it! You can almost breathe on the keys of that Baldwin studio and the note will sound!

I figure that is going from one extreme to another maybe, but I suppose it’s good to be able to play any and all pianos with a reasonable amount of proficiency.

Take care!

Rick

I can totally relate. The piano I have at home has a completely different sound and feel from the piano I play at lessons. This greatly affected me on my first piano lesson. I don't know if you are able, but I made arrangements to come into the place where I take my lessons and practice a few times a week. Just getting to sit down and play, without your teacher present, will help you tremendously to get use to the piano.

AK

yeah, i don't know. my lessons are early in the morning and i'm the first there. i can't stay afterwards either cause someone else has lessons. I guess i'll just have to adjust somehow. It's pretty frustrating because the keys on that piano are "heavier" than my digital or the grand. I practice and it's really muscle memory and sightreading after a while...then during lessons, the muscle memory part gets screwed because of the piano feel...and i get confused because i think i screwed up the keys...when i didn't...then comes hesitation in the playing. Aarrggh....

I can relate. I don't have access to any other pianos and the one I use for lessons and practicing is a Casio PX-720 which has a heavy touch. Recently, I bought a newer model, a Casio PX-730 which is more responsive than the PX-720. Despite being from the same manufacturer, I still felt disoriented because the keys somehow were easier to press Still trying to adjust now...

I use an ancient upright at home. If it weren't so tall, I would've replaced it instead of putting money into restoring it partially. The keys on my piano are still pretty light.

The shorter, newer piano at my music school that my teacher and I are assigned in particular is horrible! Not only is it out of tune to the point where I named intervals and chords wrong (I have never been wrong in high school), but the feel of the different keys on that piano are different (not compared to mine, just between the 88 keys on this one piano) - some make a sound at the brush of a feather and others require a good push to overcome the static friction. The range of force required to produce sound at different amplitudes is also narrower. e.g. Applying say, one Newton of force on a key on my piano produces the softest sound possible and 10 Newtons produces the loudest, on the studio's piano, it would be a range of 0.5 Newtons and 5 Newtons. These are just made up figures, of course. In other words, playing mp on the studio piano using the way I play my own would make forte! I worry this is a problem about me being too used to my own piano and I wouldn't be able to adjust on my coming exam.

There is no excuse for
this. Any keyboard player should
be able to switch between any
keyboard instrument--grand, upright,
harpsichord, organ, clavichord,
synth, digital, electric piano,
61-key unweighted portable,
computer-controller keyboard connected
to a computer running piano
software, etc.--with no problem.
All keyboard instruments are
played essentially the same way. Note
that a good xylophonist, who
has never played any instrument
but the xylophone, can sit down
at your teacher's upright with
the "hard" action and play it
without instruction. This is
because the striking bars on
a xylophone are laid out the
same as the keys on a piano.
On all keyboard instruments
you need to hit the right notes
in the right time at speed, and
you do that essentially the same
on a harpsichord or a concert grand.

If you can only play well on
the instrument you practice on
at home, then you are not really
a piano player, but a person
who can play one particular
instrument only, the one he has
at home, which only happens to
be a variety of piano. Forget
about "touch" and "dynamics."
You've got to always be thinking
about hitting the right notes in
the right time at speed. If
you can't do that--and you've
got to be able to do that on
anything with keys--then you
can't play.

If you depend on tactile feedback, and most people do, there is no way that you can play a piano like a harpsichord or a clavichord.

I'd just like to reiterate that this is a common problem, and is solved by getting more experience. It does help to play on different pianos if possible, but you will find over time that you can adjust more readily once you've become experienced at the keyboard. Playing on the 2 different pianos you have access to will help, even though it's frustrating that you don't perform as well at lessons. Maybe your teacher can allow you to warm up for 5 minutes with some scales or something before the lesson.

"There is no excuse for this" applies more to these distortions and misconceptions than it does to the topic of this thread.

Steven

You missed a similar discussion in the Pianists Corner here:

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...20alone%20with%20my%20t.html#Post1299625

It's a pretty common complaint and because our instrument is not portable, we just have to put up with it and adjust quickly.

I can relate - only yesterday I had the opportunity to play on a (badly maintained) grand for a few minutes. It takes some time to adjust.

Don't worry, you'll get used to your teacher's piano eventually. I found it extremely helpful to start my lessons with some technical exercises. It helps to adjust to the different instrument, to warm up and to get into piano and learning mood after a day at work.

I would note that no matter how good we get at adapting to different pianos quickly, we will always play worse at a lesson than at home.

It's one of those universal laws. There have been a couple of long threads about it here.

How about some practical advice on how to learn this?

The OP can't do it yet. So he has to learn it. How?

The only thing I can suggest is to play lots of different pianos and to try to get some time to warmup to become familiar with the instrument.

The best practical advice is to take Gierow's advice with a few blocks of salt.