QUOTE(Gon Freaks @ Sep 27 2021, 08:21 PM)
Hi all sifus.
i just started sending my kids for a piano lesson with a personal tutor.
i am looking for a good digital piano.
the tutor suggested, flykeys lk03s. around 2.5k
i personally think that, it is a bit to early to go for such price piano.
do you think i can get a cheaper one, less than 2k?
any good suggestion?
thanks,
Appreciate your help on this.
sounds like a china brand, which you should avoid like the plague
go for japanese brands like yamaha, casio, korg and roland
yamaha and casio does produces a budget line of digital pianos but i am afraid they won't be great pianos, probably suited for grade 1-5, but if they are to go serious down the line, playing and practicing on a digital piano may introduce bad techniques if not corrected.
at grade 5 and above, players should strive to play on an acoustic, there is no *cheap* digital piano in the market that can emulate the feel of a true acoustic piano. *i say cheap because some really expensive lines are impressive, but at that price point why would i want a dp.
back to your question, i personally would buy this with your budget
https://shopee.com.my/Roland-FP-10-88-key-D...730?position=29edit: some knowledge about keyboards and pianos, hope this can help future readers with the same dilemma (long wall of text, read if you are interested)
several types of pianos exist in the market
1. keyboard
- price range
from the most budget toy like crap you see on supermarket shelf to expensive professional lines which we call arrangers
- difference from a digital/acoustic piano
i'll talk about professional expensive keyboards and not the crappy stuff you usually see
usually, the first difference is the number of keys, with 61 keys being the most common, because the keyboard is usually used as a backing instrument, ie for a melody or bass loop during performance, they don't need the full range 88 keys, some even exist in 25 keys. that said, there are 88 keys keyboard in the market as well, but they are not too common usually.
second, keyboards has soft touch. if you are shopping around for a piano/keyboard, you will see the word "touch" being thrown around far too often. the touch is how a key feel while being pressed, keyboards usually have soft touch as opposed to a "hard" touch which is artificially added in digital pianos which we called "hammered action" or "scaled hammer action". what the "scale hammered action" does is it emulates a grand piano, which has natural resistance in the keys from the lower bass range (due to the string size) which "scales" to become lighter as it goes across the board to the lightest end at the high octaves keys.
the touch isn't important for a keyboardist whom would commonly use the keyboard as a backing instrument, but if you are playing solo, you would want the keys to be as close as possible to what a piano would feel like so your skills are transferable from one piano to the other. and its safe to say that you will pick up the wrong playing technique if you started off on a keyboard (like i did). also, they are required to be light and portable as possible, artificially adding weight is counterintuitive
another thing is the "touch response". not to be confused with the hammered action, touch response is commonly found in keyboards. touch response is also a feature emulated from pianos, when playing a key, if you play as hard as you can (fortissimo), the sound will be loud and vice-versa with pianissimo (soft). as a fortissimo and pianissimo is incredibly important to properly express a song. this feature is a must if you are shopping for keyboards.
to add up on touch response, there are "levels" that the manufacture will specify, the higher the levels the more depth and accuracy the feedback is, and of course, more expensive.
2. digital pianos (abbr dp cause i am lazy to type out)
as mentioned in the name, dp sought to closely emulate an acoustic as closely as possible.
the advantage of dp is mainly for practicing silently (as you can use headphones if needed), and its cheaper to start on compared to an acoustic (basic acoustic cost from 5-7k).
dp will commonly feature "scaled hammered action" and "touch response". *forgot to mention earlier "hammered action" refers to the resistance a key has, a dp can have the same resistance equally over all keys (i have seen one).*
however, not all manufacturer have the same action, and they have their own interpretation on how a grand piano should feel, so its really up to the player to test and see which one they prefer. *i personally hated yamaha dp because they are too light and felt cheap* and generally, a cheap dp will not feel good, which differentiates between the price point, but budget lines these days does feature the same action with their more expensive lines, make sure to compare their action e.g. roland's PHAIV or Korg NH
what really differentiates a dp from the price range is their sound. generally the sounds are playback from a sampled (recorded) key sound from an actual piano, good dp manufacturer like yamaha would often advertise their dp as sampled from a bosendorfer grand piano for example. but, the sampled sound are limited to what an actual piano could produce, for example, the manufacturer would likely only sample 3 "levels" for the touch response, but in actual pianos, the response is not a leveled one, but a linear one. so this makes playing on an acoustic piano much much more expressive than on a dp.
but these days, roland has came out with gimmicks like the supernatural sound engine which combines sampled sound with computer generated sound to fill in the gaps, it does sound great. thats why i recommended roland as first choice.
dp also subclassed into "stage pianos" which lacks a speaker (generally)
3. acoustic piano
for how an acoustic works, please youtube it, basically key hit strings with varying tension and string reverbs producing the note
acoustic piano has several class as well and the price scales with their class (generally)
1. upright piano $
2. upright grand piano $$
3. baby grand piano $$$
4. grand piano $$$$
what differentiates these classes are the size of the soundboard. upright and baby grand has the smallest soundboard
the difference of upright and upright grands are the location of their soundboard, as it namesake, the soundboard are vertically placed as opposed to grands' horizontally placed soundboard.
shopping for acoustics is another different topic with the size of the soundboard and the wood quality etc etc
This post has been edited by pipedream: Sep 28 2021, 01:10 PM