Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Digital/acoustic students - Can you tell the difference?

Do all you teachers see a difference in results between students who practice on digital pianos and students who practice on acoustic pianos?

I use a budget $600 digital that I bought sight-unseen online
last yr. This inexpensive digital is satisfactory for playing
anything, including the biggest concertos.

Yes, of course! The difference is night and day!

I'm a student who practices almost exclusively on a digital piano. I always find it frustrating at my lesson to play with the right touch and volume on the Grand Piano. Now that I'm getting more serious about my lessons I'm going to try to get more practice time on an acoustic. Not all digitals are created equal however, I recently tried out the (expensive) Avant Grand N2/N3 and found the touch to be practically identical to an acoustic grand; practicing on one of those would pretty much be like practicing on an acoustic.

......the Roland V-Piano, which is essentially a concert
grand that will play rings around any acoustic piano....

Do you always know what a student plays at home? Maybe keep it as part of the records?

If not, the ones who stand out as either better or worse than average could easily get assigned to the acoustic or digital erroneously.

....it's specifically to do with the way the student touches and approaches the keys .... Great students practicing on digital will still be great, apart from having this distinctive (and inappropriate/limited) manner of touching the keys, which does mean that while they are great students they are struggling to be great pianists.

Elissa, could you give an indication of the manner in which a person learning on a digital piano touches the keys differently?

No. The point is that you can tell within ten minutes (at most, as keystring attests) that a student is not playing an acoustic piano at home. It's nothing to do with being an average student - it's specifically to do with the way the student touches and approaches the keys, nothing to do with limited practice time or a failure to understand concepts.

As far as the dynamics are concerned, I wonder whether this is linked to the reason that some people use a DP, i.e. wanting to be able to play relatively quietly so as not to disturb other family members or neighbours. If you are in the habit of playing relatively quietly your dynamics are also likely to be scaled down. Of course that is not necessarily the case when using headphones - but it might be that the scaling down becomes an ingrained habit which DP users need to somehow counteract.

Like it or not, the digital is here. It outsells acoustics between 2:1 and 4:1, and all but a few teachers will have to deal with students on digitals (except for those of you who just say no).

I can ALWAYS tell when a student has been practicing EXCLUSIVELY on a digital piano. When a student practices on both an acoustic and digital I honestly cannot be sure that I can tell the difference.

There are fantastic digital pianos out there, having said that, and if you do want to go that way (for reasons of space and being able to control the volume living with neighbours on the other side of the wall, say) make sure that you get a digital piano that replicates absolute everything that a piano does: this may mean you are looking at an instrument that costs about the same as a good basic model upright acoustic piano new.

The things most noticeable about students who play digital pianos exclusively are a poorer execution of legato playing and a reduced ability to create dynamic contrasts. I had a wonderful student who had a digital piano only for the first 6 years of her lessons, and by the time the parents finally got an acoustic piano it was really holding her back! Now she's working on an acoustic she is flying ahead, but of course, she is getting reasonably advanced these days.

Moral of the story: it's a disadvantage, but a good digital piano can reduce these disadvantages to negligible for the first few years of lessons, but if you want to learn serious repertoire you absolutely need to have an acoustic piano.

It would be nice if piano teachers taught how to play on the digital, so when the student had questions like how to set up your MIDI, au, rtas, vst, whether to use a linear velocity curve the teacher could help, just like when a student of the jazz guitar asks how high up do you crank the humbucker coils, well, the jazz guitar teacher can explain it.

So, yes, I will dismiss your argument; the original position that digitals can and do hinder progress on the piano technically and artistically still stands.

If you don't have a choice then this information is interesting but won't impact on your 'choice' (since you have none).

It's like asking if poodles really are like labradors, and then saying, but I can only have a poodle because I'm allergic to other dogs.

It would be a pity for the interesting discussion in this thread to be diverted into the usual cul-de-sac.

John, this discussion is something more on the order of hash and rehash. Every argument posted thus far has been made, ten times over, in previous threads. Only the posters are new. A little bit of diversion for flavor, please!

John, I take your point.

I've only been a member of PW for a few months so hadn't realised that the topic had been done to death countless times before (though it is predictable once you think about it). Your views and those of the other teachers who participate here are always very valuable.

"When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you've become real." From The Velveteen Rabbit

Perhaps it is the warmth of the wood that draws me in.
Or the fact that it is my personal blood and bones physics that will bring out
a raw and vibrant chord
a whispering and breathy phrase
an ethereal and sustaining chime.

My parents purchased a jet black Kawaii upright when I was 7.
It took 3 strong men to move the giant thing into our living room.
It was shiny, smooth and somehow emitted a feeling of excitement
even danger. Afterall, one could smash their hands underneath the hinged fallboard.

For 7 years I played with it. No lessons. I ran my hands up and down the sturdy ivory keys. I learned some of Fur Elise by ear. (Horrible fingering I'm sure). For 7 years I visited the Kawaii and enjoyed it fully. And suddenly, severely at 14 I needed lessons. I dove into the instrument and learned to tame my wild hands, my anxious teenage mind. I sat the phone on the floor next to the sound board and played my boyfriend part of The Moonlight Sonata. He had a piano too and played me some strange chords he made up at that moment. We didn't last but the Kawaii...

That piano my parents purchased….there was no such thing as a digital anything back then. Less choices meant a 7,000 dollar done deal on a young hard working Engineer’s income. Neither of my parents were musicians but they seemed to know that having a piano seemed like a good thing to do. For them the decision was as serious as buying a car or a large appliance. There was no middle path…no “trying it out for awhile” to see if I liked it or was any good. They made an uncharacteristic leap of faith and to this day it still mystifies me. (In a good way.)

Yes, they bought that boxy, awkward, steely stringed leviathan and am I ever grateful they did.

My piano, my real acoustic
hammered and glued,
pressed and sculpted,
notched, chiseled, painted,
veneered and engraved piano is
my anchor,
my dreamscape,
my escape, my friend.

Sometimes a technician has to come and tune or replace a pad here, a hinge there. I make him a cappacino and we talk about amazing pianos that visit his shop. “The stories they tell me!” he exclaims as he gulps down the last of his drink. ‘See you in 6 months’ I see him out, shut the door and feel re-inspired by my instrument’s fresh tune-up. I know its story well. It began its life when I was little.

Now it is now part of me.

I would like to ask those who have actual experience of taking on students who, up until that point, were practising exclusively on a digital, and were then given the opportunity to practise on an acoustic - approximately how long did it take for them to make up the technical shortfall?

In this day & age I would think that a good teacher would need to have at least a passable level of understanding of digital pianos and how to set them up so that they would hinder the student the least amount (right velocity curve and volume at a minimum)...

I am also interested in the answer to Ben's question.

My son started (when he was 6 1/2) with a Roland digital piano for one and a half years. We upgraded to a Kawai RX-3 two months ago because he had outgrown the digital piano. "outgrow" here means the digital can no longer meets the teacher's requirements such as producing tone color, pedal practice, and producing consistent dynamics when switching to an acoustic for performance.

After the upgrade, my son found out that he could play a trill with faster speed and easier with the acoustic upon the first try, and he really begun to experiment with different touches and listen to the tone rather than satisfying with just playing the notes right like he were with the digital before. The transformation from digital to acoustic is not hard at all for a little boy, but I can feel how different his playing is now from two months ago.

My view is that a good digital piano might be OK for a young beginner, but it would be better to start with an acoustic to avoid the unnecessary transition later.

Can you tell that this person does a large portion of his practice on a DP?

http://www.youtube.com/user/doowlehc#p/u/10/xMf4bGvjbwQ

I have some students who have portable keyboards, some who practice on digitals, some who have acoustic pianos. I would say that at least half of the students who own acoustic pianos should ditch them, as they would be better off with a digital piano.

If you're comparing playing on a digital to a GOOD acoustic piano, then yes, I would always recommend the acoustic. However, in the real world, most parents will NOT pay the serious $$ needed for a good acoustic.

Instead, they find a 'steal' in the newspaper or maybe they inherited Grandma's piano. Many older models have horrible action (much like the 'highly-hated' keyboards) and are out of tune. In such cases, is an acoustic better than a digital? No way.

I would love it if all of my students had a quality acoustic piano, but that's not real life.

It's not real life where I live. My students have to earn better instruments by proving to their parents that they are serious, by becoming good enough players so that the difference is AUDIBLE to the parents.

And as I have repeatedly said, once I did have grands to practice and perform on, I could not stand to play on uprights. No one seems to agree with me, but I loathe them.

I would love it if all of my students had a quality acoustic piano, but that's not real life.