Are Digitalpianos an good alternative for studying?

Hi,

I'm going to study piano and i'll have to move to smaller flat. Is an Digital Piano like Kawai CA-93 an good replacement instead of a real acoustic piano. Is the claviature good enough to practise like on a real piano?

Thanks for your help.

JBJ99

People will have different opinions on this but in my experience, as long as you stay away from entry level actions (such as GHS, or IvoryFeel-G), the current crop of higher end digitals will satisfy your needs for the most part. I'm looking to go into music at the university level to develop my skills into a second career, and right now my FP-7F is what I spend most of my time practicing on (I'm currently working on Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.6, Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C# major book 1, and Robert Muczynski: Toccata). I do have access to a decent grand at my church, but sometimes I prefer my digital simply because of the perfect evenness from key to key and of course the sound is perfectly in tune!

I completed grade 8 long time ago, I used to play upright, and now I have a Roland HP-507, there is nothing I cannot play on it at this level, the piano usually responds as I want, the action is good, and I can practice on it as much as I wish without bothering anyone.
Not sure about low-end pianos, but I think that higher-level digitals like Kawai-93 or Roland HP-507 and similar, IMHO good to study piano.

With most high-level digitals, I think they are fine up to intermediate level. But if they are your only pianos you get to play on, I think you will start to develop problems learning to use the sustain pedal properly, because their sound is far too clear and one-dimensional and lacking in resonances; and almost certainly you'll develop sloppy pedaling techniques simply because you can get away with them on most digitals.

Ideally, you should also spend some time playing on acoustics if you plan to take up piano (as opposed to 'keyboard') playing seriously.

This is an excellent point that I often forget about simply because it comes natural to me. I've heard people who have learned to play formally on a digital and their pedaling technique is usually terrible - sure on a digital you have pedal resonance or whatever, but it's kind of static. On a grand if you release and press without a fluid motion, you get an annoying thump every time (some pianos are far worse than others though)...and if you don't allow the dampers to fully touch the strings when they need to, you get some pretty horrible muddy sound happening. Digitals are very forgiving in these areas.

I'd say in general a high end digital piano is fine for an advanced player, so long as the player has regular contact with a good quality grand piano and is able to identify and/or compensate for all of the differences.

I bought my DP two years ago, and for some three months after that I practised exclusively on it (before that I used to play on any acoustic I could get my hands on, from concert grands in showrooms to clapped-out old 'bangers' in pubs and churches). Then I thought it was time to see whether the technical improvement from my now-regular practice could be transferred to real pianos, and spent some time in a Blüthner, then a Fazioli showroom playing on the F278 and F228. Yes, my technique was now much more fluent (the difference in actions between the real grands and my DP was pretty minor - the Shigeru Kawai SK 7 and Grotrian-Steinweg 208 in the Fazioli showroom felt more different from each other), but something had gone terribly wrong with my pedaling..

But luckily, I was able to correct the 'deficiencies' quite easily on my V-Piano: to give you some idea of how much tweaking I had to do to get its sustain and various resonances up to what I heard from the Blüthners and Faziolis (and S Kawai and Grotrian), I had to increase its 'soundboard', 'string' and 'cross'-resonances up from their default (factory-set) 0 to between +40 to +60, and the 'decay time' (= sustain) to +60 to +70. (The maximum is +100 for all these). Why did Roland set their default levels so low on the V-Piano, which is modeled and could therefore be set to concert grand levels - and way beyond - without causing problems with looping etc? Because they corresponded to the way almost all other DPs (from any manufacturer) sound, and presumably, Roland envisaged that most of its customers will come from a DP background.

It's a sad truth really - even Pianoteq doesn't cut it without some heavy tweaking. IMHO I think DP's give the player the illusion that they can produce a better sound than the player is actually capable of on an AP.

Roland SN is this way too, you have to really crank on the sympathetic resonance to get it anywhere near real levels. It's literally almost turned off in the factory presets.

+1

On my HP-305 I have to set resonance to higher values in order to get a more convincing result.



Well, that's a controversial question IMHO, the answer is yes and no. It depends on the factors involved. I think that even the most advanced and expensive digital models are still far of the feel of the real thing, and every brand has its pros and cons.

For instance, Yamaha with its GH action and derivatives feel unrealistic and difficult to play certain passages for me. Roland PHA II/III feels great for me (that's the reason I chose a HP-305)... maybe too much great, too much easy. It feels great but unnatural in the sense that there is too much perfection in touch, response and sound. One of the charms of the real thing is it's imperfections, inimitable harmonics, nuances, etc. Kawai feels great but I find also difficult to control some nuances on their last generation of actions (I didn't try yet the new GF system). I also didn't try yet hybrids such as Avantgrand series.

But we must have in account that there are lots of acoustic pianos that are a heck to play (and enjoy). So there isn't a direct answer to your question.

The ideal situation IMHO is having a very good DP (it's really useful, nothing new here) and a nice acoustic piano (better if it is a grand, but a nice upright can do the job although I think that the serious pianist must have sooner or later a grand). But if one cannot have a decent acoustic piano (neighbours, space, etc), a good DP can do the job although it's not the ideal situation in my opinion.

If you compare an acoustic grand for $13K+ with a digital piano for 4K, the grand is the winner.
But upright for $4K vs digital for $4K - it is not that obvious.
I personally do not like the sound of many 4K acoustic pianos, at the same time no one in my house would survive me practicing 1.5-2h every day on it.
So for me the decision between 4K acoustic and 4K digital was a no-brainer - it is better to practice on a digital piano with decent sound and action, than not practice on entry-level acoustic.

PS. By the time the author overgrows Kawai 93, there will be better digitals on the market.

Thank you very much for your help and information. I've tested the demo of Pianoteq 4 on an Lightweighted MIDI Keyboard to try little bit out.

So in my view there would be 2 options for me because acoustic pianos are sadly not possible:

1. using an DP around $2K-$3K (with good action) + Computer with Pianoteq 4 and tweaking. What seems to me really complicated. I think not really an sensible solution.

OR

2. buying an V-Piano and tweak it a bit.

I've some questions to your answers.



Regarding the Sustain pedal: Is the Roland V-Piano in Basic-Presets really to short in decay while sustaining? I'm just wondering because in some Youtube-videos it seems good to me. OK maybe I let me deceive. I've to try it definitely by myself in a store...



Do mean the sample-based DPs? Or the V-Piano also? Because it uses the PM-Technology? How does the V-Piano react if you release and press without a fluid motion (the same like a grand or not?)



So do I understand right? After you modified settings on your V-Piano your pedal technique was no more terribly wrong?
---


What exactly do you mean?

Could anybody with experience on acoustic pianos and Roland SN digital pianos suggest, how you set the resonance values, so that I best possible prevent to learn bad pedalling habbits on my HP-505?

Would you have any internet-links to recommend for clearly to hear and studying a "good" resonance behaviour upon using the sustain pedal?

Yes, the sustain on all but one of the 28 presets (the exception is the penultimate one, no. 27, which is up to acoustic levels) on the V-Piano is short - the same as on all other DPs. The advantage of the V-Piano (& V-Piano Grand) is that everything is tweakable, even down to tuning the individual 'strings' for each note. So, it's easy just to go into 'Utility' (press F4 button) and scroll down to the second parameter (Tone Parameter), press F1 and start tweaking all the various resonances, pedal effects, decay, tone color, sound lift etc, etc.
I think the two extra presets on the V-Piano Grand may have acoustic-like levels of sustain, but I can't be sure because it's been a long time since I played it (when I tweaked it myself anyway).

I think that on many of the YouTube recordings, the V-Piano has already been tweaked, but because you get so many more nuances (and far wider dynamic range) from the V-Piano compared to other DPs, it's easy to forget that the sound dies rather quickly using the factory settings - I wasn't aware of it myself initially even though I'd only played on acoustics until I bought it. Looking back, it was partly because I was only comparing the way it played and sounded to other DPs when I was going around all the DP stores. But once I'd tweaked it, my pedal problems resolved - because I could no longer get away with holding the pedal down willy-nilly because the sound became congested and muddy, the same way as it would on any real piano, with all its soundboard and other resonances, and long sustain.

Well, I learned to play piano for 7 years and really loved it, but had to abandon when I had had a family and a small kid - having acoustic was no longer an option.
Now I returned to piano and purchased a digital at the same price range as Kawai CA 93/95, and playing the same pieces I played before on upright, and I do not feel any limitations. The vendor in the store played this model for me as well - he seemed to play professionally - and it still sounded good.

Several years ago I could not imagine having a digital instead of a real thing, they are progressing, and it may well happen that digital pianos repeat the story of digital cameras - as soon as they get to the level of a fine acoustic instrument (they are way more convenient than acoustic, acoustic is very demanding in terms of care and because it may not still sound to its full potential in an average house / appartment to justify 20-60-100K purchase), digitals can force acoustic out of the market for the majority of even advanced players.

Buy the time you will feel limitations of today's high-end digital instrument (it will take at least several years unless you study piano full-time), there will be better digitals on the market at affortable price tag than now, you may still prefer digital for its convenience, rather than acoustic.
Or even if you go with acostic, a decent digital piano is not that bad already to learn piano.

I have acoustic background playing upright though, so cannot say how hard to switch from a digital to acoustic.

This is just IMHO speculation

Sure! These are the actual settings on my HP-305. Have in account that the 305 lacks a dotted screen, it only has an LCD so the letters are simplified and may not correspond exactly to your 505:

rES (damper resonance): 7
rST (string resonance): 6
rOF (key off resonance): 7

By default all the values are set to 5, which I think it's a bit conservative.



I don't usually trust what an anonymous internet site tells about pedalling or another matter. I would rather read some authoritative books.

- The Art of Piano by Heinrich Neuhaus. Talks about many aspects of piano playing and also talks deeply about pedalling.

- Notes from the pianist's bench, by Boris Berman

- The Pianist's Guide to Pedaling, Joseph Banowetz

Thanks, CarloPiano!

When I said "Digitals are very forgiving in these ares", I'm referring to the fact that typically the "virtual" dampers damp the notes very quickly in a digital, on top of the fact that you wont get a thumping noise when you pedal heavily, quickly and without a smooth motion on a digital, which can lead to the habit of pedaling in such a way that will sound horrible on an acoustic piano. It's very hard to explain without actually having you in the room with an AP and a DP and simply showing you lol

To the OP's question I'd say NO. To really study the piano you should work with the real thing.

A compromise might be a hybrid digital with a real action (such as Yamaha's Avant Grand series).

Digitals have advantages for other things - but NOT for studying the piano.

BS.

Digital pianos have limitations that can impede progress to some degree when you are very advanced, but people who are very advanced already have an opinion on the subject and don't come here asking if a digital can replace an acoustic for study. I can therefore infer that the OP is a beginner or intermediate player, in which case a fine digital is a good alternative for studying.

I studied piano for my entire childhood and through college. Once I moved out on my own, I lived in apartments and with roommates where having an acoustic piano was just not practical, nor could I afford one. I quit playing. Fast forward 20 years, and I now have two young children that I want to get started on piano. I never thought I would buy a digital piano, but guess what, I just bought one. And not even an expensive one!

What are your goals? Are you going to be a professional pianist or are you learning and playing for your own pleasure. If it is the latter, I think a digital piano will be fine and as another poster pointed out, may even be better than a cheap acoustic upright. I have re-discovered the love of playing with my digital piano. I also think there are some key benefits to a digital piano for busy adults with a lot of commitments:
- piano can be played using headphones (my prime practice time is either after 10p or before 7a)
- you can record yourself playing and fine tune pieces without an instructor
- you do not need to worry about tuning the piano

I decided to go with a mid-range digital piano, so if either of my children decide they love piano, I have money to put towards a good acoustic. I definitely will not be selling the DP though!

Indeed I MAY have misunderstood. I was supposing the OP wanted to study the piano at conservatory level, and my answer was meant to be a reply to that. If I misunderstood, apologies - I'm not a native speaker of the English language.

Here's an example of what happens if a person's first instrument is a digital:



And of course, my all time favourite:
Yamaha P95



You've already provided me with an excellent signature, time for another one?

Reminds me of that good old Bach quote

"...is nothing remarkable..., all one has to do is hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself."

Although he is referring to playing organ, the idea is similar.

Brutal. His thumb in his right hand just kills me!!!

Meh... what does he know?

That was painful, but I very much doubt it has to do with digitals vs. acoustics. This guy is simply a robot with zero feeling for music.

Where does he say he learned on a digital? I couldn't find this information either on youtube or his own channel.

In any case, people were playing like that long before digitals were invented. I remember. And I'm sure that a mediocre upright piano would be more of a bar to a student realising his or her potential than all but the most toy-like digital piano.

Digital does not equate with sterile. A player with emotions to express will do it on the lowliest of digital pianos. Just as this man does not on a decent seeming grand piano.....although he does indeed get the notes in the right order.

That is Kos playing!

A tad wooden for my taste but pretty much the right velocities on the right keys.

Hmmmm well, one does not become regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time for nothing :P

daughter got into one of finest music school with Piano as major and she practiced only on Digitals (recently replaced with Yamaha C3M)

Congratulations to your daughter suniil!

If you are starting out - consider only 2 options: an acoustic upright or a Yamaha Avantgrand N1. I started on the former and just bought the latter. An acoustic is preferable, but I do believe the N1 would be the next best thing in a flat or apartment. The action on the N1 is true grand action; though the sound is not as resonant as an acoustic.

Don't cut corners. The less expensive digitals don't begin to match an acoustic in action or sound.

Hi Susan,
have you tried the Yamaha NU1 in comparison to the N1? It´s an upright action instead of a Grand action, but I think it as close to an acoustic action as the N1 is while being less expensive.

Best
D

Yes, I forgot to mention the NU1. So 3 options: acoustic upright, N1 or NU1.