My son plays the piano and is about to take his grade 2 exam in the summer. At his last exam there was a horrid digital piano in the practice room (much to the disgust of his tutor might I add). Since then she has advised that the pupils have had a keyboard to practice on beforehand; which she says is better, but still would prefer a piano.

I just wondered what everyone's thoughts on this were from students to teachers and beyond. Do you think that a proper piano should be provided for practise before an exam as playing on a keyboard or basic cheap digital piano is not the same as playing on the real thing and I think it can be very Off-putting especially for younger candidates. Maybe this is the norm!

When my son started playing piano we bought a top of the range digital piano as he was only six and we thought that it would keep him keen with having the different sounds etc. We have said we will look at buying a proper second hand piano if he gets through his exam as obviously things will get a lot harder at grade three level. Although he still wants to keep the digital piano to do his own thing, he gets frustrated when practising and it all comes down to the touch sensitivity of the keys even though you can change it on ours, he can still tell a vast difference.

I would really appreciate your views and comments to get a general overview on this.

Some centres don't even have warm up facilities.
At least if you know about it the teacher can advise on how best to use the warm up time.
I always advise that this time is not used to play through the pieces though sometimes just playing the first couple of bars is good. I tend not to play any of the scales either but to play some other sort of warm up exercise.
A piano candidate is allowed a couple of minutes in the exam room to try the piano. Maybe his teacher can advise on how best to use this time.

mumsy, sorry it isn't very clear from your post whether you are asking about a piano at the exam centre in the "warm up room" or the piano you have at home to prepare for the exam - your post seems to allude to both.

As sbhoa as said many exam centres don't even have a warm up room, never mind one with a piano in it. This is more for those instruments that require warming up/ tuning up before hand rather than piano. I don't think the exam centre is the place for last minute practice. Better to spend a few seconds trying out the piano in the exam room at the start.

For practice at home - personally I would prefer a good acoustic to a good digital piano, but a good digital is preferable to a poor acoustic. If your piano has properly weighted, full size keys and is touch sensitive then I would think that is suitable for taking him all the way up to grade 8 and beyond. It comes down to your budget, space in your house and personal preference. Either way the piano in the exam - whether acoustic or digital, will always feel and be different to the one you have at home. So it is a good idea to take any opportunity to practice on a different piano (school, teacher, friends' houses) to get used to adapting to different instruments. This will make it less of an issue in the exam.

I have been to many different exam centres over the past 20 years, all over the country. In that time, I've only been to two with warm-up facilities, and in both cases, neither had a piano anyway.

If anyone here is from Liverpool, they'll know the Friends' Meeting House centre(unless it's stopped being used since I moved away 12 years ago) - two halls on the go most of the time during exams; I used to get a pretty good vocal warm-up going in a resonant stairwell, with me singing the harmonies

Our centre has a warm up room with a digital piano and I use it for warming up instrumentalists and singers. However,I advise my pianists to keep well away from it because it has such a light action, whereas the exam piano is fairly heavy to play. Going straight from one to the other would not be helpful.

Must be lucky here then as my local centre has a practise room with a digital piano. It's not great and has no sustain pedal so I certainly wouldn't advise it for doing anything except getting your fingers warmed up and flexible. But it is useful for tuning up woodwind instruments and a quick run through with an accompanist if necessary. The piano for the exam is lovely and I covet it for my own having played it when accompanying a bassoonist recently.

I must be lucky, then, that the only two centres I've ever used both have warm-up rooms with pianos!

The Cambridge AB centre is in a music shop, and the waiting are upstairs has a small room off with two digital pianos and headphones.

The TG exams are held in various schools and I've only been with my pupils once (so far) where we waited in a small practice room with an upright piano.

Special visits, though, in the 60s - sometimes in a private house, I think we even had them in ours once or twice, and only the one, upright piano against a wall to take the exam on. I don't know if this has changed since then.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply and I really value your comments. I must admit I thought that all exam centres provided a room with a piano/digital piano/keyboard for practice and warm up before the exam. It looks as though I was totally wrong to think that and we should consider ourselves lucky that we get anything at all.

My personal view is that I think it is a good idea to be able to warm up the fingers with scales etc. and to chill out and calm down especially when a child has just come out of school all hyper and full of school stuff in their head.

Interesting! I appreciate the feedback.