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FAQ Digital pianos. Click on these links for answers to these questions
Q/ Digital Piano or keyboards for a beginner ?( Finger touch, number of keys and sound differences)
Q/ What is lesson function on digital pianos ?
Q/ What are User Songs on digital pianos ?

Q/ Digital Piano or keyboards for a beginner ? (These are DIGITAL PIANO FAQ - for keyboards see KEYBOARD FAQ )

For a beginner 2 main factors should be taken account when deciding whther to buy a keyboard or digital piano

1)BUDGET - All digital pianos are 88 keys and have highly precise and hammer action (see here). Except for very high range Keyboards like the WK8000 which has 88 keys, Keyboards have less keys ( 49 to 61 keys for entry level models and 76 keys for pro models )

2) NUMBER OF KEYS of DIGITAL PIANO vs KEYBOARDS Does your child or you as an adult beginner need all 88 keys? For the first few years - lets say approximately 3 years, piano beginner pieces utilize about 4 and 1/2 octaves ( 12 notes to each octave).So if your child has never had lessons, the 88 "note range : of a digital piano will not benefit them much until some years into playing

So very few pieces need more than 56 notes during this stage of playing.Up to about grade 6 in the royal schools syllabus ( 5 or 6 years inot playing, its not so much that afew pieces have very low or very high notes but more is involved :

3)PLAYING Piano or Keyboards LOUD AND SOFT A keyboard can only be played softly or loudly to a more limited degree than a digital piano with hammer action. "Touch sensitivity" _ a feature on some keyboards, allows for a more limited range of soft and loud control than "Hammer action - see here" The difference is not small- this is a very real factor i differences- It takes some years of playing ( around 2 or 3 for child ) to "have the control" to be able to play soft or loud in any case. This is probably one of the more advanced aspects of technical control that needs to be developed and it tends to develop "after " other skills like independant fingering, rhythm , etc etc.

So no, a beginner does not benefit from the hammer action aspect of more advanced control of loudness / softness. It cannot be underestimated how important this aspect is to develop control of though. Once the songs become more adbvanced it becomes increasingly important to "bring out the melody" (ie the right hand melody in most cases) To achieve this the left hand MUST be played softer than the right ! Otherwise one just cant hear the melody as its drowned out by the bass notes. Also climaxes and build ups in the both hands need the hammer action.

Having said that, a child can adapt later from a simple keyboard lighter finger touch to digital pianos hammer action with very little problem. The type of pieces a beginner will play on a keyboard for around 2-3 years also wont rely on these finer points - ie the type of beginner piano pieces played wont rely on the soft loud balance of more advanced pieces to the same extent as more advanced pieces

"Touch sensitivity" on a keyboard can also really only be mastered by a professional - as indicated its a lot less responsive than hammer action. so it needs even more control . I always advised my students to turn it off( it has a switch) because without proper control it results in jagged expressive effects - in many notes suddenly almost dissapearing ( output too soft) or jumping out at one ( output too loud)

4)Sound quality- Piano vs keyboard

Sound quality on keyboards differs according to the model range. The top keyboards like the WK series closelt approach the quality of all the sounds on all the 88 key digital piano hammer action models

Q/ What is lesson function on digital pianos ?

Lesson function plays back the left hand part whilst keeping the right hand part of a piano piece silent, or vice versa , from either the preprogramed memory of piano pieces ( these can be seen if you download the manuals)or whichever song you load as a midi file to User Memory.

When learning a piano piece all teachers encourage strongly learning each hand seperatly at first, no matter how advanced a student is. naturally at first playing only half of the poiece without hearing the complementing other hand's part tends to frustrate students initially as they learn each hand as it's natural to want to hear the fullness of the bass part as the right hand upper notes sounds or vice versa, but the advice is sound. Piano pieces are too complex to handle everything at once.

Lesson function solves the "frustration" or " over eager to play both hands at once immediately" problem as when practing one of the pre programmed pieces or one of the loaded user songs, the lesson function enbables you to still hear the silent hands part, much like a "backing track"

Any other Midi User Song loaded to either smartmedia card or internal user memory, can also be enjoyed in the same way using Lesson function.