Acoustic or digital?

Piano is yet another instrument I've played around with, so although this doesn't answer your question exactly, I can tell you that one big difference is how much noise they make. There was a time in my 40s when a friend offered me a digital piano fairly cheaply because he'd acquired his dad's really expensive one owing to said dad no longer playing it; having played piano for a few years in my 20s I decided I'd buy it off him and have another go. The piano I got was the cheapest Yamaha that had a proper weighted keyboard. Nothing special, but good to learn on and, most useful of all, you could play it through headphones. I was living in a fairly small terraced house at the time. I've never liked other people being able to hear me play, but I could play this either through speakers with the volume quite low or silently on headphones. After a while I bought a "proper" acoustic piano. It didn't fit under the window where I'd had the Yamaha and I had to put it on a party wall. The neighbours complained (politely) about the noise and that pretty much killed it for me - my playing tapered off quite rapidly to the point where I stopped altogether.

Mr Z plays digital and uses headphones. I'd love to be able to use headphones on the recorders and especially the clarinet.

It's a shame, Pavane, that you didn't have much of a chance to decide for yourself whether piano was right for you but that would be an entirely different timeline.

corenfa - I see what you mean. It's this difference between 'notes' and 'music' again. Agree totally over digital being better for private practising.

I'm not sure if this is a strange question but it's a long time since I've been in the same room as an acoustic piano but do they have more of a percussive sound than digital or can digital create that effect? I keep insisting that the harpsichord is quite percussive because of the sound of the keys being struck.

I'm not sure how the two compare, but I would say the pedal smooths out and softens any percussiveness on an acoustic.

Corenfa, when you were auditioning the digitals did you compare the effect of the sustain pedal and did the digital sustain muddy the sound as quickly as it does on an acoustic ?

How do you test a piano? Is there something you should look for in particular. On the recorder I have a couple of notes I'd check. Edgar Hunt has notes and transitions that he suggests for the descant - sadly not for any other recorder. On a harp forum once, someone said that the top notes of a harp are never in tune. So does a piano have things you should look for?

I'm just curious. I'm curious about almost anything really...

So, how do I test a piano. It may not be how anyone else tests pianos, but here you go.


Some of the basics are sort of obvious, like the keys and pedals shouldn't be sticky. All the bits of piano should function.

There are different aspects that I look for depending on whether I'm looking for an acoustic or digital, so I'll mention those separately.

When I was auditioning acoustic pianos, I took as wide a variety of music as I could, so my entire diploma programme. Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and Menotti. I wanted to see how it sounded and felt for each different genre. I was looking for the possibility of making different sounds and tone colours. This was difficult to ascertain as I wasn't a very good pianist myself then. I managed to get quite a lot out of listening to someone else trying pianos- there was a family at the same piano showroom evidently trying pianos, and they'd brought along who I think was their piano teacher. He was trying the same thing on all the pianos including a few I was considering, many models in the same range- and there was one particular model, the Kawai K6-A, that he sounded vastly better on. That turned out to be the model I bought in the end.

If I was looking for an acoustic now, I would be testing how well it supports my technique. Can I play a full dynamic range on it, particularly how soft can it go. It should be easy to produce a note at any dynamic. I am also looking for sensitivity- if I play with wrong technique, do I sound bad? If I just bash it, it should sound bad. Can I do a nice legato on it, that is, can the keys go from one to the other smoothly. Can I get different key release effects for staccato and similar. Can I make it sound more "singing" (this is really hard to describe, either the sound of it or how to produce it). Can I do things like depress a note silently and hold the pedal, then play other notes and have the open strings ring. If I use arm staccato vs finger staccato, does it sound different. If I really put my back into it for fortissimo, does it sound like a good loud sound, or does it sound harsh. 

For a digital, I am looking at how well it replicates the feel of an acoustic. So I would be trying all of the same techniques that I tried on the acoustic, and evaluating them for whether they feel and sound the same. I am not at all bothered about fancy sound samples or flashy things like rhythm tracks and recording. I just want it to feel as realistic as possible so that when I practise on it, I will improve.

That model is certainly on my list. It does feel remarkably like an acoustic. But I need to blag my way into a posh piano shop and try an acoustic grand in order to compare too.. And I'd also like to try the Yamaha AvantGrand.