Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Is practicing on a lower-end Digital piano good?

hilarious

Hi Tozen: with JoeT the correct question is not "why do you ask?", but why do you answer... 😊

Some heated discussion here…

With the disclaimer I’m a (slightly advanced) amateur and largely self-taught pianist, my answer to thread title goes like this:

“Is practicing on a lower-end digital piano good?”

Let’s say it’s not bad. But not good either. IMO.

There's one or two nursery rhymes Mozart did. Try them instead!

There are fine pianists who are good at turning old children’s dittys into music easily appreciated by people of all ages .....

Wait, how did I get pulled into this conversation?

Doesn’t the P515 action « truly » opposes an inertia thanks to the hammer below the key and « truly » sends a note velocity ? We can’t deny this trueness.

"A digital piano doesn't mimic any piano action" Yes they do, that's the entire point. That's why Kawai named their action "Grand Feel" instead of "Plastic Folded Action Feel". You're arguing about backing technology, I'm arguing about the user experience. Are you going to tell me that an e-reader does not mimic real books in their reading experience? "But it doesn't even use real paper!! And it's not made with trees!!"

Yes, digital piano makers like to claim that their instruments compare favorably with the finest Continental pianos found in the famous salons of Vienna.

Lovely marketing. Lovely bullcrud. They can name it Grand Feel. But such trade names are fictitious and meaningless.

The real world is different. But ... if you insist that a folded digital piano action mimics a grand action, then I might claim that my chocolate chip cookie mimics a Porsche roadster.

When I was a kid my family had no money to buy (or rent) a piano.

So I drafted a keyboard on a piece of cardboard and I started to practice singing the notes while I was pressing the corresponding key.

Believe me or not, I learnt the first two or three Beyer exercises.

I assume that a low end digital piano is better than a piece of cardboard…

I think we'd all very much like to hear your rendition of the Chopin piece now. Your assertion that the piece is "far above me" is pretty crass (crude), but since I am an amateur I freely admit that there are doubtless better renditions out there. Of course I have only been regularly playing (for the first time in 20 years) for 10 months, so I expect I shall improve quite quickly over the next 10.
Where is your rendition of this piece, so we can set the "mark" towards which I should aim?

But they've been assidiously attempting to update the grand piano, into something with more clarity and less interference from resonances.
No doubt they've been looking at streamlining the action, too. Getting rid of springs and stuff.
Secretly, they are dead jealous of digitals and would just love to electronify the action of a grand. It'd be easy.
What's stopping them?
People who think the world is flat.

So, soon acoustic pianos will work on "Play by wire" with sensors on the keys and actuators on the hammers?

Or it could be wireless, so you can have the grand in the middle of the room and take the keyboard with you to the sofa.

"Play by wire(less)" would also enable the development of player assisting technologies like auto-correction.

As for the actual topic: So, low-end digital pianos are meant for low-end piano music? (And low-end players?)

I will be more than happy to write detailed analysis why this is piece is too hard for you.
As I said - noone is expecting you (or any other amateur pianist) to play it on a uber-virtuoso level. However, this piece is too difficult for you, and as long as you will not be able to admit it before yourself and will just rebounce the ball, my (or anyone other help) will be pointless.
Eventually it's your decision whether you want to be a good pianist or not. By good I mean playing the pieces that are within your abilities (technically and musically), and that Nocturne is making you a lot of pain, which is just visually visible.

If high-end piano music is classical music and low end music is song, well some argue that digital piano are not made for high-end music but for low end music. There is a teacher saying that, so is opinion is worth listening.
There is another teacher (well known in England) that has, in his teacher room, a bechstein grand but also a Casio gp-310. I think he is arguing that the digital is good help for practicing.
Who is right who is wrong? I think neither. Because that are opinions, and depends of circumstances of a lot of variables..
A digital is not an acoustic piano, it is not the same artefact. But at which level are they close. What to consider?
Making loud noise of ones own opinion against the opinion of others, just make no-sense (again). But teach a lot about the psiche of who is shooting loud.
Non-sense, self satisfaction, arrogance, sometimes agresivity, mockery..... Opinions for facts...
Typing in this forum won't increase my piano skills, and will take my time away. So yours.

Cheers

The mean truth is: They are meant to sell.

To sell at a price bracket, where you cannot legitimately create a musical instrument, that faithfully reproduces a piano. They are money-grabs in that sense. Money-grabs usually work, when people have no clue: no clue about tools they purchase, no clue about repertoire and no clue about their own abilities. Proof: this thread.

Sadly that's all that is to it actually. The lowest tier (which is colloquially nicknamed "shitbox" in the automotive industry) saw loads of dispensable models released during the last decade, where just one would have sufficed.

However such a race to the bottom usually also marks the end of a boom cycle. The last upright piano boom cycle also saw lots of crap flooding the market in the end of it, before people stopped buying them and lots of manufacturers going broke as a result.

For many people on this forum Chopin's nocturnes are beyond their skill level, even when they are playing piano for several years with the help of a piano teacher trained for classical piano. That should tell you something.

Please have a look at the ABRSM and RCM syllabus to assess which pieces are appropriate for beginners at a certain level. Each level roughly equates to a year of professional piano lessons.

You are a moron. A condescending moron.

I could write a detailed analysis of why that is the case, but I doubt you would have the capacity to understand it.

Either post a video of you playing this piece or take your bullshit and shove it up your ass.

Well. I have more than 10 years of piano playing experience...from the age of 7 to 18....then I stopped for 25 years.

I know what my playing level is, and the Nocturnes (including 48-1) are all well within reach of my playing level (though some are clearly more challenging than others).