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Tony, I quoted you but I wasn't specifically responding or "arguing" with you :), just wanted to address that particular direction of the thread.

At any rate, I guess the thing is we *do* have other kinds of keyboards out there that are supposedly easier to play (non weighted and semi-weighted) and even ones that do away with keys all together. But if one wants to play piano, then I think the acoustic model is the main thrust of a DP.

That makes sense to me. If you want to learn to play a particular type of instrument, you would want to play that type of instrument.

Tony

Dewster, my friend, you and I have been allies on the war against DP-manufacturer slackness, so I'm loath to go too hard on you here. But I really think that you are using your own shortcomings as a guitar player as a reason for suggesting a redesign of the guitar! Like it has an inherent problem that makes it not ideal for human use.

Many people don't experience the shortcomings you have. For example, I have no trouble coping with 6 strings - in fact, I own three 7 string guitars for those occasions when I'd like a few more options. Some people may not be suited to the guitar schema - their brain simply may not "get it" as well as it gets other things. Perhaps you are one of these people. But the guitar is a highly logical, ingenious and functional creation. It can cover a huge breadth of musical styles and it can do it almost as effortlessly as a piano.

It might also interest you to know that I get guitar students coming to me complaining that pianos are too complicated and how it's impossible to have two hands doing two different things or 10 independent fingers doing their own thing. Such people tend to resist your attempts to understand how such things are possible. i.e. how the brain groups fingers and information into manageable portions and is able to couple things together. It's the same on the guitar, really. Some people just don't make the necessary connections to make it to the state of ease on the guitar. And some do - and they are the ones who make it look easy, because it is.

Very astute comment, Tony. I get students asking me quite often, "which instrument is the hardest". My opening statement is, "They're all the same", and I go on from there in the manner you describe. Basically, every instrument that has existed for more than a hundred years has been pushed close to the limit of what can be performed on it. It's the performance limit of human beings we are talking about - not the instrument itself. All instruments have had extraordinary music played on them. There's no need to try to rank the difficulty of them.

You said "Even my hifi has no spruce soundboard or wooden cabinet, but it can reproduce it nicely."

Can produce what nicely? It only reproduces what was fed into it. Your hi-fi cannot bloom the sound of an acoustic if that is not part of the original waveform.

How much experimenting have you done with an acoustic piano? Are you using the sustain pedal in the correct way. I have an old book called "The Art of Piano Pedalling". Perhaps controlling your right foot might reduce the effect you hear and so make the digital piano sound more appealing.

Ian

Quite likely I'm engaging to some degree in projection, but laying the blame on an inanimate object instead of human. Always easier to do that than actually doing the hard work of getting better on an instrument! Could take lessons I suppose, but at this point I'd rather learn drums (though I watch videos of people practicing drums solo and it looks really dull).

I built a few guitars and an electric bass when I was younger - you learn a lot about why things are done the way they are when you go off on radical tangents! Things like don't make anything without a significant body (like the Chapman Touchstick) because you won't be able to keep it steady while playing. If I had a clone it would be building a 10 string nylon (5 pairs) with the high E gone, 2" aluminum angle for the neck, glued on frets, and a boxy travel ready body. And I would probably hate it.

But I really do think there is a guitar / keys killer out there waiting to be engineered into existence. I've had literal dreams about such a thing on and off since high school, though none with any good ideas in them unfortunately. Can you imagine coming up with the instrument that fills half of the Sweetwater catalog for the next century?

You need a Theremin in your studio to scare your students straight.

With zero tactile feedback (feature/bug - you decide) you have to stand stock still as a statue while fishing around in the air for the notes, with nothing but your ear to guide you. I often find it difficult to listen even to Theremin virtuosos due to pitch issues. The instrument is an abomination (and I say that lovingly).

Thanks ando. This is a bit off the topic, but still worth consideration...

The classical guitar certainly has had a few hundred years to have its technique developed, which is why I chose to use that as my model for approaching the instrument rather than putting it on my right leg and having my elbow sticking way up in the air or having it slung way down low on a too long strap. I think there is a fair amount of physical damage that can be avoided by learning from those who have gone before.

Tony

Yeah, i guess we're saying the same thing. This was the sense of my wifi topic: if the sound is available ( technicians do somehow put it into digitals, what i don't know ) then it can be reproduced even thru loudspeakers ( though it must be said that among hifi enthusiasts piano is known as the most difficult instrument to reproduce properly, you really need a proper system, and the cause is, you guess it, huge harmonics ) .

Regarding your second topic, i'm not sure i get it right ( due my poor english ) : i'm no piano master at all, but in my acoustic piano days, i was properly thaught to master pedalling, hence the excess of harmonic boom. But i progressively lost it using digital instruments, because they didn't have that behaviour. Actual result: i move from my digitals to an acoustic, and the sound slips out of my control.

Hi. The topic looks like going a lot phylosophical and philological, but that is interesting indeed.

You talk about "unnecessary skill".

First you will note that, whether unnecessary or not, half of the world still buys stick gear cars. So if you have a holliday in one of these countries and want to rent a car, you'll have trouble in handling it.

The same way, if you come across an acoustic and want to play it, you will have trouble with it's atomic harmonics. You thought you were a proficient enough pianist, but on a decent acoustic, with boom out of control, you'll nonetheless sound like a wannabe.

Second, as someone else wrote, a stick gear actually has lots of advantages over an automatic, save one: comfort. Which is indeed a big deal on a car you use thru necessity, and can induce you to f.uck the rest, and simply go the confortable route.

But you don't want to play a piano thru necessity, you do it for your pleasure, so you'll probably want to learn to master every aspect, including it's .... voice hand how to control it, getting it to growl or shush at your own command.

Bellycapelli, that growl has been usually avoided from the main sample session, just as harmonics.
I think there are both technical and psychological (human perception) reasons to do so.
Neither common speaker systems or headphones, nor human ear, are capable of capturing what's good in a recorded piano, and let only 'bad' sounds aside. If you try to record the whole sound it becomes confusing because, when you play the recording, there's not enough space in it. Recording anything means some kind of compromise, always. Listen to a professional recording, and think in what you would need in order to feel you are in an auditorium.
People who go the software route need to match the entire setup with the sound font. If you already have the best or more realistic sound at your reach, you'll need a keybed good enough, then a sound system at par, then a conditioned room...then another software
And even this way it will hardly sound as a piano, cause you miss the wood frame or vibrations or whatsoever.
But, to me, good digitals react to overpedalling with an ugly sound. Still they are too forgiving, that pehaps has to do with marketing.
What you say is true, though, and I was feeling the same until I bought myself an upright.

I suppose a bit off topic ...but... I really miss driving a stick. That is all I drove until my current car. Since I never buy new cars, I take what is available in the condition and price I am willing to pay without borrowing money to buy a car. In winter, I feel that I have much more control of my car with a stick. Driving an automatic still feels like "bumper cars" to me - foot on the gas, foot on the brake and that is pretty much it. At least where I live in the US midwest, we really don't see normal "passenger" cars with a stick anymore, and fewer sports cars with a stick too.

Tony

I am planning to buy myself an acoustic too, i feel, if you're picky with sound, there's no way around it. But not yet for me: i'm turning back to my old love after a long hiatus, and i'm not sure i'm gonna stick to it. If i don't, with a digital i'll have spent no big money to regret. If i will, then i'll have a daily driver for practicing during nighthours, or when girls have to study.

Hence, i want to look for the best of two worlds.

Can`t believe I just read this . . . I wont be told by any car when to change gear . . . that`s her job

I have somewhat parallel experience.
I quite deliberately pulled the discussion a bit off topic to show how SOME of us in SOME places no longer have a need to have or practice a particular skill.

I grew up in England and have lived in continental Europe.
For a long time I drove ONLY manual transmission vehicles.
I have lived in an area of the USA where manual transmissions are very rare for a few decades now.
I have 6 adult children ONE of them drives a work truck with a semi automatic trans, the other 5 have never learned to drive a manual transmission - and *TO MY POINT*, they have not NEEDED to and would not become better drivers if by chance they learned to double de-clutch a crash box.
That the majority of the adult population in half the world can and does is irrelevant to them.
In their daily lives they all drive automatic transmissions.
I am quite sure that if they ever visit a country where manual transmissions are the norm they will a) have hertz or avis provide them with an automatic b) crunch and crash their way through it the hard way.

To bring this back to where I am "at" with pianos.
I and many others will NEVER "perform" at a level that "requires" the skills to "Drive" a concert grand.
I play for my own amusement, my enjoyment derives from developing what to some may be simple and elementary skills.
I doesn't bother me that I don't play advanced pieces or that I don't play them "well".
This is recreational enjoyment - that is ALL it is.
I am not alone in this, many/most of us are not on the conservatory track - never were and never will be.
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Even LESS relevant - my tractor has a manual transmission.
12 speeds ALL without syncromesh, one shift lever on the right, the other on the left. Also a third shift lever for forward/reverse, so it has 12 reverse speeds.
My BMW K1200S is a 6 speed, shifted by left foot.
It isn't that I CAN'T shift manual transmissions, more that the NEED is not there on most "daily driver" vehicles.

Hi r_b, i got your point.

But please consider this: no matter how basic you think your skills are, if you come across an acoustic, they could still sound worse / crap.

It is not a matter of conservatory track, you will notice it even "performing" jingle bells. I don't get it why one should want an imitation of a real instrument, to the extent where most manufacturers boldly declare to sport a "Boesendorfer imperial" sample, and then settle for a simplified surrogate, deliberatley washing out some qualities of the real thing, which would be too hard to master.

Recreational must not be neccesarily mean "simplyfied". If you oversimplify, to me the recreation somewhere gets lost.

This is obviously just my personal opinion, don't want to sell it to you, and i'm aware the more pianists see it your way, the more such an instrument is justified, hence designed and mass supplied. Guess this has a lot to do with the fight consumer devices vs. professional devices, and the electronics involved worsen the matter.

Just different point of view, which become very important to manufacturers, if they are very widespread. I possibly represent a minority of the market, which should look straigjt for an acoustic.

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...s_this_now_real_enough?.html#Post2393599

Very interesting post, at least to me, because it's another guy who represents exactly my same point of view about a more muddy sound, a more powerful harmonic boom, even the possibility of a deliberate detune of the piano: a thing of which i tought, but didn't have courage enough to say. In one world: a more natural sound 360°, not just key by key.

I understand though it is probably not a case the request comes from a professional who is forced to go digital just for technical reasons.

Some of us have been doing just that for years . . .you can detune Pianoteq and my digital. I`m gonna retune it today, and pay myself a goodly sum for do doing . .

Like all analogies, it does break down at some point, and this is where I believe you misunderstand. It's not that a different skill is needed to play a concert grand that is so far different like driving manual vs. automatic. It's just there are varieties in sound one can achieve on a good acoustic that are so far greater than any digital out there.

There are things you don't even know you can possibly do on a digital that you discover with an acoustic. And I'm not talking advanced classical playing, either. I'm just speaking purely from a musical/expression standpoint.

Can a digital give a person satisfaction? Of course. But the experience of playing on an acoustic grand just pales in comparison in the feel and sound to a digital, and the enjoyment one gets from it far outweighs the cons of needing to tune twice a year, etc. (IMO).

peterws, Very interesting! Pianoteq or simlar software will definitely be next toy to try out after the planned digital.

How does this work, do you detune the whole piano by same consistent value,or can you simulate random detune upwards / downwards, as it goes on in natural fashion on an acoustic?