Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Do owners of grands find it difficult to play on uprights?

A piano is a tool [ and a passion of course]. The better the piano, the more accomplished the pianist, the better the outcome. Personally I like to enjoy what I'm hearing when I play. A piano against a wall is the worst.

rada

Yes...the worst. Better to quit altogether or even better, have your hands removed at the elbow rather than play those insufferable uprights.

Sean, you put your initial question in helpful context when you told us you play on a spinet. I don't think comparing grands and uprights generally is going to be very helpful in addressing your circumstances. You are playing on a difficult to play instrument. Most people are going to find it difficult to go from a grand to a spinet. Properly regulated, a good quality upright can have a wonderful feel (and sound). Mine does for me.

And rada/Bach, you should appreciate that there are many people here who love their uprights. No need to go out of your way to offend.

I've got one of each kind and I feel like I "acclimatize" to the touch of each pretty quickly when playing. Regarding the repetition aspect my grand is a little different from more modern instruments... so has less of an edge over the upright in that department than many grands would - having said which, both my pianos exceed the limits of my ability when it comes to trills! For individual notes repeated rapidly they've also both coped with anything I've asked for - the repeated C#s halfway through Rhapsody in Blue and the Bbs in the Katachurian Tocatta spring to mind and both pianos are up to the job for those.

The height of the music desk is the biggest problem - I do 95% of my practice on the upright and it can be tricky remembering to look (back up) much higher on the grand - this also gives me problems on my teacher's grand; for ages I felt I played worse in my lessons than at home and put thus down to being nervous at playing in front of my teacher but actually I think not having the keyboard as prominent in my peripheral vision as on an upright is a substantial part of it.

The difference in the height of the music desk and its distance from the eye are definitely major reasons why I play worse on the grand in my teacher's studio than on my upright at home. The grand (one of the smaller Yamahas, not sure which)at least allows the music stand to be pushed back or pulled forward, which helps with my near-sightedness, but the music sits up much higher than it does at home and I have that much more difficulty returning my eyes to the right position if I happen to have looked down at my hands for a second. I'm a veteran of cataract surgery, and my eyes just don't respond as quickly any more to quick shifts in distance.

It definitely is easier to maintain good tone and produce a broader range of dynamics on the grand (especially getting a decent ppp) than on my T118, but I've only had this particular upright for a few weeks and am still getting used to how it handles. It doesn't help that I often practice with the mute pedal engaged because I live in a townhouse and like to play at night. When I happen to be at home and all the neighbours are out, I dispense with the mute (and open the lid) and it takes me a while to adjust to the difference in touch between the muted and unmuted state. I've likened the sensation to adjusting to a new lover: How should I touch you, up here, down here, to make you purr, or growl, or roar?

Who knew re-learning to play the piano would turn out to be an erotic exercise.

I need to get out more.

I think Bach was mocking rada, not actually calling uprights bad. Another thing, "erotic" you don't need to get out more, you need to get out all the time wow, erotic.

I don't think I could have made my sarcasm any more obvious if I came out over the internets and beat everyone over the head with my bleeding stump arms.

I recently purchased a Kawai K-2 upright...and love it.

My apologies, I'll be Bach. Thats what I get for mixing work with PW today and doing neither all that well. Congratulations on that Kawai.

I agree about the height of the music desk. I am currently trying out pianos for purchase, and since I haven't played in years and don't currently have an instrument, I have been more or less dependent on having to sight-read my way through my old music (I learned to play on uprights). This has been more challenging than I had expected since the desk is not at my eye level on the grands I've tried so far, and I've had to muddle my way through playing while frequently pausing to look up and down. I will definitely have to investigate highly-adjustable benches to help out with this. Hopefully there is something out there that works.

I started out on a grand as a kid, so I've always been used to they hand/music disconnect. My piano teacher that I had when I was a kid was kind of eccentric (aside from living in a big old house which she had filled with seven different pianos, 5 of them grands...). She would use a piece of cardboard that she put under the music rack to cover my hands so that I had to look at the music and not keep watching my hands. She would make me work with trying to get a feel where the keys were without having to shift my eyes from the music. The results of that were that I rarely ever look at my hands, almost never lose my place in the music, I can sight read pretty well, but it took several years to correct my crazy fingerings that I came up with.

I find it hard to adjust to the differences in hight in the music stands on uprights because it is so much closer to my hands. Even today, I rarely look at my hands while I play, so seeing them while I'm reading the music sometimes throws off my (fragile) rhythms...!

Oh.... wow, bleeding stump arms... that was quite a visualization!

I love my grand, but I've played some uprights that are wonderful. I've never played a K2, but Kawai seems to put out consistently high quality grands, so I doubt they'd sully their name by putting out anything less than high quality uprights.

That being said, I've played some really crappy feeling and sounding grands and uprights. So, the grand form does not a quality piano make. I saw something in earlier threads that made me laugh, and is quite true, there are many grands, and I assume uprights too, that people here refer to as "PSO's" (Piano Shaped Objects). Because they look amazingly like a piano, but nothing much else than the looks would support that they are, in fact, a piano. LOL