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I played the church's three acoustic pianos today listening for this. (I was there anyway preparing music for the coming handbell choir season).

I had hoped to listen to one of the accomplished players, but the services had only pipe organ.

At any rate, I listened carefully while lifting the keys. All three of the acoustics had damper engagements very similar to that of my old digital - very short distance from full release to full damping. The piano whose tone I like the best (but gets played the least due to location) had the damper engagement at about the same distance from bottom of the key as my digital. The other two pianos were both higher, and the one I liked the least did not engage any damper until almost the very top of travel.

I could shape the notes a little bit on any of them, roughly the same as I can on the digital. It isn't a huge amount, but it does add something to the tone sensation.

Using the damper pedal was much different. There is a large difference between full damper and partial damper that I could not duplicate with finger damper alone. Some of that may be due to string resonances. There were also extreme differences between the three pianos on how well that worked and could be controlled. This level of pedal control is not present on my older digital. I understand that partial pedal is something that has been improved on more modern digitals but I've not had much experience with it.

Well 70 years from now is 2085.... Sure by all means, only if I can live that long (or the earth can last that long)

From a 5 year old digital's manual :



I think makers of digital actually knew something about this, and have tried.

Personally, in this day and place (Greece) I recommend my student's parents to check out digital pianos, if they can't afford an acoustic one. Their usability surpasses that of an acoustic piano, when we're talking about teenagers ready to start exploring the world of computer music. Plus it's much much cheaper, portable, and easier to dispose of actually...

The downside is that since it's a digital machine, in will be outdated pretty quickly, that's it's actually NOT a real piano (which is a real shame) and ultimately that it loses value over time...

Nikolas, your thoughts (as so often is true) are very close to my own.

I have a digital and love using it when I have the energy and will power because it allows me to work late at night, when everyone else is asleep.

In a perfect world we would all have perfect instruments and would have the space, freedom and privacy to play them 24/7. But that's just not my world, and it is not the world of many people I like the best.

Back when I was in high school, I wanted to learn how to play piano. We had no piano at home and my dad didn't want to get one. Nor did he want to pay for lessons.

One day the band teacher told me that he would teach me piano if I desired. But how would I practice? I solved the problem by using the acoustic in the music room and the piano lab in the other music room (Wurlitzer Electric Pianos). I would go and practice, usually during study halls.

This lasted about 3 months, until the principal discovered what I was doing and put the kibash on it - she wanted study hall time used for studies. So I had no choice but to stop. In that time I went through three method books. Until the day he died, the band teacher would tell people how proud he was of the progress I made.

I can't help but to wonder what would have happened if I had available to me one of today's digitals.. digital piano, keyboard, anything.. Back when I had the time and did not have to worry about my time being consumed by working to pay bills..

I've seen families opt out of lessons for their kids because a teacher told them acoustic or nothing. I've seen students get discouraged and quit because their instrument was a piece of junk that wouldn't hold a tune or regulation and was no joy to play. Often for the same money a parent can get a student a low cost digital that is always in tune and does not have regulation troubles that the alternative would have.

No matter how much talent a student may have, the desire is often to play for enjoyment or to be in some band - heck, playing in a band might just require knowing three chords..

The risk of injury is clearly higher from an acoustic - if you try to move it! I'm no longer available to help friends move a piano, having done it a few too many times.

Playing piano is risky too. The body was not designed to sit, in a fixed position, for hours at a time making thousands of repetitive motions. Injury rates for serious students on acoustic pianos run around 80%. The more hours you put in on any repetitive activity, the more chance of hurting yourself. There isn't any evidence that digitals are better or worse, just speculation. Currently digitals outsell acoustics 4 or 5 to 1, but I would imagine the more serious students are most likely using acoustics.

I was without a piano for 35 years, and had no way of getting one. Finally a "toy" was passed on to me - keys as light as those on a computer keyboard, no touch sensitivity, not enough of them. It was one step up from practising on a cardboard with notes drawn on it and humming. Then I got a digital which was acce$$ible for I think $700. Any note below middle C was double loud, so that I learned to sort of "cringe with the left hand". But at least I could do dynamics. Then finally I got my "entry level" Yamaha. The keys feel much more like an acoustic. In fact, there was an acoustic in the store that I could have gotten for the same price, but - regardless of who played it in the store - it went from loud to louder. The touch and responsiveness of my digital were superior to those of that acoustic. Plus, there is no way that I could actually practice any length of time, given the thin walls and neighbours.

My posts here should indicate that I am dead serious as a student. Unfortunately top pianos are tied to the pocketbook, while dedication has no correlation to the pocketbook.

In an ideal world, the teacher who knows something and wants to teach it, would match up to the student who wants to learn that something and is ready to absorb it, and the availability of the instrument best suited to both. How it's been arranged in our universe, however, is a huge practical joke where any of these three, or all of them, get scattered, and somebody is just killing himself laughing as we scramble. Or else it is a "character creating exercise" because we have not been handed the cards we need, and we should say "thank you".

Greg, talking about injury, I am still curious if you have converted the recovered pop, jazz players to acoustic or they have learned a way to continue with the keyboard without hurting themselves.

Even on today's entry level digitals, the touch is weighted and very sensitive (or can be adjusted to very sensitive). I was able to play them with very light touches, not feeling much of the "bottom bounce" feeling with some decent speed. Actions on some (poorly maintained?) acoustics can be very heavy, and require much more effort on my fingers, and I can't play as fast, not with the same light touches.

One presumed benefit of acoustic over keyboard is that acoustic builds "finger strength", but would that also increase the chance of injury?

Or it is the "fortissimo should feel pianissimo" technique makes everything effortless on the fingers? Is that technique not possible to acquire from or apply to a digital at all?

I suspect this is a while ago. The price for entry level digitals from many big name makers, including yamaha, has dropped to $700 level. With a 2 year payment term, it is accessible to virtually every household in the 'developed" countries. Hopefully no longer any one is denied the opportunity of learning music due to lack of access to an instrument.

If the instrument is a piano or not, is a secondary question one, compare to the accessibility to an instrument.

Nevertheless, from the video of the opening thread, while not the same, they sounded pretty close to me, especially considering the 25+ times price differences.

And once again, the question was not that if a digital is a substitute of a good grand, we all know it is not.

The better the instrument, the better for the student, we all know that too.

When one has to make a compromise, is that really an acoustic of "any kind or condition" is better than any digital?
Even in 2013?
Even after watching the video in the opening thread?


By the way,



There is no such a thing as can't afford an acoustic, not in North America. Visit Craiglist you can find a free (or almost free) acoustic piano, working one, as long as you are willing to move it.

I think I once heard a wise person once say that there is no such thing as a free piano..

I don't think there is much disagreement about the following preference order for playing classical piano:

good piano > good keyboard > no instrument > injuries

Now on to more interesting stuff ...

Well, here it's not N. America. It's not only the issue of money, but also the issue of space. Some places in Greece are too cramped to fit a real acoustic piano.

And, since I've come across a few free pianos in London, when I was scouting for one, they were awful. A digital piano would be a much better choice for me. But alas it was about 10 years ago and I was still stuck with the idea of an acoustic. :-/

Absolutely.

The question was : good keyboard vs poor to mediocre piano.
Especially with the new insight : keyboard == injury

It is a fact that enough acoustic piano playing usually leads to injury. It is not unreasonable that playing digital the same amount would do so as well. (the really serious students who get injured now are mostly on acoustics, because that's where serious students get to eventually)

It is only speculation that digital might be more risky; insight is too strong a word.

I still after reading through all the thread with great interest find the mayor question implied in the opening post of this thread unanswered. It concerns the general difference in the capabilities to shape the tone of a piano by varying keystroke and key release movements on a digital and on an acoustic piano, and this possibly impacting the education of the piano student in an uncorrectable way.

As a great artist can produce quite useful expressiveness on a digital piano of nowadays standard, it to me seems obvious that learning on a digital should not impose in general any significant drawback in achieving a good playing technique. Expressiveness is achievable on a modern digital instrument and thus it should be possible to study it on the digital.

The acoustic instrument and the digital instrument students initially in their trainings might emphasize on slightly different aspects of their movements to gain expresiveness on their particular instruments, but afterwards, when changing to the other instrument, only some adaption in this emphasis might be needed. I wouldn´t expect that certain movements couldn´t be apllied anymore or even frustrating a successfull change to the other instrument. Isn´t it just the way that the applied teaching program has to be adopted to the particular situation instead of in general demonizing the use of digital instruments in piano education? Couldn´t we nowadays summarize: same approach, slight adaptation phase, same result?

I am almost apt to say, that if a teacher is not able to well teach a student the piano playing on a modern digital piano, then this teacher would for sure also not be able to properly teach any student on a first class acoustic grand piano.

So in response to the OP: An acoustic piano moves the air in a different way than does a speaker. The demonstration is miked for the benefit of distribution. If there is an electronic circuit involved in the demonstration, all bets are off. If I were standing in that studio, I would assure you I could tell the difference. I don't care about key acceleration, or pedal modulation, if there is a speaker involved, one is at the mercy of it. When in the presence of an acoustic piano, one feels it. As I said, an acoustic piano produces it's sound differently from a speaker, or speakers.

That is certainly true.

Ah, do you ever listen to a CD of a piano performance?

That's a mere digital reproduction. But except for our own playing, and the rare expensive concert, much of our listening to piano IS a digital reproduction.

While the question is not directly answered, I think the answer is clearly implied, for the responses (and the lack of the responses) :

Get a good piano.

A keyboard is not a piano, a poor piano is a poor piano. Good luck if you are stuck with them, but get yourself out as soon as you can.

I take it. I didn't come here to argue, but to seek honest answers, whatever the answer is.

Shape the tone is unfortunate terminology. There is a lot of good research showing that tone shaping on an acoustic is not as possible as is assumed. And tone shaping (well, decay of tone shaping) by key lift does not seem to be much different between digitals and acoustics. It is really not tone shaping as much as nuances of dynamics (and in the case of the grand, repetition rate) that people find different.

We should also note that playing on an in-tune piano at a very early age can develop perfect pitch. An acoustic piano starts going out of the tune one minute after being tuned. If tuned regularly and maintained in a constant humidity environment, they may not go far enough out of tune to matter, but the reality is that most students play on less well maintained pianos. Many older pianos (most of the free ones) cannot be brought all the way up to 440.