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Not sure if this is the right thread but I'm not sure where else this would go (synth thread?). I don't have room for a digital piano (yet), but I just bought a used 49-key keyboard on the cheap (specifically a Roland A-49, which fits nicely on my desk). Rather than try to force the task of "learning piano" onto a limited piece of equipment, I'm going to focus on learning theory and simple composition. That said, it seems like these efforts would benefit from becoming a competent keyboardist within the limitations of the equipment I have. Would you approach this differently than the standard piano methods (with modifications for the reduced range), or is there a keboard-specific approach out there?
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Jun 2, 2021 23:23
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Funny story, my $100 A-49 fell through because the guy was expecting the shipping to be only about $25. Oops. But now I'm psyched and impatient so I upped my budget, read more reviews, and picked up a certified refurbished 61-key Novation Impulse. It's semi-weighted and supposedly has very nice keys. It will also eat up more of my desk, but whatever. Does anything in particular distinguish any of the online lesson platforms, or are they all just vehicles for teachers to find students over Zoom/Skype?
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Jun 7, 2021 16:04
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I am a neophyte myself, so take this for what it's worth (not much): #4 takes you out of the realm of "digital piano" and more into "keyboard workstation." That's not bad or worse, but different. And because keyboard workstations are generally oriented towards live performance, you're probably paying for a lot of features you don't need. Alternatively, even a budget digital piano will have a MIDI output. Using that, you can stream your playing to a computer. MIDI does not send audio data, rather it tells the computer "they played this note, this hard, for this long." Using DAW software you can make that sound however you want. $300 meticulously sampled virtual piano instrument? Check. Armpit farts you recorded using an old gaming mic? Also check.
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Jul 3, 2021 21:14
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Meatlong Football posted:I have an FP-30 (love it) and it has a couple dozen other sounds but they're clearly less well sampled than the piano sounds. Even the electric piano is pretty ehh. The 3-pedal stand is nice and I enjoy flipping pages with the left pedal but really 2 pedals is enough and I don't think that should be a dealbreaker. Ok so this reminds me of something I was wondering the other day. I'm 3-4 months out from seriously shopping for a digital piano to supplement my keyboard but I'm trying to get a lay of the land. For a variety of reasons a portable DP will work better for me than a console right now. It looks like most of the portables in the sub-$1,000 price bracket have 3-pedal units that integrate with the dedicated stand. As far as I can tell, only the Casio PX-S1000 has a truly portable pedal unit, while the others (Kawai ES110 - my current front runner - Yamaha P125, Roland FP-30X) only have a portable damper pedal. I may be able to step up to the $1,500 price bracket but it looks like the situation is similar. I'm at the point where my teacher is just starting to talk about the damper pedal, so I don't have a great sense of how important the others are. Given that 95% of my playing will be practice at home, I can't imagine it's a big deal, but figured I would make sure.
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Jul 4, 2021 17:13
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Looking for a keyboard stand recommendation. I'd like it to be sturdy (resistant to getting bumped), relatively easy to set up/tear down, and not too deep (it will be holding a relatively slim digital piano, I don't need Roland's 2ft deep Z stand). Also under $150 if possible. Was looking at the Quiklock M91 (the optional 2nd tier is a nice bonus) but Z and T stands also seem worth considering. Related: Owners of the FP-30X/P-125/ES110 and similar pianos, how sturdy are your dedicated stands with the 3-pedal board (which looks like it would help brace)? I finally made it to Guitar Center and saw a P-45 on its dedicated furniture stand (the P-125 and FP-30X were on wall racks) and holy moly was it wobbly. Pretty sure my 2 year old could collapse it - not just knock it over, which could be fixed by a wall anchor, but literally cause it to fall apart - by carelessly running into it. It didn't have a pedal board though 
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Jul 10, 2021 14:46
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That's good to hear, especially because I ended up liking the feel of the FP-30X over the P-125. That said, this particular P-125 was handicapped by being nonfunctional and with some broken keys, so probably not a great example of the type!  I'm going to another Guitar Center tonight to form a second opinion but there's probably a reason the Roland gets recommended so often in this thread.The Kawai showroom up the road from me told me this morning that the supply of ES110s is not keeping up with demand and they don't even have a demo unit currently. Kind of a shame, because I heard really good things about it, although in the tradeoff between having a USB interface with audio (Yamaha/Roland) and MIDI DIN (Kawai), I think the USB is probably better for me.
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Jul 10, 2021 20:25
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I ended up getting the Yamaha. The Roland action did feel a little better but the Yamaha seems fine, and is a big step up from my semi-weighted Novation. On balance the Yamaha also had some nice intangibles (I liked the sound better, a proper USB ASIO driver, 6lb lighter), whereas the Roland's Bluetooth wasn't as high on my list. I plan on upgrading to something much nicer a few years down the road anyways and keeping the slab as a portable/backup. I just picked up the stand and triple pedal, and yeah in the case of Yamaha (pretty sure it's the same pedal unit for the P-125 and P-515) I can see that it won't do much. For the Roland and Kawai it's more like an additional cross-brace.
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Jul 12, 2021 02:51
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Having done the same exercise a month or so ago, in my experience you may have to hit a couple Guitar Centers. I eventually got lucky and found one that had both the Yamaha P45 (cheaper but same action as P125) and Roland FP-30X on display. Even my local Kawai dealer didn't have an ES110 to show - they said they basically sell out as fast as shipments come in. I am happy with my P125, but if you are going to stick with internal sounds (or plan to use VSTs on a Mac, I guess, because the Yamaha ASIO driver won't be relevant), the FP-30X felt like it had a better action. I thought the Yamaha had better sounds but the Roland wasn't bad and neither matches a good VST. Both have digital audio interfaces built in so you don't even need a separate audio interface to record into your DAW. The ES110 does not have this feature, which is the only reason I didn't order one blind as the reviews are glowing otherwise. Speaking of VSTs, I took advantage of the Pianoteq Standard sale and really like it so far. The Steinway B and Petrof Mistral are my favorites, but I really like the free 1920s grands too.
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Aug 12, 2021 23:32
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Digital pianos are going to have better keys than any cheap 88 key MIDI controller, even a weighted one (ie M-Audio or Alesis). The P125 and FP-30X can do both audio and MIDI over USB (I really like this, I can use a VST on my computer and plug my headphones into my piano to hear the computer audio). The ES110 can do MIDI too, but over standard MIDI cables and doesn't have the audio return ability.
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Aug 13, 2021 00:58
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My teacher has me going through Alfred's book 1 and I suppose it's pretty decent. I have found that it occasionally throws some really awkward combinations of new things at you, but that may be because I'm struggling with hand independence. I'm also finding myself thinking about fingerings more than notes and intervals, so now that I'm working on a piece that has the left hand in C position and the right in D position, I'm having a tough time of it. I wonder if being a former wind instrument player is playing into that habit. Of course, more practice is the fix here, and none of this is helped by work and my kid making it really hard to practice lately.
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Aug 29, 2021 19:24
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Stu from Merriam Music did a YouTube review of the Donner and he didn't seem super impressed by it, although he said something to the effect that it was better than he expected. Suggest you consider the Roland FP-30X or FP-10 as well. When I was shopping last year the Kawai was unobtainium and I ended up going with the P-125. I did not see those complaints about the Kawai but I did see them about the Roland. I thought the Roland did have a better feel than the Yamaha, but the clicky action complaints and Yamaha ASIO driver swayed me to the P-125.
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Jan 31, 2022 02:36
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That professor was a moron, most wind players started playing whenever their school band programs started. Usually age 9-12ish. And a lot of pro woodwind players double across many instruments, some of which they would not have learned until after they became pros. It's not like strings where type-A parents put kids into Suzuki lessons at age 3. Anyways, end de-rail, I found an in-person teacher and am starting lessons on Saturday after having to take an 8-month hiatus. Looking forward to the 5 year old after me wondering what's wrong with this old guy who can't even play a Bach prelude 
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Jul 7, 2022 18:48
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a.p. dent posted:hey piano thread. i'm thinking about buying a digital piano now that i have space. i don't want anything fancy but can spend a bit of money. I have the P-125 and it's fine. It sounds decent on its own and the built-in USB audio interface makes upgrading the sound with a VST super convenient. The Roland FP-30X has the same feature and maybe a slightly nicer action, but unlike the Yamaha it doesn't have a dedicated ASIO driver (that's only an issue for Windows though). According to discussions I've seen elsewhere, it looks like the new P-125a might not have that feature, so buyer beware.
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Jul 9, 2022 01:26
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Alizee posted:Try to relax your hand/forearm a bit and let the weight of your arm and gravity be the force. This is something my teacher is trying to drill into me and I'm finding it a lot harder than it sounds. Speaking of teachers, having a teacher with experience teaching non-musical-beginner* adults has been a much better experience than just getting walked through a method like Alfred's (which is what my previous teacher was doing). Right now we're working through Mikrokosmos and also drawing stuff from Guhl's Keyboard Proficiency, with some theory and ear training on the side. It's too early to quantify whether my progress is any faster, but it's certainly much more satisfying. * e: I should clarify what that means, I am a total baby on piano but was a serious wind instrument player years ago
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Jul 26, 2022 00:07
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Pollyanna posted:I’ve never been so pissed off by a nursery rhyme. Why do my left hand and right hand hate doing different things. WHY. During piano learning attempt 1.0, Jingle Bells was the first thing to really trip me up on hand independence  Although as others have noted I think you are supposed to switch hands halfway through, not try them simultaneously. One, because that's how the song goes and two, because the double bars at the end of a measure indicate the end of the song. If you were playing both hands together, both lines would have those double bars. Unless of course the practice directions referenced above say otherwise but that would be odd. (E: refresh thread before posting  )NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:How do you like working with it? I love the Mikrokosmos for general music learning and I've been hacking my way through it for two years now. It's good! We're still in volume 1 but it's much more musically satisfying than Alfred's. I like how it has you changing positions almost right away and doesn't just have you playing ditties in major keys, so we get some side discussions on theory as well. Makes me feel like a real piano player!
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Jul 28, 2022 14:56
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I really like Aimee Nolte. Her stuff is way above my head currently but I watch it aspirationally.
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Oct 18, 2022 17:54
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After a detour into Guhl's Keyboard Proficiency, my teacher has decided to pick up Mikrokosmos again at exercise 31. It's a fairly straightforward canon but the new twist is accents played by one hand but not the other. It's so hard. I thought staccato/legato hand independence was tricky but I am going to be fighting this for a while.
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Oct 30, 2022 01:55
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Pianoteq 8 is out, for those so inclined. 25% off until November 28th for those who haven't bought it yet or want to pick up some new instrument packs.
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Nov 18, 2022 23:56
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Maybe try plugging the USB cable into a computer and recording into Audacity, or using an audio recording app on your phone? That way you could at least look at the waveform and see if it's clipping or dropping out or whatever. The audio over USB is PCM so there really shouldn't be "distortion" introduced by the cable, except maybe outright drop-outs. That fuzzing also sounds kind of like what happens to a piano through Zoom when background noise cancellation is turned on (in the Zoom app, though, so maybe not applicable). e: I assume you have tried this but double check your gain settings and try turning down the volume on the piano too Discussion Quorum fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Dec 8, 2022 00:14
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jesus WEP posted:i bought a yamaha p125 in july and I’ve been taking lessons and recently started working my way through some burgmuller I have the same piano and have been taking lessons for about as long. I've also seen the same comments and they're exactly the kind of thing that gets into my over-analysis-prone optimizer brain. My trick is to find much better players than me who are using P125s (or other GHS keyboards) on YouTube. Shames me out of wanting to drop $2k+ on an FP-90X or ES920 when clearly I am not using the P125 to its fullest. They're out there, even Charles Cornell was using a P1x5 of some flavor before upgrading to a Dexibell after his channel took off. I also figure 1-2 years from now I'll be able to make a better decision about what I want in a piano action than I would today. I can only speak for myself, but after a year-ish I feel like I haven't had the experience yet to develop anything more than shallow preferences, or even decide on how much focus I want to put into classical vs jazz/contemporary. I'd rather swing and miss on a $600 purchase than a future $2000 purchase! Discussion Quorum fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 05:01
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I tried Pianote for a bit before getting an IRL teacher and I'm not going to say I can't recommend it (there are a ton of resources and you can have teachers review your performance) but it never connected with me. Like you, I had a musical background and didn't really need notation explained to me, but they lean really heavily on "it's ok, it's just a piano, it won't bite you and we won't have any scary sheet music just yet" as the main vibe. I get that might work with people who have a ton of anxiety about reading music or from memories of their childhood piano lessons, but I just found it annoying. It also takes a chord/pop-music based approach, at least in the early lessons, which isn't exactly how my teacher started me (counterpoint, finger/hand independence, and holding me to good technique). All of this is of course subject to your own preferences and goals - but 7 months in I'm glad I went more or less straight into having a teacher and told her "pretend I don't know anything except how to read notation, and teach me to do it the right way from scratch."
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Mar 8, 2023 23:44
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Mister Speaker posted:In any case, seat-of-the-pants I imagine that distinctive 'saloon piano' sound comes from the kind of upright you'd find in such an establishment being a bit beat-up. Is there any truth to that, or was there always intent behind that sound? Nah it's that (e: the origin, I mean, obviously it became a deliberate aesthetic). Your average hookers-and-poker saloon c. 1910 would have bought a cheap upright and spent as little as possible (if anything) on maintaining or tuning it. Plus any recordings would have been on a wax cylinder through a horn or some equally lovely medium. That's basically the sound. That's not what I hear in this song though. Sounds like a grand, maybe with some compression and EQ? Doesn't sound specifically detuned to me although I'm not in the best position to listen closely. When I first started taking lessons on my teacher's real piano, I kept stopping because I thought I was playing the wrong notes. I wasn't actually, turns out her piano was just coming due for its next tuning tuning. My ears were used to my always-in-tune digital piano or Pianoteq. A real piano begins "detuning" itself the moment the tuner puts down their tools and can sometimes have a surprisingly different timbre than a digital despite playing the same notes/intervals.
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Mar 23, 2023 16:55
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I went down this rabbit hole recently when I was thinking about a long-term upgrade from my beginner piano. I decided to hold off, so this is just a brain dump of what I remember and not from direct experience. If you're really down to spend $5K, you are probably going to want to look at the higher-end consoles from Kawai and Yamaha (as those actions will have the longest keystick), but below $2500 or so you get a better action for the same money by buying a stage/portable piano. Portable actions to consider would be NWX (Yamaha), RHIII (Kawai), and PHA-50 (Roland). The Kawai MP11SE is probably the top of the stage piano pyramid but it's pricey ($4K?), heavy as gently caress ("portable" means "your roadies will move it for you"), and lacks built in speakers. A special case would be the Kawai VPC-1 which gets rave reviews for its action but it is a MIDI controller only - you will need to have a piano VST like Pianoteq or Garritan, audio interface, speakers (if desired), etc.
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May 17, 2023 04:37
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Most digital pianos are primarily intended to replicate the sound of a flagship grand. They have other sounds, of course, but the piano is designed around the sound of a particular concert grand (CFX, Shigeru Kawai, whatever). If you buy a MIDI-capable digital piano (most anything from Yamaha/Kawai/Roland would count), those 3 pedals should be available as MIDI control channels. You would then need to find a VST that has a bass sustain feature, although I am not aware of any that do. Your best bets might be Modern U (highest-effort upright VST I know of), Pianoteq U4, or Native Instruments Gentleman. They'll all cost you an extra $100-$200, though.
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Jul 7, 2023 19:27
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Truthfully, I use Amazon a lot. Also Sheet Music Plus, but with shipping it rarely makes sense if I'm just buying one thing. Abebooks has occasionally come through for me as well, such as Guhl's Keyboard Proficiency (long out of print college text)
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Jul 24, 2023 05:43
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The FP30X is well regarded. Stu from Merriam Pianos said that the PHA-4 is the best action in the major low-end piano lineups. I think Roland and Kawai are probably taking the lead in that market while Yamaha and Casio appear to be chasing slimmer form factors (which generally come with a shorter pivot). If I could do it over, I would have gotten the FP30X instead of the P125, and I would definitely get it over Yamaha's replacement of that model.
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Apr 23, 2024 15:56
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