Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards The action of my NU1X is driving my wife crazy

I might have to get rid of it for something quieter if I want to keep playing when she’s home. And to be fair, if it was me that had to endure listening to the sound of the keys for an extended period of time each night, I too would loose it in the end. It breaks my heart though. The NU1X is the best thing ever.

Move it to another room. (The piano I mean.).

It's funny, my wife told me that she enjoys the sound of my piano practicing and says she prefers it to my guitar practicing! This is after ten years of guitar practice, LOL. She would probably get annoyed to hear key noise all of the time, and no music. In some ways, I feel that practicing silently is selfish to others, that is, if they enjoy the sound of the piano.

Your wife likes to hear you stumbling over your scales? Yeah, my wife is a definite no on any sort of practice short of performances.

I find I'm too self conscious. My best practise happens when I'm using my headphones, without any worry that this constant repetition of this short phrase I can't quite get right is going to drive anyone nuts or not.

When practising without headphones I inevitably stop that focussed effort sooner than I should.

Same. I often will play the same phrase 50+ times in a row. Sometimes, I will get 2 notes into the phrase and restart. Not to mention as I said, scales. I think practicing without headphones around other people is selfish whether or not they like piano. I can see how playing piano with headphones is selfish around others who like piano.

Why is it her place to say "no"?! Do what you want (as no doubt she does).

I have to smile when I read threads like this. As if these wives are ruling all you cowering jellies with a rod of iron. Just grow a pair and tell these wives you're going to practise (or do whatever) and if they don't like it, tough.

I don't have a wife. If you were wondering

I was surprised myself, but the answer appears to be yes, she doesn't mind hearing me stumble over scales, and pieces. I repeat phrases and pieces over and over again, and she doesn't scream out from the other room. Your wife studied the piano so perhaps that is why she can't stand to hear someone else practice. My wife says she likes the sound of the piano better than the guitar and she doesn't seem to care that she keeps hearing the same thing over and over again.

People love repetition in music, they crave it. Where would we be if there was no repetition in music? So, playing something over and over again does not seem to upset people in the same way that saying something over and over again upsets them.

I don't draw a hard line between practicing and playing. I call all of it playing. In some moments of practice, there can be a beautiful turn of phrase, or a few notes that sound good together. My wife says that she can hear that I am improving. I appreciate the encouragement. I wouldn't get any encouragement if she never heard me play.

We’re not wondering now!

Nothing to do with being a cowering jellie. Just respect for the other person who has their aural space intruded upon by your practise. It is just the normal give and take and respect for other people.

What a delightfully simplistic view of human and family dynamics!


+1!

So true. This mostly came to an end when I dumped the upright and bought a digital.But just yesterday I forgot to shut off the monitors. I played with headphones on, and I did not notice that the speakers were blaring. (No one complained, though.)

Maybe turn on the sound, that way she won't hear the action.

If that doesn't work out, but you are still married after, putting the piano in a different room if possible sounds like a good option to me.

When I was 'teaching myself' it was on an acoustic, so my version of practice most of the time was basically just bash through because otherwise wife (and later family) would have had to put up with repeated stops and starts. Incidentally, though, it meant that I thought that I was giving the impression that I could play, hence I refer to myself as an 'impressionist pianist.' It also meant learning to avoid really bad mistakes 'on the fly,' particularly horrible discords*. Concentrates the mind wonderfully, but it isn't very relaxing and, of course, breeds bad fingering and all sorts of other errors that I'm probably still making.

When there was nobody around I did 'practice better' - kind of (sorting out fingering, dynamics etc.), having no real idea of what proper practice properly really meant Still don't, really, but to the untrained ear I don't play too badly

I did improve, btw, but it required a fair amount of revision, unlearning and so on, but it took time to get to that stage.
Currently playing on a really bad DP (I should stop moaning about it and do something, but that's another story) I can play around with things using headphones and the advantage is pretty evident.

I think, though, that (learning) the violin (I was really bad at that!) is a far more effective instrument of torture than the piano.


*as a completely boring aside (in keeping with the rest of the post, no doubt), that 'learning to avoid horrible discords' has caused a problem with some of the more outrageous composers that I've tried occasionally - I have trouble convincing my fingers to play some of their music.

Could that be a story involving the "B" word?

Has anyone thought of soundproofing walls in the piano room?

Soundproofing is really hard. For example our elderly neighbour is quite deaf but refuses to use a hearing aid. We've spent £10,000 on soundproofing our party wall, yet we can still hear her television. Every now and then we complain, she grumbles, volume goes down for a while and then gradually back up again. Oldies nowadays, they aren't like oldies of yesteryear.

She use to get up at 4am and watch telly until 5am. At least that has stopped.

Oh dear! It could indeed, but there's also reading the horror stories about DPs that click, clack and so on. At least my cheapy is relatively quiet - and very simple, so not much to go wrong.

However I've gone off topic too much:

I guess the point I was making (aside from having 'that moan') in a round-about way, was that nobody complained about hearing the 'music' and, incidentally, my wife is actually unhappy about my using the headphones instead of playing out loud (but I hate the tone of my keyboard through the speakers and even the hi-fi!) She can't hear the keyboard noises but misses the playing. Oh, and btw, the children took up the piano so it didn't annoy them either.

I'd guess that hearing the clacking / thudding (or whatever) keys is annoying in a similar manner to the sound of knitting needles, typewriters (remember them?), or perhaps somebody playing a bongo incessantly. So perhaps playing without headphones more often would help.

Have you tried changing the locks?

The sad fact of life is that hybrid actions are noisy. You can do a bit to isolate the noise by placing your NU1X on heavy rubber or sorbothane mats or onto a thuck rug but the noise in a hybrid comes mainly through the action components and not as much the "physical thumping" carrying through a light chassis on a typical digital piano, so it will only help so much. Moving the piano to another room may be the only option.

One of the benefits of a "pure digital action" is that they can (and are) engineered to be much more silent than acoustic actions. If you do end up exchanging out the NU1X (or getting a separate silent practice piano), I'd recommend looking into the Kawai wooden key options, like the MP11SE. The Kawai Grand Feel action is head and shoulders quieter than any other digital action I've tried (especially after a year or so of play/wear).