The Ideal First Piano: What You Need to Know

I'm Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com giving you the ideal first piano, what you need to know. The ideal first piano, you might think, oh is that going to be an upright? Is that going to be a digital? What's the ideal first piano? Well, I'm going to shock you here and tell you right from the get go, the ideal first piano is a 9 foot concert grand Steinway or other top tier piano in a concert hall. Now, that is an ideal first piano and you might think, really? You want to start with something like that? Well, in a perfect world, that would be ideal. But I'm going to go through all the different pianos that would be ideal for you and at the end you'll find the absolute minimum piano you need in order to start successfully at the piano. Now, why would I say that a 9 foot concert grand is the ideal piano? Well, there's a lot of reasons. You know, just like driving a car, if you're used to driving a big car, going to a small car is effortless, but the reverse is not true. If you're driving a peanut car, zipping around town, then you're in a real big car, you're going to feel out of place, parking is hard. It's the same thing with piano. If you get used to playing on a large grand piano, going to any other piano is a seamless experience. But there's more to it than that. The rich sound, the reward you get for your playing, the smooth action, you're going to want to play that piano and you're going to be more successful. I can't tell you how many times I've run into parents who want their kids to study the piano, but they don't want to spend too much so they get some junky piano, the kids hate the sound, they give up and it's a self -fulfilling prophecy to see, oh you see, I'm glad I didn't spend the money, they didn't stay with it anyway. Now, of course, a concert grand is a tall order of business and I mention in a concert hall because unless you have enough air space, not just a physical room, I mean I could fit a concert grand in this room, but it would blow me out of here if this is only just barely big enough to fit a concert grand and the ceilings aren't high enough, you need some air space aside from the physical space to fit a nine foot piano, it produces a lot of volume so this is not practical for most people. Well, the next best thing is a grand piano because you get the rewarding touch and sound and that would be absolutely ideal for most homes. Now that might not be practical either, maybe you don't have enough room even for that or the budget. Let's go down then, what about a baby grand? Now the benefits of a baby grand are you get a very similar action to a concert grand, it's not quite the same geometry but it's very close. Well, from there if you go down to an upright, a tall upright could have a sound equal or even better than some baby grands but you're losing out on a couple of essential things. First of all, the action is inferior, it's sluggish on even the best uprights compared to grand pianos because grand pianos, the hammers go up and down, have the benefit of gravity so repetition is lightning fast.

Whereas on an upright the hammers go sideways and there's a limit to the speed of repetition, you'll notice it not just with repeated notes but with trills and things like that so when you get to an intermediate level you're going to not have the same response of the action.

Also the pedals don't all do the same things, only the sustain pedal, the one on the right, the pedal you use most of the time. So for beginning students a good tall upright can actually be the ideal piano. It might not have quite the same rewarding sound that a larger grand would have but you can get a nice sound and until you get really more advanced those sluggish action and the lack of the expressiveness that are added with the pedals won't be a big hindrance so it's close to ideal. Then you get to shorter console pianos which are still okay to learn on, not bad, not ideal. I said you know this is about what's the ideal piano to start on. From there hybrid pianos are actually really a good choice for a lot of folks because you can get a grand piano action on some of them in something that fits in a very compact space and provides a sound signature of digital piano samples of larger pianos. It's not really the same thing as the real deal with strings and all of that but the action is superior to the next possibility of what is the ideal piano to start with and this what I would say is the basic minimum of what you need if you want to study the piano which is an 88 key weighted action digital piano. Now why is this so important? Well if you play on a piano that is a semi weighted action your fingers are not going to develop the strength and the thing about piano that's different from almost all other instruments is you play a clarinet or a violin or a trumpet you take your instrument with you wherever you go but with piano you go to lessons you go to someone's house you go to school church it's different pianos everywhere. If you're used to playing a real light action a digital piano you're not going to have the strength to play other instruments so the absolute minimum that you should have if you want to study the piano we have children studying the piano is an 88 key weighted action digital piano. Now they talk about weighted graded and once you see that you go oh my gosh I better have a graded action what does that mean? Well simply put the keys on the lower half of the piano are heavier because the hammers are thicker hitting bigger strings longer heavier strings so indeed the notes up here are a little bit lighter than the notes down here. Is that a big deal? Personally I don't think so I don't really think that having a weighted graded action is going to make a big difference a good weighted action 88 key digital piano with a decent sound now there's a wide range of quality these instruments go to your local guitar center or if there's any other music stores in your area that have digital pianos and try them out for yourself so you can get an idea of the sound because there's a lot of variety but generally speaking Casio, Yamaha and Roland as well as other companies Kawai make really nice digital pianos starting in just a few hundred dollars and you know what's great also along with hybrids is that you can play these instruments with headphones so it might be a great adjunct even if you have a grand piano somewhere in your home and plus they can hook to computers so there's music software so having a good digital piano actually has a lot of benefits even if you already have a piano so that's it for you once again with pianos bigger is better all things being equal starting with concert grand semi -concert grand grand piano tall upright console piano hybrid piano weighted action 88 key digital and those are the order of what is ideal and the minimum one is that 88 key weighted action digital but if you can at least get a tall upright piano in good condition you're going to do great at the piano and you're going to enjoy the sound and it's going to make you successful in your piano studies if I can be of any help I'm Robert at LivingPianos.com we do sell pianos all over the world with free delivery around the country check out LivingPianos.com for yourself we're actually the world's first online piano store since 2006 we'll see you next time thanks so much for joining me

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