I am a piano teacher who teaches beginners and intermediate players. One of my students parents wants her to take piano lessons and buy a keyboard to practice on. She asked me what was the best one to buy, but I didn’t really know. I know about pianos, but not keyboards. I recommended a Yamaha because I’m familiar somewhat with the brand, and know they make lots of other musical instruments besides just keyboards. Is that a good keyboard, and if so, what model? Thanks!
Tags: best, Keyboard, Piano
any brand will do, as long as weighted keys type with pedals. It does not matter how good a keyboard is, if it does not have weighted keys for piano practice.
I’d say that Yamaha is a safe guess, usually their stuff is decent quality. Before the purchase, you’ll want to make sure the keyboard has these qualities.
-weighted keys, keeps the feel natural and allows the player to use dynamics
-full set of keys, all 82. As songs get more advanced, they’ll use the full length of the piano, and a dinky 3 octave keyboard won’t cut it
-pedal(s), make sure it has at least the sustain pedal, maybe the lower note sustain too, but it won’t need a damper pedal, seeing how the keyboard has a volume
-a sturdy stand for the keyboard, you won’t want the thing shaking so bad that it knocks the music off
-music stand of some sort, so you can read music
Extras:
-headphone jack would be nice, so you can hear yourself play, without making the house loud (the keys may click, which was weird for my family at first) / or speaker input, seeing as sometimes the speakers that come with the keyboard aren’t loud enough
-midi cable outlet. This is for recording purposes, if the student would like to record his/her playing. I’ve found this helpful, to hear my own playing allows me to identify minor mistakes I miss while playing.
NOTE: the midi cable outlet won’t come with the actual midi cable, so you’ll have to dig a little to find one (I’d recommend a midi to USB cable for most keyboard to computer recordings, it’s what I have)
-variety of settings, the strings, organs, guitar, all that fun stuff can be fun to dink around on in free time, though isn’t necessary. You could stick with a straight grand piano. Most, keyboards will come with some settings. I’d advise you to stay away from the keyboards with a half ton of noises, because that’s usually the best quality about them, when really it’s just a bonus.
That should cover most of it. You’ll probably be able to identify a quality keyboard from a junk one from experience with pianos. The one that I have is a Casio brand. It’s called the Casio Privia (PX-300). Works great for me, found it on Craigslist for decent price. Again, Yamaha should be perfectly safe, just give your purchase a test run.
Good luck.
You want an 88 key piano, weighted keyboard, and the minimum number of on board samples, memory, etc. The more the technology and memory is dedicated to classical piano sound, the better.
Yamaha , Roland and Korg are names that come up again and again.
Roland has a brighter timbre which cannot be tempered down. It is excellent for cutting through pop sound mix arrangements. The sound is not generally desired by classical pianists.
The Yamaha is most desired by classical pianists, for its tone, which is nonetheless a little too ‘fluffy’ in the medium setting and a little too bright in the bright setting (my opinion as western classical pianist). The Japanese have a taste for strong and delicate Pastel colors, and I would fault the Yamaha a bit on being ‘Pastel-ish” in the basic timbre of its sample.
I know Korg only by reputation, and as more a synthesizer work station than famous for its piano sample quality. That Piano sample again is probably on the bright side, like the Roland, and ‘tipped’ toward a preference of timbre for pop music.
There are models of keyboards, the bed only, which sit on a folding stand: these come with one damper pedal, need speakers or constant headphone use. Other models have a full ‘body’, speakers, pedals. This latter the more expensive, of course.
p.b.
Many of these pianos, recent models, are for sale second hand because people buy new ones thinking they will use them, then don’t.
I bought this for my children to use with their keyboard.We wanted our kids to learn how to play music but didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a full sized piano not to mention we didn’t want to deal with the size and mobility issues. This was a great inexpensive keyboard for that purpose. http://digitsy.com/us/item/B0001LO2YS
Yamaha –
long lasting
great quality
amazing sound
lightweight