Grand, Upright, or Electronic? Grands become necessary at advanced levels (four
to six years of lessons). Because advanced material cannot be played on lower quality pianos, the students can't even practice them. There are great pianists who became
technically advanced practicing mostly on uprights, so it is possible, but difficult. There is no evidence that you need a grand for initial technical development, although a few piano teachers will insist that any serious student must practice on a grand. An argument can be made in favor of uprights, at least for beginners, because they are more difficult to play and may be better for early finger development. They may be superior even for
intermediate students because uprights are less forgiving and require greater technical skill to play. For students up to intermediate level, any differences among uprights and grands are inconsequential compared to other factors such as student motivation, quality of teachers, practice methods, and proper piano maintenance.
The most important factor for acoustics (grands and uprights, as distinguished from electronic [digital] pianos) is maintenance. Acoustics require maintenance at least once a year. Too many acoustics are under-maintained because their owners do not know what maintenance is needed, which makes it too difficult to practice pianissimo and musicality, acquire technique, or learn absolute pitch. Digitals do not require maintenance.
Electronic Pianos: Today's (2015) best electronic pianos are still inferior to good
grands for sound and tone control, but are improving rapidly. The best electronics are now competitive with grands for technical development. Most inexpensive speakers can not compete with the soundboard of a grand and future electronics will surely come with better speaker systems. Uprights do not provide sufficient advantages for technical development to warrant their use over quality electronics that are readily available, comparatively inexpensive, and require no maintenance. Today's electronics will last about ten years under constant, daily use, at which point the actions tend to become sticky and noisy. Another reason for upgrading to a new electronic every five to seven years is that the newer models are cheaper and better. Because the quality of the action is the main problem with electronics, the best way to test one is by playing fast trills.
Because electronic pianos have some unique advantages, most serious pianists now own both an acoustic and an electronic. Here are some reasons:
(i) For less than the price of an average new upright, you can buy a new electronic piano with all the features you need: weighted 88 keys, 128 polyphony, headphone, volume control, touch control, organ, string, voice, harpsichord, metronome, recording and midi/analog out, transposition, different tunings (temperaments), and canned accompaniments. Many electronics provide even more, but these are common features you can expect. The argument that a acoustic piano is a better investment than an
electronic is false because, except for collectors' items, no acoustic is a good investment, especially when the initial cost and depreciation are so high for new instruments. The maintenance costs of acoustics are substantial, since they require tuning, voicing, and regulation at least once a year, plus periodic repairs.
(ii) The electronics are always in tune. Very young children exposed sufficiently to perfectly tuned pianos acquire absolute pitch automatically, although most parents never
discover this because the children are never tested and, if it is not discovered and
maintained, it is lost during the teen years. The acoustic piano begins to go out of tune the minute the tuner leaves your house, and some notes will be out of tune most of the time. Because too many acoustic pianos are inadequately maintained, the fact that the
electronics are always in tune is a big advantage.
(iii) You can use headphones or adjust the volume so that you can practice without disturbing others. The ability to turn down the volume is also useful for reducing ear damage when practicing loud passages: an important factor for anyone at any age.
Although younger pianists can tolerate loud sounds, by the time they start hearing tinnitus and losing their hearing at age 50, it is too late — hearing loss will quickly accelerate thereafter with age. Protecting the ears starting as early as age 20 is the best way to avoid such a fate.
If you are an advanced player, even an electronic will create considerable "playing noise" (with the volume turned off) that can be quite loud to anyone nearby and these vibrations can transmit through the floor to rooms under the piano. Therefore it is a mistake to think that the sound from an electronic (or an acoustic with "silent" feature) can be completely turned off.
(iv) Electronics are more portable than acoustics. Although there are light keyboards with similar features, it is best for piano practice to use the heavier electronics so that they do not shift while playing loud, fast music. Even these heavier electronics can be easily carried by two persons, and will fit in many cars.
(v) Variable touch weight is more important than many people realize. However, you have to know what "touch weight" means before you can use it to advantage. In general, the touch weight of electronics is a little lighter than that of acoustics. This lighter weight was chosen for two reasons: to make it easier for keyboard players to play these
electronics (keyboards are even lighter), and to make them easier to play compared to the acoustics. The disadvantage of the lighter weight is that you may find it more difficult to play a acoustic after learning on an electronic. The touch weight of acoustics is heavier because it is expensive to make acoustics lighter. One advantage of heavier weight is that you can feel the keys of a acoustic while playing, without inadvertently depressing some wrong notes. However, this can also lead to careless playing with some inadvertent finger motions because you can accidentally hit a key of a acoustic without making any sound. You can practice getting rid of these uncontrolled motions by practicing on an electronic and choosing a light touch weight so that any inadvertent strike will produce a sound. Many who practice only on acoustics don't even know that they have such uncontrolled motions until they try to play on an electronic, and find out that they are hitting a lot of extra keys (and buttons!). The light touch is also useful for acquiring difficult technique quickly. Then, if you need to play on a acoustic later on, you can practice with increased weight on the electronic after you acquire the technique. This two-step process is usually faster than trying to acquire technique at a heavy key setting.
(vi) Recording piano music is one of the most difficult things to do using
conventional recording equipment. With an electronic piano, you can do it with the push of a button. You can easily build up an album of all the pieces you learned. Everyone should cultivate a habit of recording every finished piece from the very beginning of lessons. Too many students never record their performances, which is the main reason for excessive nervousness and difficulties during performances.
(vii) Most pianists who follow good practice methods and become proficient when young will end up composing their own music. Electronic pianos are helpful for
recording your compositions so that you don't need to write them down, and for playing them in different instruments, as appropriate for each composition. With some additional software or hardware, you can even compose entire symphonies and play every
instrument yourself. There is even software that will transcribe (though imperfectly) your music onto sheet music. On the other hand, there is nothing like a quality grand to help you compose – the sound from a great piano somehow inspires the composing process. Therefore, if you are a professional composer, most electronics will be inadequate for inspiration although they will suffice for mundane composition chores.
(viii) If you can acquire technique rapidly, there is nothing stopping you from broadening your horizon beyond classical music and playing popular music, jazz, blues, etc. You will appeal to a wider audience if you can mix music genres and will have more fun. The electronic piano can help by providing the accompaniments, drums, etc., for those types of music. Electronics are more easily transportable for gigs that can become a significant activity depending on the genre.
(ix) The above is only the beginning; electronics will improve in leaps and bounds
every year. One interesting development is piano modeling (Pianoteq), instead of the sampling used by most manufacturers. Good sampling requires tremendous amounts of memory and processing power, which can slow down the piano response. It is also limited by the original piano used for the sampling. Modeling is more versatile, requires much less memory and software, and enables features such as partial soft pedal,
controlling the hammer shank flex or letting you play Chopin's Pleyel.
(x) We should all move towards WT (Well Temperaments) and away from ET [Equal Temperament that is universally accepted today, see (77) Circle of Fifths,
Temperaments]. Once you decide to use WT, you will need several of them. Learning to discern and bring out key color is a most valuable skill as an advanced musician. ET is the worst tuning for this because key color absolutely disappears. With electronic pianos, you can get most of the useful temperaments by flicking a switch.
The touch weight of a piano is not a simple matter of adding or subtracting lead weights to the keys to change the force required to depress them. The touch weight is a combination of the down weight, the inertia of the keys and hammers, and the force required to produce a certain volume of sound. The down weight is the maximum weight that the key will support before it will start to move down. This is the weight that is
adjusted using lead weights, etc. The down weight of all pianos, including the "weighted key" electronics, is standardized at about 50 grams and varies little from piano to piano regardless of touch weight, although it is slightly lighter (10-20%) in weighted key electronics than most acoustics. The non-weighted keyboards are much lighter.
When playing a piano, this 50 gram weight is a small fraction of the force required to play -- most of the force is used to produce the sound. In acoustic pianos, this is the force needed to impart velocity to the hammer. In electronics, it is the electronic reaction to the key motion and a fixed mechanical resistance. In both cases, you also have to overcome the inertia of the mechanism in addition to supplying the force for producing the sound. Electronics have a smaller inertial component because they have only the inertia of the keys whereas the acoustics have the additional inertia of the hammer mechanism; this makes the acoustics less sensitive to inadvertent hitting of the keys. Therefore, you will feel the most difference between acoustics and electronics when playing fast or staccato and little difference when playing slow legato.
The touch weight is the effort required to produce a certain volume of sound and has little to do with down weight. For acoustics, touch weight is determined mostly by hammer mass and voicing (hardness of the hammer). There is only a narrow range of hammer masses that is ideal because you want heavier hammers for larger sound but lighter ones for faster action. The touch weight can be adjusted by the piano technician by hammer voicing, rather than by changing the down weight. For electronic pianos, touch weight is controlled in the software by switching to the sound of a softer hammer for heavier touch weight and vice versa, which simulates a acoustic grand; there is no mechanical change to the down weight of the keys or other inertial components. Thus if you switch to the heaviest key weight, you might feel that the sound is somewhat muffled and if you switch to the lightest weight, the sound might be more brilliant. In electronic pianos, it is easier to change the touch weight without adversely affecting the sound because there is no hammer to adjust. The maximum dynamic range of most electronic pianos is limited by the speakers, so that the dynamic range of acoustic grands is larger.
You can demonstrate this subjective judgment of key weight by turning the volume down using the electronic piano and trying to achieve the same loudness. We conclude that there are small differences in the touch weight between grands and electronics, with the grands tending to be heavier, but those differences are not sufficient to cause major problems when switching from one to the other. The fear that practicing on an electronic will make it difficult to play on a grand is unfounded; in fact, it is more likely to be easier, although it may take a few minutes of playing on the grand to get used to it. One
exception is acoustics that are out of regulation, such as compacted hammers — they are much harder to play than electronics. Unfortunately, too many acoustics are under-
maintained, making them difficult to play. Many teachers think that practicing on digitals doesn't work because the students can't play the same pieces on acoustics, but the fault lies in the acoustics, not the digitals, because those acoustics were not properly
maintained. Therefore, students who learn on digitals should practice on acoustics as often as possible, because there are differences, and it takes some time to learn how to play the acoustics.
Electronics provide the sound via software so that reproducing the touch weight of grands exactly is difficult. Yamaha "solved" this problem by inserting an actual grand mechanism into their electronic (AvantGrand model), which more than doubles the cost of the electronic, but retains all the advantages of the electronic. Because the hammers do not produce the sound by hitting strings, the feel is not exactly the same. But the eventual question we should consider is "Should an electronic emulate an acoustic exactly, or should the electronic eventually have its own properties that can be superior to the best acoustics?" Right now, the exact emulation is important because concert pianists must still perform on acoustics and nobody can predict if electronics will ever replace good acoustics. That time may eventually come because (1) the electronics are improving so rapidly, (2) a vast majority of pianists will start learning on electronics, and (3) with better speakers, etc., there will soon come a time when a pianist can overpower any orchestra when playing a concerto, whereas today, even the best acoustic in the world cannot overpower a large orchestra. For some "pop" concerts, digitals are already replacing acoustics.
Half size and three-quarter size electronic pianos should be cost effective to produce. They can be sold or rented to piano teachers and schools that rent them to the youngest students for extra income, given financial terms that guarantees positive cash flow for everybody. Today, the availability of pianos for small, young, fingers is a major limiting factor. Small pianos will benefit instrument makers financially because they will increase the number of good pianists that will need full sized pianos.
Some pianists have asked their tuners to increase the down weight (with the hope of increasing finger strength), but this throws the piano out of regulation and is bad for technical development (velocity, musicality).
If you are a beginner purchasing your first piano, an electronic is the obvious choice, unless you can afford a quality grand and have space for it. Even in that case, you will probably want an electronic piano also because the cost of the electronic will be
negligible compared to the grand, and it gives you so many features that the grand does not have.
Uprights: Acoustic uprights are less expensive than grands, they take up less space,
and for small rooms, large grands may produce too much sound so that they cannot be played full blast with the lid open without hurting or even damaging the ears, not only of the pianist, but also everyone in the house. The electronics have these same advantages plus many more. Owners of uprights too often neglect hammer voicing entirely because this neglect results in more sound. Since uprights are essentially closed instruments, the neglect of voicing is less noticeable. Uprights also tend to be less expensive to maintain,
because expensive repairs are not worthwhile and are not performed. Of course, there are quality uprights that are competitive with grands in feel and sound quality, but they cost as much as grands.
Among uprights, spinets are the smallest and generally the least expensive pianos; most do not produce satisfactory sound, even for students. The small height of spinets limits the string length, which is the main limitation on sound output. In theory, the treble should produce satisfactory sound (there is no limitation on string length even for
spinets), but most spinets are weak in the treble because of poor quality of construction; therefore, be sure to test the highest and lowest notes if you are evaluating a spinet – simply compare it with a larger piano. Console or larger uprights can be good student pianos. Old uprights with poor sound are generally not salvageable, no matter what their size. Do not place an upright too close to a wall; this will deaden the sound. To position the piano, place it very close to the wall; then play middle C while pulling the piano away from the wall, until you get maximum sound.
Uprights have been "obsoleted" by the electronics and there is no reason to buy a new upright, although some piano teachers and most piano stores might suggest
otherwise. Many piano teachers have not had enough experience with electronics and are more accustomed to the feel and sound of the uprights and tend to recommend acoustics as "real pianos", which is a mistake. The difficulty of purchasing a quality upright, the problems encountered with having it properly "prepped" before and after delivery (see following section), and the need to keep it regulated and in tune, are not worth the slight difference in touch or tone, if any.
The rule concerning uprights is simple: if you already have one that is playable, there is no reason to get rid of it until you buy an electronic or a grand; if you don't have a piano, there is no compelling reason to buy an upright. Students above intermediate level will want a grand piano because the most technically difficult music is harder to play on most uprights and inexpensive electronic keyboards. Because of decreasing demand and profits, manufacture of uprights may cease in the near future.
Grands: The advantages of most grands are: greater dynamic range (loud/soft),
open structure allowing the sound to escape freely (which provides more control and expression), richer sound, faster repetition, smoother action (use of gravity instead of