Thursday, October 21, 2010

Learn To Play A Digital Or An Acoustic Piano

By Jenne Mae

What is the better choice if I have to select between buying an acoustic piano or a digital piano? Let's take a look at the different choices if you want to learn to play piano.

Personally I have not been forced decide between purchasing a normal upright piano and a digital piano as I have both inside my house. I can see advantages in both types of pianos when practicing the art of learning to play piano.

A standard upright piano generates sounds with hammers that strike the strings. A digital piano on the other hand tries to duplicate the feeling of playing an acoustic piano.

Plenty of individuals are familiar with the basic upright piano but what advantages has a digital piano?

First let us describe a digital piano.

A digital piano consists of a keyboard with weighted key action, sensors that detect the velocity when you play the keys and a set of sounds you can choose from. In order to make it possible to listen to the piano once you play you have an amplifier and loudspeakers and headphone jacks.

Here are some advantages with a digital piano:

1. A digital piano doesn't need to be tuned. A basic acoustic piano you need to tune one or two times every year. If you can't tune a piano yourself you have to turn to a piano tuner. It can be quite expensive of course. Even a piano tuner has to pay his bills.

2. You can practice silently. A digital piano normally has a headphone jack so by utilizing headphones you may practice as much as you wish without disturbing neightbors or family members.

3. Midi interface. A digital piano normally has a midi interface which makes it possible to connec your piano to a PC and utilize music software such as notation programs or a sequenser program or a software synthesizer.

What then are the disadvantages of having a digital piano?

1. The sounds in an acoustic piano are produced by strings vibrating and the different pitches interact in ways that you cannot copy on a digital piano. The sound quality of the sounds produced by digital pianos are becoming better and better but it is still a completely different way of producing sounds.

2. A digital piano is limited when it comes to producing different tone colors by different ways of playing. An accomplished pianist might feel limited by the sampled sounds.

There are many more things to say about choosing a piano but this is a beginning.

As you can see it is not so easy to decide what's best for you. If you can't decide what type of piano to buy you can do as I have done. Have both types of pianos and keep smiling. - 40731

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