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Adrian and all,

I see the merits of the Digital and I did have a Digital Hammond organ for some years. I realized the danger of being lulled into a tranquil situation but was always back on the acoustic grand very quickly,for I knew the danger of loosing the touch required for an acoustic. Sold the Hammond 20 years ago.

It's also,I fear,a 'tool which will fool' by that statement I mean; I have many times thought whilst listening to clips of our member's musical abilities, what a fantasic acheivement in X number of weeks to produce such piano playing.....but I then looked up their profile and found they were on a digital device.

And another aside. We were on the Cruise ship 'Minerva ll' just before Christmas and on the two dance bands with different pianists, they used a keyboard device on top of the music desk (Yamaha acoustic pianos)playing the left hand chords on the acoustic, and the right on the digital which played sounds of music other than piano, this was in short bursts during one 'number' not as a standard part of the band, but an add on.

There were 5 of these Yamaha grands on board, one, the full concert grand and others smaller. I was allowed to play the one in the dining room between mealtimes.

Anyhow I will never succumb to playing digital (unless for silent practice with ear phones)as I value my rather mediocre ability to play the real pianos and have not acheived my goals.

The digital era is here and it has it's place but I feel it is like having automatic dummy drivers in race cars, with all the current technology they can now just about do that.

I fear the days of 'art of the piano' are rather threatened by the digital advances. Just a few emotions.

My I suggest that if you have a child prodigy that they only use the digital as second to the acoustic. And will teachers always use acoustics, as will exams too?

Alan.

lol it feels as if us pianists are always threatened when it comes to our end. I heard in highschool a teacher was saying the piano is obsolete instrument anymore. oh well if we have to go out, lets go out fighting or playing

Hello Alan, I do take your points. However, I am not interested in the automatic features that some digitals have. The one I chose has an action with weighted keys and a mechanism very similar to that on an acoustic grand - I have played it a lot now and I really feel that the action is not detrimental to my acoustic touch. In fact quite the reverse actually, I have a suspicion that I am becoming more sensitive to exactly how I depress the keys.

It (CLP280) also has very few gadget features (these were of zero interest to me) as it is aimed at pianists, so it does have good quality piano sampling.

I think that the top end digitals have a useful place for us pianists. It was essential when I was in Switzerland as an acoustic piano would fill all four floors of the house because of the unfortunate (and unforeseen) acoustics of that building.

They are very useful when quiet practice is a necessity for domestic harmony! In my case I am working on some long (e.g. 63 pages) and quite difficult (for me) pieces and there is a limit to the willingness of my very tolerant partner to listen to my practice of difficult passages over and over again.

Kind regards

Adrian

Funny!

[snip]
... and sometimes we like them out of their cases, too!

Cheers!

Adrian, I see your viewpoint and have to agree that the signs are,probably both is the route. I have considered this matter for a while. Plus I think the old Hammond digital organ was well beyond today's technology.

I do get frustated if I cannot play the Bosendorfer when my wife wants to watch something on the TV in the drawing room. I would have the digital in the office upstairs near the Computer.

Will be thinking hard about the idea. I have a grandson who plays the violin and says he intends to have piano lessons too.

Kind regards,

Alan

thats my only wish on an acoustic piano..headphones!

Somebody watching the TV should not disturb a pianoplayer and vice versa!

Why must the TV be in the drawing room? Have a TV in your bedroom, or furnish a special home cinema in your basement, with all surround devices, and also with headphones.

Nevertheless, for silent playing, if you do not want that anyone else hear what you are playing/training, a stage model digtal with good headphones, standing on somethingelse than a X-rack, and a separate music desk is the best solution. It is very flexible - you can carry it everywhere where you get electricity.

For a pianist focused on tone and articulation, the digital piano simply cannot cut it. A digital piano cannot tell what part of the finger you used to hit the key, but the acoustic can. On an acoustic, it makes all the difference in the world. I speak for myself when I say that I would go crazy trying to get a singing tone out of a digital piano and then try to get a pizzicato sound and not be able to tell the difference. If that were the way things were going to be, I just might die right then and there.

Jan-Erik,

Thanks but, I have my wife here who has a say in the matter and I cannot send her out of the drawing room nor can I really afford to have a studio built on the side of the house although there is room. We have no basement.

Most of the time she is cooperative but when the situation is I want to play, a digital in the office would be good and they have some extra features that would be useful to my practice and certainly recording would be a big help too.

All the best to you,

Alan

Quite the contrary, the acoustic piano can't "tell" which part of your finger you used to strike the key, nor whether you even used your finger or a pencil or a plumber's wrench.

Regards,

Bruce - you said succinctly what I was thinking!

A piano key is merely a lever. It is depressed and releases a hammer. It responds to the velocity of depression but that is it. Nothing more! There is nothing magic about pianos, whatever some pianists may like to believe. They are merely percussion machines with a lump of felt hitting a string.

An upscale electronic piano key is also a lever, and electronics recognise the rate of key depression and interpret that to produce a range of sounds. The range depends upon how many samples are programmed in.

If you have enough samples, it is possible to get extremely close to an acoustic piano sound.

I am not trying to be a digital guru here, just injectinging bit of realism. If you were unimpressed with digitals 5 years ago, try a good one now. You may be surprised and find yourself forced to discard some prejudices.

A

singing tone does not really exist IMO, once you have depressed the key thats basically it... and I agree that an acoustic piano cannot tell what part of the key you pressed either. These are of hardly any importance when training as a pianist IMO, as fundamentally one can develop technical ability and musicality on either a digital or acoustic piano.

It does not make sense to say whether or not digital will take over acoustic because digital pianos have to be sampled from an acoustic in the first place, otherwise there will be no digital piano to play with.

Piling on.....

At this point I believe that the only significant technological barriers to a digital sounding exactly like an acoustic are pretty much a.) effective emulation of sympathetic string vibrations when the sustain pedal is down and b.) sound image (speakers don't disperse sound in the same way as a sounding board). The first is already being solved (pianoteq's is quite good already) by algorithm development and more powerful processors. The second can be solved by alternative speaker technologies (ribbon electrostatics in particular). Couple this with the inherent advantages of headphone practice, portability, freedom from tuning and maintenance, ability to revoice or use alternative temperaments on the fly, freedom from miking (and all the problems that go with it) and things don't look good for the home team.

unless they're modelled - which brings up some interesting possibilities. For instance, what would a 26' grand piano (that could sound a low A without ANY inharmonicity) sound like?

I have both, and I play the acoustic instruments 99.9999% of the time. The digital seems distant from me like I'm listening to a CD recording instead of feeling the piano. There's nothing technically wrong with the Technics SX/PX-667; it's just not "right" and there's something impersonal and cold about its tone.

Granted the instrument does have its value like late night practice, recording, etc. but that's it. The acoustic instruments like the piano and clavichord have a warm tone that reaches into the soul. The acoustic piano even resonates right through the room, and makes me feet and body vibrate. The clavichord, being much softer fills the room like soft warm light and surrounds the player (The recordings don't even come close to the real sound).

I absolutely never got that from the digtal even with the volume turned up. With the volume too high, the tone was saturated, and annoying. When turned down too low, the "Acoustic Reflection Technology" (tm) didn't kick in.

Just a couple cents on the pile.

John

Does anyone think that the climbers scaling Mount Everest would ever be content with virtual reality?

Even though the route to the summit is now a tourist trail, the number scaling the heights are few. Most, the vast majority, potter about in the foothills, and for them virtual reality is not only fine, but possibly better.

John - I take your point, but not all digitals are equal. Some do now come very close to feeling and sounding like an acoustic. The pace of technological change means that the gap will reduce.

Kind regards

Adrian

AJB,

I didn't ask about the tourists. I asked about those scaling Mount Everest. There's a difference.

Of course I'm not saying digital doesn't have it's place, but it has it's place.

I feel a bit confused again. It would appear to be the case that the acoustic instrument is best and the most challenging to master. You are playing the instrument not operating a electronic gadget that plays perfectly without chance of feeling. How do you folk feel about electronic guitars as against acoustic.

Then again we have the 'player-piano', they sound a bit mechanised more like the old barrel organ and hurdy gurdy. So is it the lack of human feeling that is lost on electronic digitally enhanced instruments, yes? And mechanised automatic instruments too ?

Two different pianists on the same piano and playing the same piece can have vastly differing application and tonal warmth to the same piece of music. If we loose the tonal nuances with electronic instruments that would be a bad situation for music perhaps.

I find playing a high quality grand piano the tone is enhanced/varied by the touch to the point of not really needing the damping pedal except for sustaining tones. Perhaps high end digitals can emulate this too?

John Citron seems to make a valid point or two.

Alan