Digital pianos have there place.
But I can readily feel the difference.
Even when just listening to YouTube videos the acoustic piano wins.
Can even the top end hybrids really satisfy a grand player?
G'day, John!
Years ago, I remember of meeting a guy from your area of Oz at a PTG conference, Ron Overs. He was building some pretty interesting pianos at the time, hung out talkin' physics with Del Fandrich and Ron Nossaman, I think, maybe a few others. Not sure if he's still around or not. The years slip by so quickly...
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MacMacMac Digital pianos have there place.
But I can readily feel the difference.
Even when just listening to YouTube videos the acoustic piano wins.
I was brought up on acoustic piano - upright and grand - acoustic, just as a lot of people are/were/here. When I listen to both - acoustic and digital - they both win. A music and piano exponent will be able to showcase outstanding essence of music in one form or another on any piano. Even a 10 dollar one is special - and not to be out-done by a piano that cost eg. 200,000 or million dollar plus. What is important is essence of music. And play pianos. Any pianos. Piano players unite!
Bellyman G'day, John!
Years ago, I remember of meeting a guy from your area of Oz at a PTG conference, Ron Overs. He was building some pretty interesting pianos at the time, hung out talkin' physics with Del Fandrich and Ron Nossaman, I think, maybe a few others. Not sure if he's still around or not. The years slip by so quickly...
Yes, I know Ron. Not well but have been to his shop and had him consult on a job I was doing. Don't know what he's doing this days, as his webpage don't seem to have been updated for quite some time (looked at recently to see what he was up to).
Sydney Australia
Retired part-time piano technician
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Josephine @Navindra Josephine wrote: "Oh, I'm in the wrong thread, I thought this was the thread about practicing on a digital piano. I don't have a top end hybrid piano. So just ignore my post.".
This exemplifies a basic design problem with Piano Tell (and with PianoClack). It is often hard to know which thread you are looking at. This never happened with PW, because every post there contains the thread title. Aside from Josephine's observation, I have noticed that not infrequently I find myself "lost" here, in the sense of not knowing what thread I am in.
So @Navindra if at all possible, you should do something about this. I don't mean put the title in every post - but there might be somewhere in a non-scrolling part of the page where you can put the title? Maybe at the top?
I don't think any concert pianist would choose a hybrid as a substitute. Sara Davis Buechner grew up with acoustics and plays them all the time. She's not using a hybrid to learn how to get the best out of an acoustic grand. Even if the action is convincing, digital pianos lack the tonal variation of a decent acoustic grand.
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These days - the digis are able to inject other forms of interesting and wonderful 'goodness' into the sound, so that the piano player is able to get adequate variation and richness to generate music that provides every bit an excellent or outstanding musical experience.
Those very skilled pianists - including classical etc - will find ways to get the best out of any particular piano after they take some time to check out its behaviour, and then it's piano time.
Piano players can and will be hop onto any piano and give an excellent account of themselves. And when the time comes for a classical concert pianist to prepare for a concert, then they will have their preparation processes, and the show goes on.
It's known that at least one very well known concert classical pianist was/is using not only digital piano in their home ... but in particular ... playing digital 'slab' piano in their home. Their own digital slab piano. And it's not for advertisement, and not necessarily to practise her concert classical pieces, but we can expect they will/can play classical in one form or another on any workable piano.
There are examples of her digital slab online, which she parks very near to her acoustic grand piano, parked front-to-front (face-to-face) style, so she can hop from one to another by just turning around.
It is this concert pianist here ...
I do wonder if digital piano makers have ever considered adding an element of inconsistency in how a note will sound even if the key is struck with the exact same mechanical parameters. I wonder if that would help replicate the unmistakable organic feel of an acoustic piano?
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I think they will have considered it Rubens! It could surely be added as an option - as in for example slight randomness in the amount of added harmonics/tones to a note. It may be works-in-progress, as they have to make sure that the feature doesn't lead to issues like the effects etc interfering with other ones, leading to audio or sound quality problems.
Another consideration is control. If particular piano players want to switch over to the other option - where they want reproducibility - which could be quite difficult or impossible in itself (as most or maybe all humans can't control their body like a specialised electro-mechanical machine/device to consistently have 'machine' type reproducibility) - there could be that option to set the non-random feature, to work towards the ideal 'perfect' control scenario. And then it becomes down to the person themself - to see how they control consistently and reliably their own body.
The topic of perfection and reproducibility is an interesting one - because on one hand, if some people are striving for having music played to be reproducible - as in performance, then they might think along the lines of they want an ideal instrument that ideally does exactly the same thing when they push exactly the right velocity (or ballpark velocity, because it looks like humans most likely can't push a key at exactly the same velocity repeatably down to some ultra precise value that is). And then there's the other perspective, where some people really like the unexpected behaviour - which is a departure from the ideal/perfect control. This is probably why - it's the entire collection of pianos and people and music that is amazing and special.
Rubens
One VST library (obviously not a digital piano, but an add-on for one) advertises "round robins."
The blurb for it on the B&H website says in part, "Round robin sampling involves recording multiple samples per note, so that when a note is played repeatedly, it is not triggering the same sample. "
An interesting concept...
Make a joyful noise...
Jane - expert on nothing with opinions on everything.
Jane
Aha! Yes this is what I was talking about. I wonder if that would replicate the feeling I have on an acoustic.
I still can't find the best words to describe the feeling. It's like the sound is a paste and I'm shaping the paste. Those are the best words I can find so far, so not very good.
I think @Joseph-Fleetwood put it pretty well. Hybrids are a major improvement over digital pianos, but at the end of the day they are a compromise for people who would like an acoustic grand piano but live in an apartment, don't want to deal with piano maintenance, can't afford an acoustic grand, etc.
Context: I practiced on a P515 (digital) for years, then upgraded to a Yamaha N2 (hybrid), and get to perform on a variety of acoustic grand pianos (Steinway, Fazioli, Schimmel, Bösendorfer, Petrof) at local piano meetups.
The P515 is a nice little thing, but the technique for playing a digital piano is not the same, and that impacts your playing on an acoustic piano. The most noticeable adjustment is when playing soft/light — on a digital, you just press down, but less fast. This works very differently on a real piano action (the resistance of the key is nonlinear, there's escapement, etc.), so a lot of digital-only players have difficulty playing pp on an acoustic piano. Also, during certain fast passages (e.g. the LH octaves in Baba Yaga) I felt like the keys were recoiling against my fingers - this added additional strain to my hands (I speculate this is because of escapement, you don't have to move the full weight of the key the entire time on a real action).
I bought a used Yamaha N2 earlier this year. In many ways it is a major improvement over the digital — but also in some cases it highlights more starkly the deficiencies in my technique (e.g. fast repeated notes that were easier to get to sound on the P515). At the end of the day though it's so much better to practice on and makes me a better player when I play on an acoustic grand.
Compared to the acoustic grands I play on, I still don't love the touch on the N2. I'm not sure if it's because it uses a baby grand action (shorter sticks) or if I need to get it regulated but it's not as light and responsive as some of the concert grands I've played on — it feels like I'm working to play the piano instead of my fingers dancing weightlessly across the keys.
And this is just touch. There's no comparison obviously when it comes to sound production. Just as piped-in engine noises don't produce the same visceral sensation as a naturally aspirated flat-six, digital sound production on hybrid pianos is just a shallow facsimile. The sound will never make you cry tears of pain... but it'll also never make you cry tears of joy.
"You're a smart kid. But your playing is terribly dull."
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If I recall correctly I read an article some years ago that Artur Pizzarro had bought a high end digital/hybrid for practice purposes. A postulated advantage was said that it would require less maintenance but I've no idea if this worked out as expected.
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TheBoringPianist The P515 is a nice little thing, but the technique for playing a digital piano is not the same, and that impacts your playing on an acoustic piano.
The reverse is true too. Only kidding. It's not true. We can switch back and forth with relative ease. It's like hopping between different cars, some adjustment to adapt to the controls and check out the behaviour and it'll be right.
All of these 'weapons' (ok ... amazing music generation machines) will shine when us piano players hop on them. Like in Top Gun. Pianos are good. They're very good. Excellent in fact.
keff Thanks for mentioning that Keff! Online sources mention his dad was born in Australia, and he has dual nat ... british-aussie. I didn't know that before! Just saw online 5 minutes ago. Best regards.
Digital piano makers may or may not have considered inconsistencies in sound, but Pianoteq - I know this tends to be an emotive subject, but some facts are just facts, whether you consider them relevant is another matter - has a condition slider which degrades the sound progressively to a honky tonk or worse and a number of parameters which randomly vary the sound slightly, all independently of each other. It suits some who are troubled by what can appear to be an identical machine-like sound. Please start a pro/anti Pianoteq thread if you wish, rather than derailing this thread. Thank you.
keff He is or was a Yamaha artist and he did a promotional video for them. As payment they gave him an N1, back in I think 2010. They did the same for Murray McLachlan as well.