Pianos vs Keyboards - Music Lessons - Williamsburg Brooklyn Greenpoint

Should You Learn on a Real Piano or an Electric Keyboard?

Why is this important? Piano teacher, Nicki Adams, is here to tell us why…..

I’m a pianist and piano teacher offering piano lessons in Brooklyn, and I often receive questions about what kind of piano to have at home, particularly whether to buy an acoustic or digital instrument. I wanted to lay out a few reasons why I usually recommend acoustics and offer some advice for those seeking digitals:

1. The acoustic piano produces sound with hammers and strings.

You hit a key and it launches the hammer like a catapult throwing felt. It strikes the string and an explosion of sound echoes through the wood and brass frame. This gesture has inspired thousands of compositions and performances in styles and generations of musicians ranging from Mozart to Art Tatum to Billy Joel. A student’s understanding of their instrument motivates exploration and learning. Without a grasp of the essential sound making apparatus of their instrument, a beginner feels less responsible for the sounds they make. That’s why I generally recommend the acoustic piano. I understand it can be a big ﬁnancial investment to own your own acoustic piano – a good quality upright can run between $4,500 and $10,000. However, used pianos can be found in great shape at much lower prices. Just check out the website pianoadoption.com, and you’ll ﬁnd a whole catalogue of free pianos, sometimes in good condition or in need of minor tune-ups. Consulting a piano teacher or piano technician when purchasing your instrument is always beneﬁcial. Other deterrents include space and lack of stability. Living in New York, it’s hard to predict your living situation year by year – it costs more to move acoustic pianos and they limit your living options. These are important points, but daunting as an acoustic may be, I still believe the student’s payoff is worth the investment.

2. The shelf life of a good piano vs a good digital piano is remarkably different.

Digitals lasts 5-10 years while acoustics can last 50 -150 years if well maintained. There’s a few reasons for this. As instrument companies improve digital pianos the older models become obsolete and there’s less demand for technicians, so instead of ﬁxing older models people generally buy new ones in the same way they upgrade computers and phones. An acoustic needs regular tuning and upkeep, and there’s always a market for repairing and tuning up older models. Also, rating the value of an acoustic has more to do with personal preference. Students become attached to their acoustic pianos and hang on to them longer. In fact, many recording studios have less expensive spinets and uprights because there’s a demand for quirkier, unconventional piano sounds in popular and indie music. Even the premium quality grands are vastly different in tone, feel and action. World class pianists might prefer a Steinway D, Bosendorfer or Fazzioli and usually audition speciﬁc models before performing or recording on them. A digital piano is easier to assign objective value, insofar as it successfully replicates a sound. Since it doesn’t resonate itself, but rather sends signals to ampliﬁers, the threshold of quality isn’t based on preference but on the degree to which it realistically portrays the sound of an acoustic. When looking for a piano to start out, it’s good to be cautious, but an affordable acoustic works wonders for beginners. My parents went to a garage sale and bought our piano for $500 when I was younger in the 1990’s – it wasn’t great, but it served my practice needs for performances, competitions and eventually conservatory auditions.

3. Digital pianos won’t prevent opportunities, but it’s important to ﬁnd a good quality model with some speciﬁc features.

First, it must be weighted so that it feels like a real piano. A real piano’s keys are attached to hammers that strike strings. Digital pianos manufacture that feeling using sets of weights attached to each key. It makes the digital instrument slightly heavier to carry than a non-weighted digital, but it’s a world of difference for developing ﬁnger strength and muscle memory when practicing songs and scales. Another important feature is touch sensitivity – this makes the volume of the notes variant upon how hard or soft you strike the key. If you can’t control the volume of the piano by striking the keys at differing velocities you’ve lost one of the most important parts of playing music: the ability to play with dynamics. Lastly, I encourage students to avoid digital pianos with many different sounds. Practicing on an acoustic piano sound can inform one’s use of synthesizers and organs if one leans toward those instruments in the future, but synthesizers and organs are almost as different from the piano as vibraphones and marimbas. Students should always experiment with sounds, but clicking buttons and turning knobs can limit their ability to express more complex emotions and ideas on their instrument.

4. Weekly lessons on an acoustic piano beneﬁts students, especially those who are not ready for the commitment at home, so keep this in mind when choosing a studio and teacher.

The difference between teaching on a digital vs an acoustic piano is the same as the difference between performing on a digital vs acoustic instrument – you won’t ﬁnd any instance of professional pianists recording on digitals and most famous teachers require their students to have acoustic instruments. This is mostly because digital pianos fail to adequately replicate the sounds of an acoustic. They come closer and closer, but they’re inevitably limited to mimicking through a series of pre-programmed digital responses. A real piano has an inﬁnite array of sounds depending on how you strike the keys – one can have a hard, smooth, soft, short, or connected to name a few. The possibilities lead to unique voices on the instrument and new ways of interpreting songs. You might think that there’s little more to the sound of a pianist then the notes they choose and the instrument they use, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. For example, a friend was recently at a performance and was excited to ﬁnd out that Chick Corea was in the audience, and the bandleader had asked him to play a few songs. My friend thought he had a good sense of the piano’s sound after hearing the house pianist but was amazed by how completely Chick transformed the tone quality of every note. Chick sounded like the same Chick he heard on recordings from the 1960’s, and the audience could recognize that just from the ways he pressed the keys. Pianists of Chick’s caliber ﬁnd their distinctive voices through hours of exploration. This is one of the key vehicles for discovering their relationship to the sounds of their instrument. Not just pianists, but all musicians interact with sound by tampering with the mechanical attributes of their instruments. To direct these explorations, one must have some basic understanding of how their instrument works. Some people see the connection between digital signals producing waves that are channeled through ampliﬁers, but it’s incredibly complex when compared to striking an object and hearing the object resonate. When I was very young I banged on pots and pans as makeshift drum sets. It wasn’t too far removed to the sensation of hitting levers that strike strings when I got a piano. Both are percussive means of producing sound. The various customs of communicating with drums through human history at some point developed into the myriad forms of tone-based percussion instruments found around the world. The piano is one of those and came to occupy a solid place in the milieu of sounds associated with countless artists, genres and musical periods all the way to today. The exploratory possibilities of the instrument still resonate in the minds of children as they do in adults, giving the piano its reputation as a portal into the creative discipline of composition, performance and improvisation.

Written by Nicki Adams

Many thanks goes out to Nicki for writing this thoughtful article. Nicki teaches piano at Williamsburg Music Studio. For music lessons in Brooklyn, voice lessons in Brooklyn, or other musical instruction, please get in touch.

1. The acoustic piano produces sound with hammers and strings.

2. The shelf life of a good piano vs a good digital piano is remarkably different.

3. Digital pianos won’t prevent opportunities, but it’s important to ﬁnd a good quality model with some speciﬁc features.

4. Weekly lessons on an acoustic piano beneﬁts students, especially those who are not ready for the commitment at home, so keep this in mind when choosing a studio and teacher.

Written by Nicki Adams

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