Can even the top end hybrids really satisfy a grand player?
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.
Specifically that was Yamaha Music London, the store, that did that for them and not Yamaha Corporation or YASI New York.
As I was looking through the latest posts on this thread, the thought occurred to me, "satisfy a grand player" in what way? What is the purpose and what are the situations / limitations that need to be recognized? It might not be the same for everyone.
As a for instance, if you are playing on concert stages and traveling from place to place, your hotel rooms are not likely to have a 7' Steinway tuned and regulated to perfection for you to practice on while you're there. In that case, you may need something portable and a digital of some kind may be what you can easily manage.
What if you are living in a situation where you are mostly at home but do not have room for or a budget for a nice grand piano? Or you are in a situation where the noise of an actual piano would be a problem for the neighbors? You do the best you can. And for some people, that will be a digital piano of some type, probably a better quality one if you are a serious musician.
One size just doesn't fit all. Never did. Never will. Even the top pianists won't agree on what piano they want on a concert stage, and those who are all that and a bag of potato chips travel with their own piano and sometimes their own technician to make sure it's 100% all of the time. If you can't play the piano, it's not because you practiced on a "top end hybrid" instead of a $400,000 concert grand.
One thing I would suggest, though, regardless of what you practice on, play on something else regularly. Even if what you practice on is the most highly regulated and tuned concert grand, someday, someone will sit you down in front of a crappy Winter spinet that was tooned by the janitor in 1975 and expect you to play it. Yeah, an extreme example. But unless you are top 1% already, you'll be playing the less than ideal pianos presented to you on stage anyway. Best if you can do well with less than great pianos.
Bellyman yeah I was definitely in a ornery mood when I posted earlier, there's a lot of good to be said for hybrid pianos. A former studiomate of mine tours the country with a hybrid piano in a van performing in various public places (try doing that with an acoustic piano without also carrying around a tuner/technician!) and her performances certainly don't suffer for it.
"You're a smart kid. But your playing is terribly dull."
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Check out this vid. Here, Erhusis is using a 'keyboard' (which I consider is in the piano category as well) - and is able to use it to generate musical magic already.
How does it relate to 'hybrid' satisfying a grand piano player?
I'm pretty sure that Erhusis can play an acoustic grand piano very well too. So maybe 'satisfying' is going to be just associated with someone just wanting a key mechanism that behaves like (or the same) as acoustic grand mechanism. And for sure - the hybrid mechanisms are getting towards that - along the lines of the feel/behaviour. If that's the meaning of satisfying, then we can go with that. Or even other features such as sound features that someone else is looking for.
And this is where it becomes only a matter of testing ... testing for ourselves - at a music store. First hand experience. But this also leads to those discussions, such as the ..... 'what ifs?' (which is to handle pre-emptively those 'what ifs').
My thoughts on the subject echo what Joseph and TheBoringPianist said, and especially what HeartKeys said about “satisfied” versus “same thing”.
From an action point of view, the top hybrids do a superb job of emulating the grand piano experience to build and maintain technique, because, for all intents and purposes, what you find in a hybrid is exactly what you will find in an acoustic. The only main difference is the hammers are replaced with weight-appropriate stoppers, and, in the case of Yamaha, the weight from the damper is missing - and the impact of those things is calculated for and of minimal influence overall.
Overall, though, it’s fairly identical in terms of action.
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Where the issues crop in is the sound. There isn’t a digital on the market that has a sound that matches an acoustic piano. Period. And that’s because all digitals use sounds that are a mere snapshot of an acoustic. Some are powered by a very simplistic sampling processes which just record 3 or 4 velocities per note (an absurd limitation of a piano’s capability and tonal/timbral variation which may not even capture the entire dynamic range), are not recorded in highest fidelity, and are haphazardly assisted by mediocre sound effects. Others use an extremely, extremely throttled version of “modeling” which may not even actually be modeling because true modeling requires a level of computing power that no digital has. Now, A.) for styles of music that stay in a very “present” and straight-forward tonal/timbral range, B.) for musicians who don’t need extreme nuance for their playing style/performing style/tastes, C.) for simpler styles of music and arrangements, and D.) for beginner/intermediate students of styles that do require nuance - for these use cases, the extremely nuanced and infinite-within-its-physical-range-of-capability sonic responsiveness of an acoustic isn’t necessary and/or may not even be desired. But for styles of music or pianists who require the near infinite nuance of an acoustic - there isn’t one digital that matches what an acoustic piano can produce.
That said, the use of VSTs help mitigate this because they solve that problem by contain a more complete and nuanced capturing of what an acoustic piano can do.
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Now there are still some issues.
RE THE EXPERIENCE OF PLAYING: None of them contain the action you’d find in a concert piano - both Yamaha and Kawai are using actions that would be from 5-foot/6-foot (Yamaha) or larger 6-foot (Kawai) pianos. Thus, the super fine responsiveness that comes from the very long keysticks and specialized regulation on a concert piano will never be present on the current hybrids. So, even if your VST sounds like a 9-footer, your hybrid will never truly play like one.
Also, not all hybrids are created alike. Some prefer Yamaha Avantgrands, some prefer Kawai Novus. Reasons and differences presented vary from person to person.
Also, in my experience, and in the testimony of at least two others, I’ve seen reports about hybrids having a bit of difficulty creating the very lowest dynamics - this may be due to how the optical sensors work or are calibrated.
RE LIFESPAN AND REGULATION: Typical regulation is pretty much impossible as they can’t be lubricated normally (lubricant would disturb the optical sensors) nor can the hammers be altered (unless you willing to shave/shape/drill-tiny-holes-through metal/plastic). Most technicians won’t touch them for that reason and those that will are still limited in what they can do. You’re pretty much stuck with factory regulation, which basically doesn’t exist. The shelf life is also a fraction of an acoustics: while the acoustic action inside of it could last for decades - the digital/electric aspects will not - eventually the optical sensors, motherboard, circuitry, computer inside will stop working, replacing the parts will become more and more expensive out of warranty, and then impossible when production stops. An acoustic has no such issues, and can last for centuries so long as you take care of it, maintain it, and refurbish it when necessary.
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I think HeartKeys made a very good point about “satisfy” versus “the same”.
For some uses cases, a hybrid without a VST may well satisfy, but it won’t be the same as an acoustic or equal what an acoustic can do - for these use cases, this may not matter or even be detectable.
For other use cases, ONLY a hybrid without a VST probably won’t satisfy. Partner them together, and you can almost fool yourself into believing you’re playing a $200,000 grand. And it will suffice as a practice instrument, and maybe even a performance/recording instrument. Almost.
But it will never full equal or replace the experience of playing on a finely regulated concert instrument. You may be SATISFIED. But it will never be a replacement, and when you sit down at the real thing, if you have the demands/ear/experience, you will notice.
For most, the hybrid is a compromise. They want the most realistic action, but can’t have a loud acoustic in their living space, so they get a hybrid as their main instrument or their practice instrument. Or they don’t have space for an acoustic. Or they can’t afford an acoustic or find a suitable one in their budget range.
For my own use case, I live in a shared space where the walls are made of paper, so an acoustic piano is completely undoable - my neighbors would be after me with pitchforks. Moreover, the type of piano I’d want is out of my budget - I’m an independent artist surviving off grants and fellowships - my budget is strict and I live a rather spartan life and budget months in advance to afford nice things for my arts ventures. So even if I had space for an acoustic, I couldn’t afford anything but a bad used one at best, unless I got really lucky.
Hence hybrids being a solution for me (although I’ve since moved back to a digital that is somewhere in between a hybrid and a regular - the Casio GP series).
But if I had the money and the living arrangement - psh, I’d have an acoustic. And quite frankly, I think most who have a hybrid would agree. It’s the compromise we make based on our circumstance.
And it’s a superb compromise one. And even a willing one. But, I think most of us were all aware that it was a compromise regardless, and that in exchange for having most of our needs met, we’d sacrifice the most demanding of them.
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The reverse is also true.
With the processing and injected audio components into samples including in real-time (and with evolving acoustic/physical modelling technology - which adds its own excellent components in its own way) --- that is where 'the reverse is true' is absolutely true.
As was mentioned in the past - pianos cannot generally pitch bend and do lots of other things - so it is a matter of using the instrument to do what you have to do (or want you can do), which of course means it's not overall better than what others do (at any level).
And notice this interesting bit of information as well:
(And to make it clear - my own opinion is that no piano (or music or music instrument) type is overall better than another type, and when I mean piano, I mean both digital and acoustic pianos, which are all pianos - all real pianos, as it's obvious - that's why they are called digital pianos and acoustic pianos).
And we know that there's nothing stopping anyone from having an excellent experience in all worlds - by enjoying playing/using the various types of pianos.
SouthPark
1.) The question was not whether an acoustic piano can satisfy a user of digital/computer/electronic technologies. The question was whether a hybrid piano can satisfy a grand user. Nobody who plays a grand piano AND is looking for a digital version of a grand piano (as the OP’s question presents) would want “pitch bend” or any other such effects. Moreover, if anybody wanted any of those effects, a hybrid would not necessarily be the best choice - a workstation keyboard would.
2.) What you have linked to is ONE study done by an organization that clearly has an agenda and an interest in this technology (25th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects) that surveyed a tiny group of 52 people (only 29 of whom actually play the instrument at levels and genres that aren’t disclosed and many of whom may not even be capable of differentiation). They played different random samples of 99 potential tracks, two real and two modeled - which means that not all of the surveyed people were listening to the same tracks. There’s no data to support whether it was truly random or not, no control group, no retests to confirm the results, no disclosure of whether it was double-blind or not. There’s no way to confirm this data. This is extremely unscientific and holds almost no merit. (And interestingly, they, too, also use the word “real” as a differentiator).
3.) I think at this point, whether based on what you’ve posted here, or what you’ve historically shared for those of us who are familiar with your posts: we are very, very, very clear on your opinion.
4.) That said, I disagree. They’re not all real pianos. It’s not “digital piano” and “acoustic piano”. It’s “digital piano” and “acoustic piano”. Notice the bolding. The “acoustic piano” is a piano, full stop, and the only reason we now put “acoustic” in front of it is because of the arrival of electronic versions, which necessitated differentiation. A “digital piano” is an instrument that functions as an electronic and computerized approximation (and sometimes a superb one) of a real piano. They are not the same.
You’ve shared in the past that you believe that a piano is called that simply because it is an instrument that can be soft or loud and have a keyboard layout. That is untrue. A piano has a very specific definition, that is about more than it’s dynamic abilities and keyboard layout, and can be gleaned from the original name and invention descriptor the inventor gave it: Un Arpicembalo di Bartolomeo Cristofori di nuova inventione, che fa' il piano, e il forte, a due registri principali unisoni, con fondo di cipresso senza rosa, or “An arpicembalo/harp-harpsichord by Bartolomeo Cristofori, of new invention, which plays soft and loud, with two unison principal registers (two sets of unison pitch strings), and a bottom/foundation (soundboard) made of cypress without rose”.
It was never just the dynamic capabilities of the piano that make it a piano, as a clavichord, which existed before the piano, was capable of dynamic variation also. Not was it the keyboard layout used on pianos, as that layout was used two centuries before the piano even existed on the harpsichord and spinetta. Cristofori’s own definition of his invention gives us insight into what makes a piano.
A piano, whether in it’s original form or the modern version of it, is an instrument made of metals, woods, and nowadays, plastic and carbon, that has 88 keys which trigger a complex system of levers, joints, and connect parts to cause a hammer to strike a string, and amplifies that sound with a bridge and other elements of the body, which can be horizontal or vertical. A digital piano is a computerized and electronic instrument which uses different technologies to emulate the full-stop piano.*
At present, there isn’t a digital that is better at being a piano than a real piano. However there are many that are able to approximate it at superb levels, although requiring help to accomplish that goal. And as musical instruments, they are excellent, can even be better for certain use cases, and can also present other options and effects that an acoustic piano cannot. However, they are not better at simply being a piano than a piano.
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We'll just disagree with each other taushi. I'm an acoustic grand piano player too.
Yes indeed. It is true that a hybrid digital (and even a non-hybrid digital) is not the same as an acoustic grand piano. And it is also very obviously true that the reverse is true. They all have their excellent and amazing qualities for generating excellent music.
I appreciate and love all pianos - digital and acoustic etc. They are all very satisfying to me. All of them. Actually ... much much more than satisfying.
I got a Kawai CA97 (hybrid), replacing the cheaper end regular Yamaha digital piano and the upgrade was needed. I did play the N2 that the musician on YT talked about without saying much about it as a piano: I did not find the same physical attributes. I can't have an acoustic due to neighbours etc. My goal was to train my hands on something that behaved physically as close to an acoustic piano, preferably a grand. I went back and forth between acoustic grands and this piano when I bought it and to my semi-trained hands they felt similar.
The store also had Roland hybrids and I went back and forth between the two. The Rolands have evolved quite a bit since that time and I am thinking of switching to a Roland. I had a long talk with someone about this who knew both.
Here's what I got only partly right at the time. My priority was the physical mechanical action. I did gain tremendously over what I'd had before. For example, my cheap regular DP, a key would have to depress almost all the way down before sounding, and ditto for releasing. This trained my hands into an unnatural way of moving, and also desensitized them due to the poor response. On the first day I played the Kawai like a truck driver, just plowing through its subtleties. I had to relearn pedal because the old DP behaved similarly there, but worse. The switch was a good one. I scoffed at the idea of getting a piano with an "ideal sound" saying I'm the future musician and I should be producing the sound, not the piano. In some ways I still think that way, i.e. I don't want the instrument to create magic and hide flaws. But I was wrong in another way too. Namely:
Playing is an interplay between what your hands and body do on the piano, and the sound that's produced, and it goes both ways. For example, if the piano has an amazing action, but the dynamics or quality of sound don't reflect well what you're doing, then you will strain to produce them - or that ear-body loop doesn't develop well. I started reading in PW about some kind of loudness ceiling written into the software, which one IT expert actually managed to fix on his piano by reprogramming somehow. I encountered that kind of ceiling for fff. There was also a video by Shirley testing out a related but less fancy Kawai, where something like behaviour of dynamics changed when pedal was added as opposed to not - anyway, something where what she did with her hands produced different results dynamics-wise with pedal. Part of training your playing involves the loop between the actions you do physically on the physical construct of the piano and the quality and nature of sounds you produce. I am therefore curious about the new Roland.
In fact, even the day I was first testing out pianos before buying the present one, I found the sound coming out of the Yamaha to be awesome (the place also had amazing acoustics), but the action was inferior, and I prioritized action over awesome sound.
I am not a "grand player" but kind of hope that the DP I use is of a quality that it could act as a bridge. I could actually rent time at the Yamaha store on one of their grands.
Casio calls its Celviano GP-510 BP for a "Grand Hybrid".
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...
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Both Kawai and Casio are just using marketing tactics.
Typically, the conventionally agreed upon definition of a hybrid piano is a piano that contains an actual 1:1 acoustic action inside, meaning the action is identical to what you will find in a real acoustic piano, with the only changes typically being the hammers are made of metal/plastic instead of felt.
E.g., Kawai Novus:
And Yamaha Avantgrand:
The Kawai CA series and the Casio GP series are not hybrids, by that definition.
The Kawai CA series only uses a small key stick that presses a button:
The Casio GP series uses a larger keystick to push a hammer that pushes a button:
Neither contain a real piano action.
Now, people do and have attempted to come up with alternate definitions of “hybrid”, but as the term was first and most popularly used, it meant a piano that contains a true real acoustic action inside. Merely having a real keystick does not mean it has a full action.
Kawai and Casio have begun playing fast and loose with the term, and I’m not the biggest fan of that, because it’s a bit dishonest. I would not consider the actions inside the Kawai and Casio to be the typical conventional folded actions that you’ll find in most digitals. But, they’re not real actions either. In varying degrees, they are approximations. And so the end result is those digitals which use them are not conventional hybrids.
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That's what we disagreed on already taushi. I'm saying that hybrid digital pianos and non-hybrid digital pianos are pianos, just as acoustic pianos are pianos. Where-as you're saying that hybrid digital pianos and non-hybrid digital pianos are not pianos.
Using a stick that presses a button is efficient and effective for piano playing/performance - and even overcomes the thunks, clunks and other invasive type noises of the full mechanical system (aka yesterday's technology, which of course is still fine - can still make music with it obviously, which is nice).
Regardless of whether we call them hybrid or not - they are pianos. It's just up to us piano players (the driver) to pair up -- team up - with the piano, and generate music with it.
For example - we can be sure that his person here could hop on any piano and generate golden music on anything that has adequate substance. And as I mentioned - no genre of music is overall better than another.
But don't ask me about how that Kurzweil is producing the sounds in the first vid - as it doesn't appear to be connected to power or speakers etc. That person most likely has perfect/absolute pitch abilities and is able to do 'shadow' playing. Impressive.
This all relates to the original comment about 'satisfy'. Because a lot of us are acoustic grand piano players (too), which (acoustic grand pianos and acoustic upright pianos) are excellent music instruments - no doubt about it. A lot of us just switch back and forth between pianos - regardless hybrid or not - and no issues with that. In fact, switching around is all part of the fun of playing pianos. Once again - it is true that acoustic pianos are not the same as digital pianos (and vice versa) - and that it was mentioned that even acoustic pianos even among themselves - the same model - are often on the same among individuals. Most likely 'less-so' for many digital pianos, where mechanisms have similar behaviour (among individuals of the same model of digital piano) due to the 'modern' production processes and design - which tends to allow for a particular level of 'control' of the piano, and certainty - where some/many people like that, as in --- a lot of people talk about wanting 'best' control/repeatability/consistency - less 'uncertainty'.
Thank you Taushi, making things very clear. 
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...