Electronic & Digital Pianos 3

Knowing that this is a site devoted to the uniquely beautiful sound of the piano, but that not everyone, even piano purists, can purchase a fine grand, it’s worth it to look at some of the best digital imitators. Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery!

As mentioned in the last post, electronic pianos and keyboards reproduce the sound of a real piano (and other orchestral instruments) by recording the real thing digitally, and then letting the keys trigger the corresponding recorded note.

In the digital world, they call recording “sampling,” because the original digital chips couldn’t hold long recordings, just a snippet or “sample” of each note. The piano is such a complex instrument, with completely different waveforms coming from each octave of the piano, as well as differences caused by how hard you strike the key and how long you hold it, that a realistic reproduction can only come from “multi-sampling.” What that means is that the best piano imitations will come from sampling (recording) each of the 88 notes separately, with each one being sampled multiple times to record a soft, medium and hard strike, and a long-held, medium-length, and staccato-played note.

Now storing all that digital data take a ferocious amount of memory. Earlier chips simply couldn’t hold it, so piano simulators of the 80s & 90s sounded pretty funky compared to the real thing. But now, with tiny chips able to store massive data, they’re starting to sound pretty awesome.

So one way to judge electronic pianos is to say, whichever one stores the most data of each individual note, striking force and length held, wins the “most realistic piano sound” battle.
And since chips and data storage are expensive, the more realistic sounding digital pianos carry the higher price tags.

There are many brands and models of digital pianos to choose from, with price tags from as little as a couple hundred bucks all the way up to several thousand dollars. The cheaper ones usually have shorter keyboards (63 or 77 keys, instead of 88) and keys that are “organ-like”, that is, spring-tension keys that don’t allow the true range of expression you can get from real weighted piano keys. Touch sensitivity is important, especially if you’re used to playing a real piano. You need that weight pressing back against your finger to produce all the subtle differences between the softest pianissimo to the loudest triple-forte.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to compare lots of digital pianos, especially if you live near a metropolitan area. Your local piano store or music gear shop (like the national chain Guitar Center) will have a whole room devoted to the latest digital models, all lined up side-by-side for your head-to-head, finger-to-ear comparison.

If you can spend around $1200 – $2200, you can come away with a keyboard that produces a very reasonable facsimile of a piano and other instruments, with weighted keys (often made of real wood like those in a piano) that make you feel llike your playing a real grand.

Common quality brands include Yamaha, Roland, Korg and Kurzweil, and all have several models that are great contenders for best digital piano. One of my favorites is the Yamaha Motif. I’ve recorded songs using the Motif’s piano sound, and had many listeners say they thought it was a real 9’ concert grand Steinway, listening to the playback. Yamaha is the inventor of the Clavinova, one of the first and best lines of digital electronic home pianos. And since the best always uses the best, I should mention that Stevie Wonder’s digital piano of choice is the Yamaha Motif…and you know he’s got ears.
 

For more check out these related posts

• Electronic & Digital Pianos 4
• Electronic & Digital Pianos 1