Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Level of control in digital pianos

Hi,

Does anyone agree or dissagree with the statement that digital pianos have no where near the level of conrol as an acoustic, I am referring mainly to upright pianos not grands which I accept will have significantly more dynamic range for example than both uprights and digital pianos.

I am mainly talking about top end digitals such as the CLP-280 by Yamaha, I dont personally agree that they are no way near as expressive as an upright or unable to be played with that level of overall control. I know they cant staccato like a real piano or have after-touch which is not that important come on.

Digitals IMO are easily as useful as uprights if not better for piano performance, the top-end digitals anyway. Who agrees?

MWF.

Well mwf, perhaps you should first take a look here, since this has been discussed in length recently (see page 3 of recent posts on this forum). If some aspects were overlooked, we can pick up from there. I would greatly enjoy discussing it with you.

the topic was:

Digital Pianos allow "very little control over the tone produced." Pages: 1 2

Regards,
Claude

i don't find that different playing staccato on my digital and some upright, like Yamaha U1. or maybe it didn't strike me as that different.

Whether or not this is true is irrelevant
for real-world piano playing. You can
talk all you want of about the "nuances" and
"fine shading of tone" that can supposedly be
coaxed out of an expensive grand piano, but what
playing boils down to essentially is
hitting the right notes in the right
time, at speed, and you can practice this
on any type of keyboard, be it a
61-key unweighted portable,
or a concert grand piano.
I think you'd agree that J. S. Bach, who
played only on harpsichords, organs, and
clavichords--keyboard instruments with
much different characteristics than
pianofortes, would still be able to
tear up the keys on any modern piano.

I grew up taking classical lessons and
playing on an acoustic upright at home. The
several teachers I had had uprights or
grands in the studio. And my recitals
were on grands. There were some
differences in action and sound on
the various uprights and grands, but
not so much as to be of major significance
in real-world playing.

Since the late 1980's I've been living
in an apt. building and have thus been
playing only on digitals. I've owned three:
one with very lightly weighted keys,
one with a very heavy grand piano-like
action, and one with a medium action.
The three had varying sound
characteristics. But this has not
really mattered because
I can switch to any type of acoustic
piano, upright or grand, at any time,
and everything I've learned on the
digitals will transfer to the acoustic.
A keyboard is a keyboard, in my view--
not a whole lot of difference between
any of them.

This is not relevant to the original poster, as his selections would obviously have GH keys with good action. Coming from an organ background, I can tell you that if you never play on weighted keys for practice, you will not be able to play a "real" piano well until you build those muscles and learn the action. Now that I have a good digital piano, I am learning how to use the keys and the action is just completely different than an organ.

It is like acoustic and electric guitar. If you never played acoustic guitar and only played electric, you are in for a surprise when you try to play the acoustic.

Well said, KBBit!

I was a church organist for many years also, and during those years I neglected piano playing except to first-read and finger pieces in my organ books, etc, but no real piano playing. And when I stopped playing the organ and came back to piano, it was like having to learn everything all over again.

A keyboard is a keyboard, yes, up to a certain point: of course learning to play something on it won't make you able to play it on a flute. But that's as far as I would go into this fantasy. You do need a good, firm, precise, realistic keyboard to develop/maintain both muscular tonus and good habits of generating loudness from your fingers, not your elbows. Otherwise you'll be a piano banger, not a pianist. That also goes for expressiveness. A good digital will allow you to drill that aspect also, which no accordion-like Fisher-Price toy will do...

I sure dig your posts, KBBit, keep it up

Regards,
Claude

Hi,

Just to go on Gyro's direction, I started playing piano 1 year ago. My wife was afraid that it would be another short time hobby and didn't want to hear about investing in a piano...

I got an m-Audio 61 ES for 100 euros, connected it to my computer and trained with that. 8 months later, here we go at some friend's house were there was an upright piano. I started playing (at that time my teacher told me I had gained the level of a 2nd year student), nobody ever believed that you could learn piano on that kind of a keyboard and with a 1 hour a week lesson. With a great, great piano teacher of course.

After that I had no problem to go and purchase a real keyboard, an ES 4 Kawai, and ever since then I'm in heaven. I love the sound and the feeling, I still can't believe how subtle it is, and if there is a difference with a real piano it doesn't take me long to adapt.

And I assure you that I like 10 times more the feeling of my keyboard then an average upright piano! Now let’s be realistic, I do prefer a nice upright piano, or almost any Grand, real string resonance is the major thing there.

That's my personal experience....