First, to clarify, there are "keyboards" and there are "digital pianos". Keyboards typically have 60ish keys, keys that are light or thin, and sound that is low quality. Digital pianos, on the other hand, have full-sized keys that are weighted like a grand piano, have a connection for a traditional piano pedal, and usually have a good sound quality. Keyboards are not appropriate for learning most kinds of "serious" piano music.
A digital piano is perfectly fine to learn on. They're pretty good quality these days. You can put headphones on and not disturb anybody. (Grand pianos are comparatively loud.) There's no question that you can reach an advanced level of playing on a good quality digital piano, like the better ones from Roland, Kawai, or Yamaha.
However, you lose a lot of really fine-grained control of sound. I'm talking about really fine stuff that classical pianists appreciate. For instance, pressing the pedal on a digital won't give you any feedback from the felt rubbing on the strings. Most classically trained teachers would recommend an acoustic over this fact alone.
An acoustic grand also has more opportunities to change and shape the color of the tone. A technician can make the piano warmer or brighter for example.
Some teachers claim an acoustic will lead to vastly better physical technique. I haven't seen this substantiated by any actual experiment though, so it might just be a tale among teachers.
With that said, an acoustic grand is not an investment. Maintaining it costs $100s per year. Keeping it in tip-top shape costs $1000 every 5 years or so, in top of the $100s paid for tuning. They require TLC to keep them in good condition.
Acoustic pianos also slowly break down. The crown of the soundboard flattens, the strings lose brilliance, the felts compress, the hammers wear out, etc.
But an acoustic will probably give you the greatest degree of connectedness to your music that a digital could not.
> First, to clarify, there are "keyboards" and there are "digital pianos". Keyboards typically have 60ish keys, keys that are light or thin, and sound that is low quality.
I describe myself as playing "keyboard" and call my instrument a "keyboard", even though by your definitions it wouldn't be one -- I don't think that's how the word is usually used? I think most people, including most musicians, would consider a digital piano a kind of keyboard.
I guess we can define the terms however we like. An acoustic piano also has a keyboard.
My point was that "keyboards" include a much broader class of electronic instruments than strictly what the set of "digital pianos" includes, like synthesizers, MIDI controllers, semi- or unweighted electric "pianos", etc. Unfortunately, to the beginner, they all look the same.
The usage I've generally seen is that they keyboard is just the row of keys. An analog or digital piano has one, an organ perhaps several. The pianos, an organ, a harpischord, they're all kinds of keyboard instruments.
I'd agree that the post above yours paints a bit of a false dichotomy.
There are some fine semi-weighted keybeds out there, like on the Nord Electro.
We ought remember that replicating the characteristics of an acoustic piano with a digital instrument is difficult, and was basically impossible 30 years ago. Modern sampling keyboards have hundreds of MB of memory for samples (and can play back and mix them with no audible latency).
My comment was written with "learning traditional classical/jazz piano" in mind, where the dichotomy is, I think, not false. Jamming out on semi-weighted keys in your rock band is fine, but it will not cut it for conventional training.
Most of the great jazz players learned on an acoustic piano, and indeed continue to play on an acoustic piano. Hancock, Charles, Peterson, Jarrett, Corea, ... I can't recall a single jazz pianist of note that avoided an acoustic piano and/or built their technique off of semi-weighted keys. Folks like Peterson eventually dabbled and mastered certain electronic instruments, and most jazz musicians encounter electronic instruments as a significant part of their career, but they began with an acoustic.
Keyboards of all sorts are used in all manner of places. Jazz especially loves the rounder tones offered by "e-pianos". There are even some famous synthesized classical pieces. So they're undoubtedly useful instruments, just seemingly avoided in most conventional approaches to learning to play piano.
These are interesting facts that don't address the enormous space of options that exist between the dichotomy you originally presented. That said, please play whatever keyboard you enjoy and call it whatever you want to.
However, you lose a lot of really fine-grained control of sound. I'm talking about really fine stuff that classical pianists appreciate. For instance, pressing the pedal on a digital won't give you any feedback from the felt rubbing on the strings. Most classically trained teachers would recommend an acoustic over this fact alone.
I actually agree with you for the most part, but I think the digital experience is (or at least can be) even closer than you realise.
I have a digital piano that does a very good impersonation of half-pedalling, and when you press down the pedal you can hear the whole soundboard gently vibrate. It was high-end when I bought it over ten years ago. Sound quality has improved a lot since then, touch and feel is at least as good.
Technology has come a long way. Pianoteq is amazing. The Kawai VPC1 was a pleasure to use when paired with nice monitors and a sub.
But, in addition to the sound (like half-pedaling), I'm talking about the actual feel. A digital piano's pedal will always feel like a buttery spring. On an acoustic, you can feel the vibrations, the felts, the engagement of the dampers, etc. in your foot.
It's really minor, because a great pianist can do fine with these very good digitals, but you lose a sense of "one-ness" with the instrument.
Having recently just gone through the acoustic vs digital purchase decision, while you're right that an acoustic breaks down, so too can a digital.
But IMO fixing an action or motherboard on a 10+ year digital is much scarier than fixing a purely mechanical acoustic. A well looked after acoustic has a reasonably forgiving depreciation curve if it's a decent brand too whereas I picked up top-end digital for 45% discount even though it was less than a year old
Given the price difference, you could buy a new high end digital keyboard every 10 years and still be below the cost of a middling acoustic instrument after 50 years.
You can’t justify acoustic economically unless you make your income from the piano. Aesthetically acoustic is the clear winner, but you’d better have your pocketbook well stocked.
Personally I prefer electronic because I’m not a trained pianist and I appreciate the versatility of something like a Korg Kronos over the undeniable physicality of a concert grand. And I splurged a bit on my audio setup so I can still get some good body resonance going when I don’t mind potentially annoying the neighbors.
Hmm quick glance the Kronos is around 2600 GBP. A good monitor set up is maybe 1000 GBP.
At 2% inflation, a series of 5 purchases (one every 10 years) totals to 27815 GBP
On Yamaha today, that will get you a 6'1" C3X.
I don't have great knowledge of the market for second hand midrange Yamaha grands but if it's well looked after (which as discussed costs money) the value of the piano will not be zero.
A spot check on gumtree[0] suggests that a well maintained 30-year old 6'1" Yamaha C3 is worth 50% of today's C3X. I'd be more confident that a well looked after Steinway B would command a decent price - especially if you picked up a decent 5-10 year old to avoid the premium associated with newness then sold it a few decades later.
So for me, I don't agree that the economics of buying a grand piano are as clear cut as your post makes out but I agree that periodic upgrading of a DP is definitely viable and gives you more flexibility.
I used to be really fascinated by antique pianos (Bechstein and Steinway) and I was really impressed how gradual their value decline was, but also how nice they can sound. A well looked after 1900s Bechstein sounds so beautiful.
Consider also the time value of money. If you buy the acoustic you are out all of that money immediately. If not, you can invest it and at least beat inflation. That’s assuming you have the lump sum in hand of course, you may not, and be forced to buy on credit, which will in turn drive a different economic analysis.
I’m pretty comfortable in my belief here. Certainly the immediate winner is the DP, and you may not stick with it long enough, or even live long enough, to win the long term bet you are making here.
Back to my original point — I’m not saying the acoustic isn’t worth it, simply that you should not analyze it from a purely economic point of view, because it is a losing argument from that perspective.
Fair enough. I agree that there is definitely more to just the economics of owning a piano. Times have changed but I do quite like the idea of passing down a piano too.
I also can accept your reasoning and definitely agree re. time value of money (and the value of optionality) but I was surprised actually see the numbers play out the way they did.
As for me, the much bigger problem is finding a place big enough to house a bloody grand piano!
> For instance, pressing the pedal on a digital won't give you any feedback from the felt rubbing on the strings. Most classically trained teachers would recommend an acoustic over this fact alone.
I wonder if there would be a market for that level of emulation.
For example in the car sim scene the higher end braking pedals measure not just the movement but also with how much force it is pressed (force needed for brake pedal is nonlinear with pedal movement), so you have more control over it (easier to control force of pressing compared to absolute movement of the pedal)
> An acoustic grand also has more opportunities to change and shape the color of the tone. A technician can make the piano warmer or brighter for example.
Yeah nah. Digital pianos often have more than one sound to choose from, let alone more advanced synths. If we're talking sheer variety of sound digital has no limits, even if your particular device does there is always option of connecting it to PC (althought no doubt archaic MIDI gonna lose some of the detail there)
False equivalence. A $1k acoustic piano will likely be shit. A $1k digital piano will likely be much better. A good acoustic piano is better than a good digital piano but in the real world where most people are not wealthy. The kinda acoustic piano most people can afford to get, play, tune, maintain and fix is close to the $1k acoustic. While the kinda digital piano people can afford to buy is likely closer to the $1k digital piano. So no, your average piano won't make you feel closer to music because it will be out of tune most of the time and you won't be able to afford a tuner.
I'm not entirely sure what you're rebutting, and I certainly don't know what "equivalence" I made which was "false". I just compared what you can get from a digital piano against what you can get from an acoustic piano.
If we set a budget to $1k, then sure, I agree that you'll have a hard time finding a decent acoustic. I'm not sure, though, why we should assume $1k is an average, and even if it is, why we ought to use that as a benchmark for characterizing acoustic pianos.
Buying a good quality grand piano is affordable to middle-class families. It's not unlike buying a car: you can get them new or used, financed or paid in cash. So somebody, who at least has middle-class financial means, who is serious about learning piano, absolutely has the opportunity to get an instrument they can connect with (in the specific sense I described).
It's not cheap, and to most families it certainly couldn't/wouldn't be a frivolous purchase. But that's just how it is with a decent acoustic instruments. Digital pianos are much more affordable and offer a lot of practical benefits, but they're still significantly different from an acoustic piano in every dimension.
I don't know what kind of income level are you talking about when you say "middle class family". Afaik, most middle-class families can't afford to spend money on a good quality grand piano. I would be even surprised if they even had enough money to maintain it or if they had enough space for it
It's gonna be hard to tell some parents why they should dump over $1k on some fancy piano when they can spend way less than that on a digital piano.
There are lots of 88-key digital pianos. They're pretty nice, actually. But yeah, an acoustic grand is quite unlikely to appreciate in value -- just the opposite. And the weight and size will seriously inconvenience you whenever your flooring needs work.
A digital piano is perfectly fine to learn on. They're pretty good quality these days. You can put headphones on and not disturb anybody. (Grand pianos are comparatively loud.) There's no question that you can reach an advanced level of playing on a good quality digital piano, like the better ones from Roland, Kawai, or Yamaha.
However, you lose a lot of really fine-grained control of sound. I'm talking about really fine stuff that classical pianists appreciate. For instance, pressing the pedal on a digital won't give you any feedback from the felt rubbing on the strings. Most classically trained teachers would recommend an acoustic over this fact alone.
An acoustic grand also has more opportunities to change and shape the color of the tone. A technician can make the piano warmer or brighter for example.
Some teachers claim an acoustic will lead to vastly better physical technique. I haven't seen this substantiated by any actual experiment though, so it might just be a tale among teachers.
With that said, an acoustic grand is not an investment. Maintaining it costs $100s per year. Keeping it in tip-top shape costs $1000 every 5 years or so, in top of the $100s paid for tuning. They require TLC to keep them in good condition.
Acoustic pianos also slowly break down. The crown of the soundboard flattens, the strings lose brilliance, the felts compress, the hammers wear out, etc.
But an acoustic will probably give you the greatest degree of connectedness to your music that a digital could not.