Hi , I was playing at a concert in my school on a digital piano and was just wondering if piano players prefered an acustic piano or a digital piano.

I prefer the sound of an acustic piano but I love the fact that a digital piano is porable, feels and plays like a piano and that some of them also have quite realistic piano sounds.

i prefer acoustic pianos because they sound a lot nicer! and i also think that they're more fun to play, especially baby grands because the sound reverberates a lot - digital pianos sound a lot more electronic (for obvious reasons!)

i love playing on baby grand pianos but i only have a digital one at home. They are good when you first buy them but after about 5 years, which is how long iv had mine, they go a bit dodgy.

i prefer 'real' pianos better as the keys are more suited to the touch. i love grand pianos:P

A high-end digital piano cannot match the sound of even a modest acoustic upright IMHO.. The sampling is impressive but can never faithfully reproduce the complex harmonics/physical characteristics of an acoustic instrument.

Still, they are great fun for all the extra samples and gadgets!!

The point about reliability etc. is an important. Why spend £2k on an reasonable digital if it is up the creak in 5 years? £5k spent on a modest upright should provide an instrument that will outlive the owner !!

dont people transpose at sight anymore?

If I must play an electronic piano then it must be a case of not being able to do better - and there's the portability... nice facility for disposal when I am through with it.

BAH....

I have to agree.. grand pianos are excellent to play on

Agree! I loved mine when I first got it - Grade 4 and 9 years old.. I'm now 16 and doing a Grade 8 on it is a nightmare!! it has some kind of Buzz on a Bb - ALWAYS a Bb - the ones at school do it too! I play a baby grand during my lesson and I find it really difficult because pedalling is so different and obviously real strings respond to touch better!
I'm playing in an audition on Saturday... I'm panicking already that the pedalling will go mushy or the touch will be uneven - my digital piano covers a multitude of sins!

Ah well... I live in hope.....That £5000 will fall out of the sky!!

i love grand pianos....play them very often...

I have a Claviniva CLP115 which cost me £638.
I've only been playing 3 months and I'm hoping to do grade 1 in the winter session.

The advantages of the digital piano is that they are cheap, small, portable and don't need tuning !

I agree that it would be a waste to buy a top of the range digital when you can get a new acoustic piano- but at the cheaper end it allows people like me to be able to play (after all I am only educated to PhD level in a science, I should have become an account then I could buy a grand paino every month or so !)

Also living in the south of England means that the biggest house anyone can afford is the size of a rabbit hutch- where could I put a grand ?

I tried out some 'real' pianos in a showroom last week, it amazed me that some of the uprights sounded more artificial than my digital piano !

lol for "more artificial" do you actually mean "different" ? perhaps the real sound of an upright (with all attendant real-word, real-time harmonics) jarred against the synthesised reproduction of the digital?

just my 2c worth

No I mean that some of the notes were not as rich as I was expecting.
Like comparing vinyl with tape
Maybe they were not as well tuned as they could have been

I myself prefer the "real thing", acoutic pianos because of the touch. The digital ones feel a bit too "springy" and you can't really get all the kinds of tones you want out of it. But I like the features you get on it when you want to make background music for solo parts. Makes the piece more exciting... it's as close to playing solo with an orchestra as you can get.

I find the viscosity of most modern digitals too high to make them particularly porable...

Horses for courses - I love my new acoustic, but my digital served me well when it was all I COULD have. I miss not being able to record half a duet and play along, and I miss tinkering with the 'other' sounds. A digital that doesn't get any TLC for three years will probably be in better shape than a similarly neglected acoustic...

To perform on, I'd rather have an acoustic (and a grand preferably). To practise on, given a choice between an ill-maintained acoustic and a good digital, the digital'd win.

Actually- I have disagree on the portable bit. My last clavinova weighed near on 100kg and took two burly men to move! Still, you'd let any two burly men move a digital- you wouldn't let just anyone move a 'real' piano.

Acoustic Acoustic Acoustic Acoustic Acoustic!!!! For the touch, the tone, the responsiveness..... Even a good digital (paying what I'd pay for a grand) wouldn't stand up to my acoustic (it's my baby....). Of course I could be biased, after weeks of preparation on my piano, having to perform on a clavi did not go well.....at least I ws only the accompanist!

There's nothing like a grand piano...... but I also have a Roland FP8 full size keyboard which I sometimes use - like the time I had to accompany an informal evening concert in a village hall and I rang up to see if there was a piano stool with the piano and what was the piano like? "What piano?" was the reply

Definitely acoustic! Definitely.

I prefer an acoustic piano, there is a certain feel to the keys and the way they work that can't be replicated by a digital piano somehow. However, cost can be a huge barrier, we inherited our upright when I was young, but I don't know if we would have had a piano otherwise. The ones at school are awful though, and thats the only time i'd rather play on the digital piano. The school acoustics have awful damper pedals, and, some notes which don't work, never mind the echoey ringing that sounds as you play it.

Everybody seems to agree (unsuprisingly) that acoustic are better than digital.
Does only having a digital (like I do) put me at a disadvantage for preparing for exams, especially since I have never yet played on an acoustic ?

(By the way I prefer vinyl to cds too)

My cousin only has a digital piano and has taken grades 1, 2 and 3- she wasn't particularly disadvantaged by her lack of an acoustic piano as far as I'm aware as she got good marks in all three exams, but I know that her teacher has said that as she progresses up the grades it's probably going to be a good idea to invest in an acoustic piano eventually.

Because of my previous living situations i.e. flats and because of my habit of feeling the urge to practice at late hours, for the past ten years or so I have had a digital piano and a keyboard. I do though, get to play on different acoustic pianos every day as I do home visits with all my pupils.
When you've been playing a Digital Piano for a long time, you become accustomed to its peculiarities and adapt to the differences of pedaling, touch, dynamic range etc. A competent pianist would find it no problem to swap technique between an acoustic and a digital in performance. The dynamice range is usually better on an acoustic, the touch needs to be more balanced and weighted and the pedalling has to be a lot more controlled and subtle. For all of this though, there is nothing worse than having to play a piece of melodious music on an out-of-tune, clackety old straight-strung upright with poor dampers. This is the one big advantage with a digital piano. It may be sampled and different sounding, different feeling, but at least you know that it is in tune and at concert pitch and will always sound pretty good. I can't think of many of my pupil's pianos of which I could say the same. Also, with a digital, you get all the extra voices and rhythms to use for playing other types of music. Also, digital pianos can be connected up via midi to the computer for the creatiion of accompaniments, arrangements etc etc.
My favourite then, all depends on the circumstances and both an acoustic and digital piano each have their own place. An excellent Grand Piano and/or Upright would always be preferable over a digital when playing any Piano music of course, but the digital has the advantage of being more diverse, always in tune and more portable etc. I am fortunate enough to now have both types.

Gae

Whilst I would never argue that a digital piano is superior, or equal to an acoustic piano, I do think that sometimes the attitudes that come across about digital pianos can be a little too negative. Yes, if you can at all get one have an acoustic piano, but if it's not possible then a digital piano is good enough for pretty much all of the grade levels: I know of someone who did grade 7 having only ever had a digital piano, and YetAnotherPianist did most of his DipABRSM practice on a digital piano (well I say most of it, he was learning from aged six on an acoustic piano so that's a good number of years of experience with the real thing; but in terms of the final 18 months of preparation this was mostly done on a digital piano).

If you think digital pianos are bad I did grades 1-3 on a keyboard (touch sensitive with full size keys but no action whatsoever) and managed to get distinctions for all three: that was without even having a teacher to visit once a week with a real piano. I could only play a real piano for very limited time when visiting someone with one: probably averaging out at around an hour every two months...

I now have a digital piano and have got a grade 4 distinction practising on that (it is so much better than the keyboard). I shall soon be beginning to work towards grade 5 using the digital piano and it's fine; yes the pedalling is slightly different, perhaps too forgiving, but then again pedalling (and action) varies a lot between acoustics too.

In summary, I think if you can't have a real piano a good digital one will be fine at least for grade 8 and below. Maybe if you get to diploma level and have no experience of an acoustic you will run into problems; but other than that I think the reaction that comes across is a little too strong. An acoustic is better but a good digital piano can get you a long way if you can't have one: already in my house the digital piano blocks off one of the two settees in the lounge and is in the middle of the room, there is no more room in the house (there are four rooms, bedroom, bathroom kitchen and lounge) so it would be physically impossible to get an acoustic piano in this already furnished house (not to mention the modern built terrace making with every room next to another house making the noise loud). Yes, when I'm no longer a student I will most definitely be buying a bigger house and an acoustic piano but for now it's just not feasible. If it's not possible don't worry about it: what else could you do, give up alltogether? Then you'd be worse off anyway!

Speaking of buzzing, my CLP-115 buzzes on D. Always D.

this might be a bit weird but surely the acoustic piano is the original one, it was invented WAY before the digital and no technology can ever replace something like that?

Cheers buddy!


!!

acoustic

I've had my last two piano exams at an old ladies house, where the warm-up piano is a small keyboard on the ladies bed, where you have to kneel on the floor next to it to play. I'm hoping my grade 7 won't be there!

I like both really; obviously, I'd prefer a grand piano if I could afford one, but, for its price, you can get quite good realistic sounding digital pianos, sometimes better sounding than acoustic pianos for the same price. The thing I like about the digital pianos is that it gives room for experimentation, you can record different voices on different tracks and then put them together with some, and the one we've got has got several demos, and 50 or so piano pieces as well that I've played, so it's nice to hear the demo occasionally too. I'd be content with a digital piano, providing it's got enough keys (thus why I prefer it to keyboards), there's nothing wrong with them, but if I had the money and space for a grand piano, obviously, I'd take the Grand Piano instead given the choice!

Wobby

I think its clear that eveyone would like a grand if they had the money and the space.

Then again I'd have a Maserati instead of a Fiat if I had the money !

No offence to all you modern piano players.. but the digital ones are terrible in my opinion..

You can never get much emotion or feeling for the keys, and its just not like wat a real piano....

Personally, i prefer grand pianos, but even uprites are better than digital pianos... especially keyboards...

You can't beat the sound and feel of an acoustic piano but the digital ones are good if you like composing and using different sounds. I'm going to be getting a digital piano for my 18th birthday (been saving for 2 years now and family are going to give me money towards it!) but I already have an acoustic so I'll be fortunate enough to be able to flit between the two. The thing I'm worried about is how long it will last as I have heard lots of people having trouble with their digital pianos after only a couple of years e.g. pedals not working, keys getting stuck etc. Is this only with particular makes or does it happen to all of them? I'm thinking of getting a Yamaha Clavinova CVP-309 (I think thats the right name!)

Lisa xxx

but somehow....i find some grand piano sound a bit ''artificial'' too....and that makes me thinking for months..til now. what is the cause....and sometime i can difrenciate the tones betweekn a digital piano and a acoustic piano, since i have the experience of hearing a ''artificial'sounding grand.

i'm sure steinway isn't as artificial as you would have thought...

although i really like acoustics, i love the recording feature on my digital, i can hear what im playing!

Yes, i second that.. My friend has a steinway.. pity he's a spoiled brat and doesnt deserve it!

lol, i would really like to have my the pieces played by myself recorded....but i have no idea of how to so, it should be fun and more motivating as we can hear our own songs and criticised it ourselves.or even other piano experts!as most ppl cant performed naturally in front of others...i thnk it is a good way to improve, by have our own songs recorded.what r u guy's opinion?

Sure, but whats the point if your playing is bad because ur on a keyboard in the first place?

I really hope that you listen WHILE you are playing too.......