Between digital piano and acoustic/classical piano,which one is better,what is the pros and cons between these two types of piano? What is the difference?

A decent digital can sound very good IMO.

Pros:

• Obviously you never need to get it tuned
• You can practice either with headphones on or the volume down
• You can connect it to the PC for recording or for use with music/education software
• Usually they will have other sounds such as Organs that you can play with
• Doesn't weight quite as much as an acoustic, so easier to move around if required

Cons:

• The sound will probably not be as rich as that from an acoustic (although some digitals have clever technology which makes them very convincing)
• You can't play during a power cut - I found this out the other week!
• Unless you get a decent one, you won't have the same tactile feedback from the keys as an acoustic

I'm sure other people will add more that I can't think of right now!

But is the touch (like playing loud or soft) of this two types same? If I am using a digital piano to practice,and I am using a acoustic piano during exam,will there be any huge difference?

I use a Clavinova CLP-270 and I have no issue with my balance between and at all when I go to play on my teacher's piano.

The best thing to do is to go into somewhere like Chappell's and try out a few As logn as you have a graded hammer effect (or equivalent) keyboard, the touch response should be pretty much the same as an acoustic. Most of them will let you adjust the velocity response if you don't like how the default is.

Solari-- Have you ever have the experience using a keyboard to play all those piano pieces? Because I am currently using one.It's quite frustrated when I can't get the touch that I want and the keys are much more lighter compared to a piano.

I'd ditch the keyboard as soon as you can... not having any weighted keys is not going to do you any favours when you play on a proper piano - you'll either make a huge noise or none at all I messed around with keyboard on and off for a few years when I was at school and the light plastic keys are nothing like playing a piano (or indeed a good digital).

Yeah,It's true,especially I am playing LOESCHHORN Study in F, Op 65 No 25 (Grade 3),where you have to be soft.

I'm doing that one for my Grade 3 too - it's a really nice piece Do you have a sustain pedal with your keyboard? I think a bit of pedal works nicely in this piece.

It depends on your level and how much money there is available to throw at it.

For (nearly) all grade level work you can get by with a reasonable digital model as long as it has has weighted keys and a pedal.
Extras like pc interface, recording facility and other gizmos may or may not be useful but headphones will extend your practice time into the unsocial hours. you can get all of this for £1000 or sometimes considerably less.

Once you get to upper grades/diploma level you will start to feel frustrated with it and want an acoustic model and then the outlay is usually far greater, and unless you have some sort of hybrid (or a practice pedal) you then need to consider whether you are annoying the neighbours.

I heard rumors that you cannot play higher grade (for example-grade 7) exam pieces with a very old acoustic piano,is that true? why is that?

As long as it's in good repair, I don't see why not?

I can understand perhaps some very fast passages being harder to play on an upright, as I guess on a grand piano, you have gravity on your side with the hammer action which should make things easier?

I could just be talking rubbish though...

I think it is quite an interesting theory....... I think grand piano is quite cool...

Are there any difference between different brands of upright accoustic piano? (for example:Yamaha...)

Depends what level you are really. Up to about grade 4, I don't think you'll really notice the difference, but after that the difference will become more and more apparent.

The touch of (even the really expensive) digital pianos is nowhere near as good as any half decent acoustic. You won't necessarily notice it though until you get to around grade 6+ though. The first time it really hit me was in the warm-up room for my grade 8 exam, which is basically the digital piano showroom of a shop, so it wasn't that they were bad digitals.

At home, I have both a digital (Roland FP7, which is pretty good as they go) and an upright (quite nice but nothing special). If I practise on the upright, I find that I can play them on the digital no problem, but the other way round, it's like I've hit a brick wall. (This is more apparent with faster pieces than slower ones)

The other main problem with digital pianos is the pedal, which is never realistic, even if it's not a straight on/off one. The upwards resistance in it is no where near enough and you can't feel the vibrations through it like you could with a real one. It also doesn't seem to have the effect of causing other strings in the harmonic series to resonate as well as the one you played so you don't get nearly as much resonance, which means that, sometimes, you can reasonably get away with pretty much just leaving it down throughout a piece. Again, when you go to playing on a real piano, it's like you've hit a wall and you find yourself either with a completely washed-out, over-pedalled mess and you have to pedal much more purposefully just to get the pedal to go down at all.

The only real advantage I can see to having a digital is that you can play silently. But, having said that, the noise from the keys will travel to the next room and the pedal thumping will go through the floor and is very loud coming from the ceiling in the room below, so it's not really as quiet as you'd think it would be.

Yes, it's more portable, but, as long as you only have to move it occaisionally, that's way down the list of things to consider when choosing a piano.

The hundreds and hundreds of sounds are really not necessary. If you really wanted to play the harpsichord/organ/violin/thunderstorm/train/dog , you probably wouldn't be buying a piano. They're a bit of fun to mess around with but really not relevant if you're learning the piano.

You can connect it to a computer to record from it, but you can record from an acoustic if you have a microphone.

Actually, the only real advantage I can think of of having a digital is that I can record recorder accompaniments sight-reading really slowly then speed them up rather than having to spend ages learning them. But that's cheating and won't exactly get you very far if you have a piano performance/exam etc or wanted to be able to actually play pieces.

So, basically, unless you have to move house every other week or something, you're probably better off with an acoustic.

My digital does half-pedalling and it does supposedly have some gubbins to do the resonance thingy, but you are right. I go to my lesson and find that the pedalling that sounds fine at home just turns the piece into a mess on the acoustic. At least some of the stuff I'm learning at the moment has all the pedalling marked so I can't mess it up too much

Bit of an odd workaround but I find that occasionally using a PianoStrings patch will show me exactly where I'm going overboard with the pedalling as the strings turn into a horrid mess when I use too much.

To some extent, that's true. It depends how well it's been looked after though really. My piano teacher's piano is very old and in perfectly good working order (although she did get all its hammers refelted a couple of years ago) whereas the pianos in school practice rooms are horrible just down to neglect and huge amounts of use. You can play pretty much any piece (definitely most pieces up to grade 8 and a bit above)on any piano, it just depends if you can really be bothered to spend time working out how to counter the effects of bad action/dodgy pedal etc etc.




You're talking complete sense. The action in a grand piano is a lot quicker and less complicated than in an upright because the hammers fall naturally back to the rest position rather than having to be driven there. That makes a grand, technically, easier to play, but it all depends on what you're used to really. To some extent, it's better to practise on an upright (unless you're always going to have a grand to play). Because it's harder to play, it means that when you get the rare opportunity to play a nice grand, it's easy. The other way round would be not so nice.



Mine supposedly does pedalling anywhere between completely on and completely off, but it's still completely useless.

All it does is uses different samples for different levels of pedal. As the samples will be taken per note, it probably won't recreate the laws of physics and hence any other resonances that would happen in the real world (ie: other nearby strings resonating in "sympathy", for want of a better word)

Solari --> Usually,what is the price range for a "decent" digital piano?

Sarah123--> If I want a upright piano that can use until Grade 8,how much should I fork out for it?

I'm not sure really as mine is discontinued now.. it was ?1700 when I bought it, though. I'm guessing around ?1K for something good? Someone else will probably be able to answer this as I'm not educated on what's around now!

If you want an upright you could look on eBay - people are practically giving them away! Perhaps pay for a piano tuner to come along with you to see what they think first in case you get something that will cost a fortune to sort out.

I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask about this as I've never actually been responisible for buying one. I've had a bit of a look on the internet and the decent new ones seem to start around £4000, but would be probably considerably cheaper second hand. If you can, find a friendly pianist (ideally around grade 8+) and go to a piano showroom and just get them to try them out and find one that you like the sound of and that they like the touch/pedal/etc of.

Personally, I would avoid the big black Yamaha ones as they're very clangy and seem to have quite a light action.