The 3 Types of Pianos: What’s Best for You?

The three types of pianos, what's best for you? You're not just going to get information today, you're going to get samples, audio samples of the three types of pianos, digital, upright and grand piano, the same exact piece plan in all three. And I'm going to give you all the information to determine what the benefits are to each of these, and it's not one type that's perfect for everyone. There's different use cases. Let's get right into it and listen to a little bit of the Chopin B-flat minor nocturne on a Casio Previous Series 88 key weighted action digital piano. Check it out.

I bet a lot of you are surprised at how good that piano sounds. Well, you know, technology has come a long way and for under $1 ,000, there's actually a lot of really decent digital pianos. What do you get? You get a weighted, graded action, meaning that the keys on top are a little lighter, the keys on the bottom are a little heavier, just like on a grand piano or an upright. And you get the superb sound of a nine-foot piano. Naturally, if you use headphones or external speakers, you'll get a richer sound than the little speakers that are contained within the piano.

Now, who is this perfect for? Well, if you travel a lot and you want to take your piano with you, I have that very piano that I call my vacation piano. I take it with me whenever I travel by car and it's a godsend to have a piano with me when I travel because I don't like to be away from a piano, especially when I'm on vacation. I've got all this free time. Of course I want to spend some time at the piano.

Also, if you're on a budget for a few hundred dollars, you get a piano? How can you beat that? Nothing to tune and there are many different sounds. You can hook it to computers for education software.

You can produce music with computer software, with sequencing programs. There's a ton of things you can do on a piano like this. So why would anybody want to get anything else? Before we get to that question, I also want to mention there's a tremendous range within the category of digital pianos. I chose what I consider to be the lowest price instrument that is suitable for someone to actually play on and get some satisfaction.

Now naturally you could spend more. There are some Kawais that have longer keys, not the part you see, but behind the fallboard to give a more even feel from the front to the back of the key, getting closer to the fallboard so the key travel is greater, so you don't get that seesaw effect like being close to the middle on a seesaw. And there are other features that, oh my gosh, you can't imagine some of the top of the line of Yamaha have amazing features that you can orchestrate and do things you can't even believe. But I'm just talking about straight ahead playing the piano. Now if you really want to get to the top echelon of digital pianos, hybrid pianos, bridge the gap by having more closely of an acoustic piano action with the digital sounds, and you can get into $10,000, $15 ,000 on these instruments. So there's a wide range of what are considered digital pianos and yet somebody might want to be able to orchestrate with every sound imaginable and get the top of the line digital piano. They even have some that look like grand pianos. So there's a world to explore with digital pianos. Now why would anybody want to get anything else? I just talked about all these incredible benefits. You didn't have to tune them. You could have portable ones. What is to be gained? For those of you who have played a lot of pianos, you know there's an organic quality to a real piano, an acoustic piano. The vibrancy and as much expression you can get out of a digital piano, there's truly an infinite range of tones possible on an acoustic piano. The interaction of the sounds now, many more pianos now are getting into physical modeling to try to emulate, getting closer and closer to the visceral experience of playing a real piano, but they're never going to quite match it. There's the psychoacoustic effect of the sound coming out of the soundboard in the back of an upright or out of the top of a grand piano and the bottom that just can't be matched even with state of the art speaker systems and all kinds of technologies. So if you really want the real thing and not to mention the action unless you have a hybrid, you're not getting that, you know, there's almost a hundred parts to each note, to each key on an acoustic piano. The precision and the repetition of the things you get are just beyond what any digital piano can do. So if you really want that experience, the next logical place to go is to an upright piano. And what better way to demonstrate this than with the ubiquitous Yamaha U1, the most popular upright piano in the world. Listen to the same bit of Chopin on this piano.

Good action, nice sound, piece of furniture that can go with pretty much anything. It's like a black mirror in your home. Now what are some of the benefits? I just talked about them, that real organic experience. Well what do you miss on an upright? Why would you ever have to get a grand? A grand takes up a lot of room. If you don't have a lot of space, boom, that might be the deal breaker right there. An upright might be all the piano you could possibly get. Once again, budget enters into it. To get a good quality upright compared to a good quality grand, the grand is more expensive. So space, budget, but think about this. An upright piano is unfinished on the back, so they're not very attractive. So you have to take up a certain amount of wall space.

Sometimes you just don't have that wall space and you don't want to put it up against a window that could be damaging to the piano, the sunlight or the wind coming in if you open the windows.

And a baby grand could be easier to place because they look good on all sides. You could put them any which way. So for space, sometimes a baby grand will be better. Now why would anybody need a grand piano or a baby grand anyway? Well think about this. Even though you have a complex action on an upright that has far more moving parts and expressive capabilities than even the best digitals except for hybrid pianos, but since the hammers go sideways, there's a limit to the speed of repetition. You'll never be able to do this on even the finest upright.

And not only that, but trills when notes are repeating quickly. If you are getting from an intermediate to an advanced level, you will outgrow your upright no matter how fine it is. It won't be able to keep up with you, the speed of repetition. If you play the same chord twice as a matter of fact, like this, on an upright piano the second one will always be quieter than the first one. Those hammers just can't repeat the way in a grand piano the benefits of gravity.

Now a tall upright can actually match the sound of a baby grand or even exceed it in some cases. But naturally grand pianos could be much longer. But the big benefit once again is the action, but it goes further. Did you know that the pedals on upright pianos on the vast majority of them don't do what they're supposed to do except the pedal used mostly, the sustained pedal on the right. The middle pedal is usually a practice pedal. It makes everything quieter. On some older pianos it might be a bass sustain holding all the notes below C, mimicking the pedal on a grand piano that holds only selective notes as follows. Play a chord, those notes hold, but no other notes hold.

But uprights don't do that. So if you're playing Debussy and Ravel and Prokofiev and other composers where you need that middle pedal, an upright is not going to provide that for you. However, once again the benefit, having a practice pedal like that can be pretty nice because to make it quiet you play at night and it mutes everything with a piece of felt that goes between the hammers and the strings. So it's not a right or wrong, it's what suits you. And of course the left pedal, which is so expressive, on a grand piano it shifts the action so it only strikes two of the strings as closely.

So you get a tonal shift.

No uprights, almost no uprights do that. The left pedal usually changes the action, it makes the hammers go closer to the strings so it's harder to play loud. It changes the feel but it doesn't change the tone. So those are really good reasons why, for a serious player wanting the nuance of expression with all the pedals and an action that will keep up with you, that's where we move to grand pianos, and let's listen to a Steinway M, again the same Chopin B-flat minor nocturne.

You ear a real richness to the tone and as I said the expressiveness and now I chose just a five foot seven inch grand piano just like I chose a 48 inch upright naturally they're shorter uprights that don't have as rich a tone and taller ones that have a richer tone the same thing is true with pianos with grand pianos I would say stay away from under five foot pianos in general if they're much under five feet the tone in the bass is just anemic and most companies reputable companies don't even make you know four and a half or four foot nine or four foot ten inch pianos because the compromises of scale design are too great even Steinway the model s like this is not the kind of bass so this one has an unusually good base for an s but the M is so much more popular because those few extra inches makes a big difference now you go to a grand piano at six feet and it's not just the base you get a different envelope to the sound the shape of the tone particularly in a tenor register not the lowest register but that register has an expansiveness and yes whenever you depress the sustain pedal all the strings and sympathetically vibrate so on larger pianos the tone that you get particularly when you press the pedal is so rich it opens up a whole reverberation chamber for you I once made a video saying what is the ideal piano I said really the ideal piano is a nine foot concert grand in a concert hall because naturally you have to have the right space the right acoustics for the piano you choose this goes for uprights but even much more so with grand pianos because grand pianos have a lot more volume when you get to seven foot and certainly nine foot pianos so a big recap for people who just want a nice piano you can play with headphones no maintenance you can take it with you digital pianos offer tremendous solutions and there are many different ones they could almost all be hooked to computers for music software for music theory training and sight reading training for being able to produce music fantastic the way it just plugs right into technology but if you really want that organic experience go for an upright a u1 is good there are more expensive and better uprights there are less expensive ones if you don't have the budget for that and finally grand pianos starting with baby grands and moving on up all things being equal if you have the space both for the piano and for the sound bigger is better with pianos and of course you could spend a quarter of a million dollars on a concert grand so there's no end to how far you can go with pianos but I'd say get what suits you and think long term with pianos particularly if you're getting an acoustic piano it's not the kind of thing you want to buy and then buy again think what you really want and you'll never regret it getting a nice piano again.

I'm Robert Estrin this is livingpianos.com, I'm happy to speak with any of you if you want more information for your situation to find what the right piano is for you thanks so much for joining me we'll see you next time here on livingpianos.com, your online piano store

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