How to Choose Piano
Very often our student ask me: how to choose piano correctly? What is a good brand and how should I choose it. In this article I will explain how to pick a piano that fits your budget and space and helps you and your child to get the most out of your piano practice.
In some cases you would want to buy an acoustic piano, in some cases – an electric or even a keyboard. Here what you should consider before making a decision about buying an instrument.
If you think that you will be using the instrument for a long time – get an acoustic piano. It keeps the value for really long time, the way that keys feel and sound is authentic, your fingers will get used to the correct stretch, your hands muscles will receive adequate exercise technique and the most important in my opinion as a pianist: velocity of the keys are depending on your touch completely (when you press the key, a little hammer hits the the strings – so it is completely natural physics process). That gives you total control of the sound that you are making on the piano. For better understanding of each concept I always like to use metaphors: you can compare an acoustic piano to driving a manual car and electric piano would be an automatic one.
Getting an acoustic piano has it downsides though: it is usually very heavy (what makes it difficult to move), it takes more space and in order to keep good quality sound it needs to be tuned every 2 years or so.
If you decide to buy an acoustic piano, you also want to stay with the good brands. For example: Steinway, Yamaha, Baldwin, Kimball.
If you wanted to have a piano that will never go out of tune and will be very light to move, but still has a look and feel of real piano – you would want to buy an electric piano. When you choose to buy an electric instrument, there are some important things to look out for: you want it to be full size (88keys), to have weighted keys and have high velocity sensitivity. I would put in the same category full size keyboards. They don’t look like a piano (because basically have only keyboard part of it and a stand), but some of them have very good sound quality. With this option make sure it comes with a pedal. Good brands are Yamaha and more affordable, but still decent: Williams.
It you wanted to get something very portable and to use just for several months – you can go with small keyboards (about 61 keys). Important thing to look out for: piano size or real size keys. You don’t want to buy a toy, because practicing on a keyboard like that will not be beneficial for your child’s hands at all! But note, even with piano size keys you don’t want to practice on this keyboard for more that 6 months. If after that you still are going strong on your practice, get one of the first 2 options mentioned above!
Hope it was useful! If you have questions about our article how to choose piano for music practice, give us a call at (904) 477 1552
Read another article: WOC Academy Teachers Philocophy Piano Lessons at WOC
