This blog is different from the others I have placed. With the onset of winter, my time is devoted to more indoors activities. One in which I am very interested is piano playing. As all pianists, I hope to improve my playing and increase my repertoire. My training is classical, but I am trying out some pop stuff and am expanding into jazz this year. My gear is both self bought and inherited. My experience spans several decades, but this means nothing as I have heard children under the the age of 10 play incredibly and adults who despite years of training still have difficulties. Kudos however to those adults, because piano playing isn’t just about being great… it is the enjoyment in creating sound and facing the challenge. The discipline required in the systematic and continued practice demands a lot from a person. I hope to provide my opinion on some of the gear a pianist may consider. I believe that each person has their own requirements and therefore some variability is expected. This blog may be a little hard core. My bent is more toward improving one’s technical and artistic aspects of piano playing rather than trying to acquire a real piano equivalent. To that end, my suggestions may be geared toward the piano student (hopefully all of us) rather than a homeowner looking to improve the ambience of a living room (ok too… pianos look awesome).
An Opinion about Sound
Having played on a variety of uprights and grand pianos and knowing the vast differences in their sound production, I think this aspect of the electronic keyboard may be a little overblown. There are very cheap electronic keyboards which sound better than a lot of uprights I have played, and these include the legions of pianos in the studios of music schools across Canada and United States. I came from an era when electronic keyboards were rare or actually quite bad (70’s and 80’s), and music students from this generation actually prefer those out of tune muddy sounding uprights in the practice rooms than the vintage keyboards. Yet, despite the junky sounds and decrepit nature of the pianos, these students were some of the best pianists I have ever associated with and I can guarantee that despite these pianos, they improved while at the conservatory.
The second point is that sound from the electronic keyboard is totally different from headphones and from their speakers. If you don’t care to use speakers (ie. you live in an apartment), the sound quality of the even lower priced keyboard is not that bad. There aren’t any manufacturer who purposefully choose a junk acoustic piano to get their samples. There are however manufacturers who use cheaper electronic parts and circuits. Can’t blame them… they are just trying to make money. Using headphones allows us to bypass a lot of bad electronics and speakers. My advice is to buy decent headphones.
Something to ponder over... Some say that Rachmaninoff was the greatest pianist who ever lived. For six week during his trip from Russia to United States, he practiced on a wooden soundless keyboard. Personally, I prefer a junky sounding piano to a soundless piano! The reasons why he did that may be many. It is hard to imagine any decent ocean liner in that era that didn’t have a piano, but from what I understand, he was a very reserved man. Maybe he prefers to be out of the limelight; his concert career didn’t really begin until he moved to America. Another reason may be the prodigious amount of practice he did. He was an extremely hard working man. It may just not be practical any other way. The point is that it’s not the piano, it’s the thinking and the practice. There are innumerable things that make up piano playing, ie. ability to do the jumps, moving the thumb a certain way, burning in the rhythm... We tend to get focused on one aspect and forget that there are so many things that we could improve on. Get over the sound! Fix your runs instead!
Whether a keyboard is quiet or not is irrelevant
Now imagine the Rach sitting in his little room in his ocean liner practicing his concertos and preludes. That wooden keyboard would be clicking and clacking away. If you were to listen carefully to a concert grand or for that matter any piano, it has an intrinsic noise to it. Put a blanket on the strings and play. You will hear the noise. It is unavoidable... the dampers landing on the strings, the keys smacking the felt on the bed, etc. Take a look at a piano action. It is very complicated with parts falling and rubbing against each other. These sounds are part of the instrument!
Whether the action is weighted or not
I agree that that the variation of the key weight should be somewhat similar to an acoustic with the lower registers being heavier. Once again, you would be amazed at the variation that exists in real pianos! Some gradation should exist from the lower to the upper registers. How the piano does it (weighted, semi-weight) doesn’t matter. It’s easy to adjust your fingers. Playing a scale evenly is much much harder. Focus on that!
There is also the demand for heavier actions among some reviewers I see online for keyboards. Did you know that V. Horowitz actually had his tuner lighten the action on his Steinway? (by a lot!) Horowitz was extremely picky about his pianos. In the last several decades of his career, he only played a couple of Steinways. He had them shipped (concert 9 footers) to his performances. The gram weight of most of his keys were only in the 20’s.
Soft and Sustain pedal
If you watch Horowitz play, he tends to sit low and keeps his elbows fairly close. Moving from upper to lower registers, he would sometimes shift his whole body on the chair. Watch his feet. He made substantial use of the soft pedal. I suspect it is to broaden his dynamic range (he prefers the range wide), and also because it allows him to keep control on the soft passages, which is hard given the light touch of his Steinway. Most people don’t use the soft pedal and that is why most companies don’t have it for their keyboards, but probably not a bad idea to get as good as Horowitz. Personally, I would prefer having a soft pedal more than having speakers on a keyboard, but that’s me. It’s not that I am good. I just don’t have that much control using only my fingers.
I should point out the way a grand piano creates the soft sound is by moving the entire action to the right, thereby hitting the strings off the mushier part of the hammer. The sound is softer but also muddier… and this is true of the greatest pianos in the world. As I said, don’t worry about the sound. It ain’t that bad, and if you want a concert grand sound, get a concert grand. In the meantime, practice like a fiend so that when you do, you can sound like Josef Hofmann.
Nowadays, there are some three pedal systems for electronic keyboards. I have used the middle pedal sparingly in my playing. It has been useful in a couple of classical pieces I have worked on, but the vast majority of the time it is not needed. There are grand pianos made years gone by with only 2 pedals. By the way, Hofmann likes pianos with two. My thought is that if you can have it, great!
Keyboard weight, durability, etc
I am not a big person and I do like to move the keyboard on occasion. Light is good!
A durable keyboard is important. My Yamaha developed some broken keys a number of years ago. Turns out it was made in a time period when it was a known problem. Therefore, it was repaired under guarantee despite being many years out. It still costed me over $100 to have it fixed, but my P80 is still kicking after 15 years.
Before summary, a comment about bias. I use a keyboard to hone my technique and I don’t perform on it. I already have an enormous grand. I can use the keyboard with headphones and do move it around if I want. I can make it sound better, different, and louder by hooking it up to various electronics and computers I have in the house. I don’t know anything about funky sounds like chorus, strings, and church organs. Finally, I am still learning.
So… don’t worry too much about the sound. Get the best you can but don’t get too wrapped up in it. It’s more important to just buy one and start practicing. I wish all companies make the soft pedal an option. If you don’t have one, that’s ok. You just won’t be Horowitz. Don’t worry about key weight and touch too much either. Too much variability in real pianos anyway. Durability is important especially if you are moving the keyboard around a lot. Hope to catch you jamming one day and please let me know your thoughts!
