Keyboard advice

Adam_MD

Well Mrs_MD would quite like to play the piano so I'm going to pick up a keyboard for her to learn on.

As I know absolutely nothing about keyboards I'm putting a call out for some advice. Any recommendations for models I should buy or features I should get. I would quite like it to have midi so I could pinch it once in a while to trigger drums, samples etc

Apart from that she would like it to be full size 81 keys I think?

Any help greatfully appreciated.

randomhandclaps

Doe it need to have speakers or do you not mind having a separate amp?

Adam_MD

I wouldn't mind but she would rather it had speakers so it could be used anywhere in the house.

HAL9000

If Mrs MD wants to learn piano then I'd suggest getting an electric piano rather than electric keyboard. With a keyboard notes are either on or off; with a piano how hard or softly you hit the notes makes a difference to how it sounds. Yamaha do some decent pianos at not too heavy an outlay.

Adam_MD

Ah thank you I didn't know digital pianos existed.

ICBM

Yamaha digital piano.

There's a huge range at any price point from about £350 up to how much do you want to spend?, and you should be able to find the right combination of features.

For what it's worth I have the cheapest one in the P series (the P-35) and it lacks MIDI but is otherwise excellent. It's extremely light for a digital piano with weighted keys and is about as compact as an 88-key piano can possibly be really - only a foot deep and six inches tall, so easy to move about the house. It goes on any standard keyboard stand.

CabbageCat

Most keyboards have pressure-senstive keys nowadays but aren't weighted so playing the keyboard is a very different feeling to playing a digital piano.

I agree with the Yamaha P-series recommendation. The keys are very well weighted - with the high ones lighter than the low ones like a real piano. Most of them have midi out as well I think; my P60 certainly does. 

 

RaymondLin

88 keys, hammer action. Yamaha P85 is good. I have a P75 myself.

Adam_MD

Thanks for the recommendations a Yamaha P series it is.

Nomad

A standard full piano keyboard has 88 keys.

Before I got my acoustic piano, I was using a semi-weighted MIDI controller keyboard, and it felt crap. A proper piano-weighted board feels right - much easier to play with the dynamics.

It's worth doing some research on where the digital piano technology is currently at. There are a few key features that help to make it feel more like a real one, and when I was looking a few years ago, the dearer digitals had more of the features. A few things to consider are...

Graded hammer action. On a real one, the higher pitched keys have a lighter action, and the lower keys a heavier action.

Polyphany. You can, generally, only press 10 keys, but if you use the sustain pedal, notes that you've released will continue to sound, and that can add up to a lot of notes if you keep the pedal pressed down for a long time. (A good piano will sustain for ages.)

Sympathetic harmonics. On a real piano, when you play with the sustain pedal, all of the notes are undamped (normally, there's a felt damper against each string). Playing notes results in other strings producing sympathetic vibrations (even if they haven't been hit and released - silent strings will start to vibrate).

Better speaker system. When I was looking, I found that the cheaper ones didn't sound particularly special. It wasn't until I got to a 2.4K Yamaha Clavinova with a multi-way speaker system that I was impressed with it's room-filling and realistic sound.

MIDI. Damn useful, both for recording the player, and for playing pieces through the piano without having to faff with those paper roll things.

Other sounds. Of debatable value, depending one what one wants to do with it. There are other piano sounds (like Fender Rhodes) that can sound really nice and still feel right on a piano keyboard, but some sounds don't feel right - like organ, for example.

I did my piano shopping about 7 years ago, and I would expect the technology to have moved on since then. After hearing the dearer Yamaha, I went off to look at acoustics and ended getting a used one for about half the price of the Yam. Out of about 10 pianos I tried in the used piano shop, a 2.4K Yam acoustic was nice, and so was the Rossler Rigoletto (east European) that I chose. Those were the only two that sang for me - everything else felt a bit bland.

I would strongly recommend that you take Mrs MD to the piano shop, park her in front of as many different models as you can and let her play around. It's just like buying a guitar - you have to take your time, get settled in, absorb the sound and feel. The one she keeps going back to is probably the one to get.

PolarityMan

If she is only wanting to learn Im going to be contrary and suggest an electric piano might be an expensive outlay that's never used, if you go for a keyboard instead at least you have something that can be used for other stuff (midi controller, off bit of synth live etc). whereas dragging a full size electric piano around has gotta be a massive ballache right?

crunchman

Does anyone have an opinion on how the Roland F20 stacks up against some of the Yamaha offerings.  I've always preferred the piano tones from Roland keyboards, but I know Yamaha have a good reputation for the feel of the keys.

Hopefully I'll have the funds to buy something in the new year for my daughter to learn on.

joeyowen

I got a second hand Yamaha p 140 I think, lovely thing really

With built in speakers, good action and headphone/midi etc

stickyfiddle

P85 user here. I grew up on uprights, then went a decade or so without playing and got a P85 a couple of years ago. It's not perfect but more than enough for a beginner

Nomad

PolarityMan said:

If she is only wanting to learn Im going to be contrary and suggest an electric piano might be an expensive outlay that's never used, if you go for a keyboard instead at least you have something that can be used for other stuff (midi controller, off bit of synth live etc). whereas dragging a full size electric piano around has gotta be a massive ballache right?

As I understand it, it's for playing at home. That aside, so far as I'm aware, all 88-key keyboards are piano keyboards (whether stage pianos on stands or the piece-of-furniture style).

Trying to play piano on a synth-style keyboard is crap - I thought it would be okay but ended up getting the proper thing, and it made a world of difference. The key weighting is an intrinsic part of the instrument.

I would also question whether some multi-purpose synth-style setup will produce a piano sound that's conducive to learning piano. If you wanted to learn classical guitar, you wouldn't buy an electric and a pile of effects in the hope that the compromised feel and sound will lead to you learning classical.

Adam_MD

We're going to head to a few music stores this weekend to see what she prefers. On paper the yamaha p series is current fav.

hobbio

Check out Kawai pianos too. My Mrs earns her living with piano and keyboard, and her Kawai is great. They're not cheap new, but second hand it might be a goer.

ICBM

PolarityMan said:

dragging a full size electric piano around has gotta be a massive ballache right?

Not really, the only way in which a digital piano (if you don't have one with a full piano-type stand) is awkward to move is its length, which there is no way around with 88 keys. A normal 'keyboard' like the Yamaha PSR-295 I have is shorter with only 61 keys, but deeper, taller and not that much lighter so it's a bit six and two threes…

Nomad said:

Trying to play piano on a synth-style keyboard is crap - I thought it would be okay but ended up getting the proper thing, and it made a world of difference. The key weighting is an intrinsic part of the instrument.

That's exactly why I got the P-35 - my daughter is learning piano and the non-weighted PSR just wasn't good enough even for basic practice.

If you do want both, things like the PSRs go second hand for only about £50 or even less once they get a generation or two out of date.

Fuzzdog

Another vote for the Yamaha P-series keyboard here - I love them, and I have also noticed that every person I know who is primarily an acoustic pianist seems to play a Yamaha P of some sort when they need to plug in, so that says something!

Nomad

ICBM said:

PolarityMan said:

dragging a full size electric piano around has gotta be a massive ballache right?

Not really, the only way in which a digital piano (if you don't have one with a full piano-type stand) is awkward to move is its length, which there is no way around with 88 keys. A normal 'keyboard' like the Yamaha PSR-295 I have is shorter with only 61 keys, but deeper, taller and not that much lighter so it's a bit six and two threes…

The stage piano ones should be easy enough for two people to move around the house, even if it's on the stand made of wooden panels (which, @Adam_MD, looks to be much better than those grotty X-frame things - better room for the feet and pedals).

For proper ballache, try 200+ kilos of acoustic upright.

Fretwired

These guys are good .. have some offers on .. not sure how competitive they are but I've dealt with them a few times and always had excellent service.

http://www.reddogmusic.co.uk/catalog/keyboards-and-modules/digital-pianos?utm_source=Red+Dog+Music&utm_campaign=493c22d553-xmas+synth+&+key+special&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3dce5edb4c-493c22d553-98983964