About a year ago I bought a very basic digital piano - a Yamaha YDP - S30. At that time, no one in our family played the piano, and it was only bought to enable my daughter's clarinet teacher, who comes to us, to accompany her occasionally, and do some work on aural tests. Hence, I didn't want to spend much. Even I can tell it doesn't resonate like a "real" piano. However, it does have pedals, weighted keys, touch sensitivity etc. - ie I was careful to get a "piano" rather than a keyboard. We don't have a lot of space and our central heating had previously destroyed my grandmother's acoustic piano....

Shortly after we got this piano my daughter started lessons, and has just taken Grade 2. I hoped the piano would do until Grade 5. However, she constantly complains that it as not as nice/easy to play as the piano she uses for her lessons at school. I haven't taken too much notice because (as a non-pianist) it seems to me likely that every piano feels different, and my daughter also moans about some of the other school pianos that she has played for concerts/exam.

As she learns at school I only met her teacher for the first time last week at a school "instrumental evening". In view of my daughter's complaints I mentioned to the teacher that we had this very basic digital piano, and did we need something better? She said at once that we did, but from the subsequent conversation seemed to assume that the piano lacked the pedals which she said would be needed from Grade 3.

So, any thoughts as to whether we can make do with what we have for now, or is it really going to impede my daughter's progress?

This is probably not what you wanted to hear but my gut instinct would be to say that you should probably get another piano, and preferably an acoustic instead of digital.

Although digital pianos have pedals and weighted keys, only the very best actually feel like pianos to play and I've never played one that had a satisfactory pedal.

You are right that all pianos are different, but from my experience, your daughter is probably right to complain about some of the school pianos, as they are generally old, overplayed, out-of-tune, have dodgy pedals, clangy sound, uneven touch etc etc (I've never seen a school practice room piano that was any good). The piano she uses in lessons however is more likely to be of decent standard.

Hi!

Well, my digital piano has got me up to grade 6 standard, and hopefully further, so it can't all be that bad! But I understand where your daughter is coming from completely. My auntie has a baby grand piano in her dining room, and I have nothing but jealousy when I go round there and play it.....one can dream i guess ><

Im afraid that the more musical kids do start to notice the differences fairly soon, and will want an acoustic piano rather than a digital. If you possibly can, I think you should get an acoustic. Take some advice about where to put it and how to look after it so that it doesn't suffer from the central heating. Most modern pianos cope pretty well as long as they are nowhere near a radiator. There are plenty of bargains to be had at the moment - find yourself a reputable piano tuner and ask him/her about second-hand acoustics - they are often the first to hear of any that are for sale and can tell you whether they are worth buying. Good luck!

But if and when you buy an acoustic piano - keep the digital. It will be invaluable for getting extra hours of practice without driving the rest of the household and the neighbours insane.

Most of my pupils either have a digital piano or an electronic keyboard to practise on at home, and for most of them I think space, as well as cost, is the issue. Keyboards can go in bedrooms out of the way and certainly digital pianos take up less space than an acoustic piano. I had one pupil who went up to Grade 5 practising on a keyboard, before her parents bought a digital piano. Not recommended though.

One of my new pupils plays on my (acoustic) piano so quietly I can barely hear the notes. When I asked him about how he played at home, I discovered that if he wanted to play loudly he just turned up the volume button on his (digital) piano.

On the other hand I have a pupil who has an acoustic piano with very heavy keys, and he plays everything very heavily and finds it difficult to play quick passages. We've had to work hard to get him to play lightly for some of his exam pieces, but he's getting there.

However many times I play on a digital piano, I've always far preferred my acoustic. It's not a good make but it's easy to play, and although I'd prefer the beautiful new Yamaha grand just acquired in the school I teach in (it's lovely to play), I have to make do with what I can afford and fit in to my house. I'd always recommend an acoustic if possible (spend as much time as possible trying it out, so it suits your daughter), or a good digital as a second choice.

Keyboards in bedrooms out of the way - how sad.. I had a number of pupils in that category and they all fell by the wayside, through lack of practice. Parents didn't want to hear the 'noise' and weren't sufficiently interested to supervise and encourage.

Sorry,

Remaining off topic for a minute; yes I agree it's very sad if the keyboard is kept out of the way in a bedroom, but I think that's possibly marginally better than having to keep it in its case and then get it out to practise and then put it away again so everyone can watch the telly. At least it can be kept out and ready to play if it's in the child's bedroom (hopefully). I sometimes ask my pupils if their mums/dads/stepdads have listened to them play a piece they've been working on, and am quite saddened when so many of them say no. It's quite obvious which pupils have parents who are interested - they are the ones who make good progress on the whole.

Get a good acoustic if at all possible and I'll second getting in touch with local tuners. You will need a good tuner once you've got the piano anyway so start asking around now and use their local knowledge. There have been a few threads about piano tuners here recently so try doing a search.

Definitely keep the digital too if you can afford to - not only for late-at-night playing but for when your child eventually goes off to uni when having a portable instrument is far better than no instrument at all. As to keyboards in bedrooms, my experience is that each child is different and some actively like to be able to shut themselves away and get on with playing whereas others need to be in an environment where there are others around. Also, if your digital has a computer interface your child will quite possibly want to start to experiment with composing through a keyboard and music software (eg sibelius) as they get older.

Digital pianos/keyboards are OK for synths, pop music and compositional output. Get an acoustic piano for serious music study/practice and pleasure. I have played and tried out top of the range digital offerings from Korg, Roland and Yamaha (some of these costing around £5-6K upwards) and yet not one of them in my opinion or in the opinions of a number of profs from RAM and RCM come any where near in performance, sound and playability to a mid range, mid priced well tuned acoustic instrument. You can buy a brand new acoustic upright piano for around £1600 and many dealers in these recessive times will cut you a good deal. Why buy a load of electronic 'tat' when you can have the real thing for more or less the same price?.

Ideally, an acoustic piano would be good for grade 3 upwards (does your digital not have any pedals at all?), but I think one could get away with a digital until after grade 5. Not having regular access to an acoustic piano would cause difficulties in the higher grades (though I do know of someone who has gone through grade 8 with only a digital)

Yes, I'm certainly reluctant to part with the digital for just this sort of reason. My daughter has come to the piano fairly late; she's 12 and in Year 8, so already beginning to compose in school music. Also, it's handy for her to be able to record what she plays, and listen critically to it, or just record one hand's worth of music to play along with.

On the other hand, I'm not sure where we'd put 2 pianos...

Maledictis - Yes, the digital has pedals (3) - see my original post. It was just the teacher's assumption that it did not.

Oops sorry, missed that bit!
In that case, I stand by my original statement that although it may be desirable to upgrade to an acoustic at this point, it is not yet necessary

Just to give an alternative viewpoint to balance this one ^ ...

I started learning on a *very cheap* portable digital piano (not keyboard) - it was around £150 last year although I think it's gone up now. I don't use it for synths, pop music or, at the moment, for compositional output - I'm going down the "normal" classical path. I'm extremely pleased with it, and the advice I got from experienced pianists on here at the time I bought it was that it ought to see me through quite a number of grades. It's possible that some people think that because it was so cheap, it must be rubbish, but anyone who is more open-minded may well discover that it's perfectly suitable for a beginner up to intermediate level (which is the advice I got). I'm not saying it's suitable in your circumstances, Halka, I don't know, but particularly in these economic times, I didn't want anyone else reading this thread to get the impression that all digital pianos - even cheap ones - are "electronic tat" and that they need to spend four figures on a beginner piano, because that's a long way from being the case, in my opinion

My son passed his Grade 6 on a Yamaha Clavinova, we bought a good acoustic piano earlier this year and are waiting for the result of his Grade 7.

Higher grades are possible on a reasonable electronic instrument - we bought the Clavinova to replace a very worn-out acoustic when my son had done his Grade 2 but was the only person playing - we could not have justified the quality of piano we have now bought until now, when he is at the upper end and two more of us are learning.

It is something to consider for the future, but I don't think it is urgent yet - but if she progresses beyond grade 5, yes you may well need to do something then.

I certainly advise keeping the electronic if you can, for late-night practise or for the differewnt possibilities afforded by the voices

Our 4th son moaned and moaned that our piano was horrid compared to the ones at school but then again, he was able to use those to practise on! He really wanted me to buy a Bosendorfer but I didn't have the spare thousands and couldn't, he passed his Grade 8 very well despite our home instrument being a bit rough and ready.

I'm an adult learner who has just been playing a couple of years.
I started with a Yamaha YDP-223, which I still use about 50% of the time.

My wife and my instructor did convince me about six months ago that I really needed an acoustic piano.
I started searching Craigslist for my area, and within a month found a very nice 50 year old upright for about $1200 (plus another $150 to get it home). The digital then went to our bedroom and the acoutic to the living room.

If you are not aware of it, Craigslist is a not-for-profit community bulletin board operating in most major cities in the UK (as well as US, Canada and many other places).

I just did a quick serch now on the London site and found a used upright going for 420 pounds. From the picture it apears in nice shape. Obviously, you have to shop around and inspect any instrument closely for cracks, tuning etc. There are many unwanted pianos out there, however.

As someone said, though, keep the digital as well. I get to practice all day in an empty house (on the acoustic), but after the troops come home, its nice to be about to put on the headphones and continue in my own bedroom!

I have a Roland FP2. I also have a Grand, which was delivered 3 weeks before I took grade 8. I still do a lot of my practice on the FP2, not least because I am perfectly well aware that my wife doesn't really want to hear me playing the same bar of a Bach prelude or fugue repeatedly until I get it right. Also, at this time of night she doesn't want to hear the piano at all! An acoustic piano (not necessarily a grand, although if you're planning on turning pro maybe even that) is probably essential to an advanced player. A decent digital is suboptimal, but will get you there.

I have a digital to practice on at home because I can't afford a real piano and I am starting to notice how my playing is suffering because I can't practice what I have learnt in the lesson.

As an advanced student, I spend most of the time in my lesson learning how to control the tone evenly and how to improve the piece by working with the different nuances of the piano, a lot of which you can't recreate on a digital.

I would say that at some point, you need to buy an acoustic piano if you want your daughter to be able to play as well as she can - there comes a stage when a digital becomes a hindrance. It is fine to learn the notes on and to learn pieces at the very start when you are just familiarising yourself with new things, but you need a real piano touch to be able to refine it. Even scales can't serve their purpose on a digital as you don't need the same finger control on a digital as is required to produce good, even tone on an acoustic.

You don't need to actually own an acoustic piano or have one in your house. YOu simply need to have regular access to one, for a significant part of your practice.

I would not go so far as to say it is a hindrance. It is just not sufficient by itself. Most obviously you cannot learn proper use of the pedal because pedalling is not properly emulated. But most of the work that goes into learning any piece is done deliberatley without pedal, even when the pedal will be used a lot in the final performance.

Thi si quite true

But this particular point is not entirely one-sided. Because the sound cuts off so abruptly on a digital when the key is released you need much more precise control to produce a good legato than is needed on an acoustic instrument - expecially an upright where the damping is noticeably more sluggish than in most grands.

Apart from being unable to practice the sort of pedalling that you need for Romantic, Impressionist, and modernist composers, a serious deficiency of a digital is that you can't get a different quality of staccato by varying the force - in particular you can't get that "trumpety" sound that you need for Martinu, Bartok, and some Profofiev, amongst others.

However, limitations like that are not restricted to the digital/acoustic divide. I know someone that bough a reconditioned Steinway because they could do things on it that they "could not do on their Yamaha C5" [They kept the Yamaha as well!]

I actually have to agree with heartbeat on this one - I have 2 students who practise on their digital pianos at home, and then they have 1 half hour practice session a week on school pianos and 1 hour lessons a week with me.

I have noticed that their technique has deteriorated in the last couple of months that they have been using the digital piano instead of the acoustic that thy were used to (their parent's split up - mum has an acoustic, dad doesn't and they now live with him).

I can only think that this is because of the lack of resistance on the digital piano compared to the weight of an acoustic - I know the keys on a digital are technically weighted, but that is only electronically, to respond to pressure; they don't actually require the same amount of effort as pressing down a real piano key. Their digital piano is a Yamaha P140, which I believe to be a high end digital piano (?) but for example, they recorded themselves playing Czerny exercises on their digital at home to prove to me that they did it well at home, because in lessons, they find it really hard to do Czerny exercises on the piano I teach them on - which has very light keys to play.

This, I believe, is a hindrance to their improvement.

I think you have missed the point.

The problem in the case you quote above is not that the practice that they do on a digital piano is a hindrance. It is that they are playing a digital piano almost exclusively. It is the lack of a traditional piano that is a hindrance. (One half hour at school and a weekly lesson are hardly sufficient).

I believe that you can go quite a long way with only a digital piano, and that a digital piano is a useful practice tool at any level so long as it is combined with a significant amount of practice on an acoustic instrument.

I don't really see how I could have put it more clearly.

I am not a fan of the things or a proselytizer for them, but I see their usefulness. There is no way I could get in sufficient practice if it all had to be on an acoustic instrument. I often snatch some extra time at 7:00 a.m., or after midnight. Unless you live in a large mansion, or have a sound-insulated music studio, you just can't do that with a conventional piano.

I have not a clue what you mean by "I know the keys on a digital are technically weighted, but that is only electronically, to respond to pressure; they don't actually require the same amount of effort as pressing down a real piano key"

The keys of the Yamaha P-series are not "technically" weighted. They are actually weighted. They use real weights, gradually heavier from treble to base, and the force required to move the keys is fairly similar to that of the majority of real pianos. The overall feel is still different in many ways, but this is not one of the reasons.

Sorry Mad Tom, I missed that, yes I do agree that is due to exclusive use.

What you say about the Yamaha P-Series is very interesting - I did not believe that digitals were truely weighted at all (I'm not very good with technology, so please don't be mean!) I just thought that it emulated the weighted effect.

It surprises me, because I am having to use a digital at the moment (usually a Yamaha P-190 I think) and it doesn't feel anything like an acoustic. The keys are weighted, but still feel like there is nothing attached to the end - the feel is not like that of a light touch piano, in fact there is resistance that I can feel, they just don't feel normal. I obviously don't know why this is though!

I'd just like to point out that this is more than a question of progress, and hindering it - and the jury's clearly still out on that one; it's a question of enjoying what you're playing! The more enjoyable it is, the more you'll do it, and the more progress you'll make!

I know that when I play my teachers beautiful Yamaha grand, I sound infinitely better than when I play on my digital. (which doesn't have the spongey quality that I have noticed on some others.)

I made an effort to practice on different acoustics before an exam last year and they were all nasty - over bright in tone, dodgy keys, stools (or plastic chairs!) the wrong height and non-adjustable.

I'm not sure if practice on acoustics made any difference to my technique but it is useful to use different instruments so that you are not freaked out by it in the stress of a performance situation. Which leads me to wonder if it is the experience of acoustic instruments in itself that is essential, or merely that of using and being able to adapt to any instrument. Much has been said about nuances and key strokes etc but you can hone it to perfection on your own acoustic and then find it doesn't translate to someone elses.

That is what I wonder too.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts, though they leave me still uncertain what to do . Therefore, for now I will do nothing!

Certainly, I will consult my daughter's clarinet teacher next term, as he is a good pianist and has experience of playing our current piano. Also, my daughter will be doing a jazz workshop next term on Saturday mornings above our local piano shop, which should afford us the opportunity to experiment with a few new and second hand pianos as we pass through the shop.

Her piano teacher has suggested that my daughter try to get to school early and do some practice there. However, daughter (like her mum) is not an enthusiastic early riser...