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From dwills@server (Michael Dunn) Mon Aug 8 14:19:57 1994
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth
From: dwills@server.uwindsor.ca (Michael Dunn)
Subject: Digital piano guide, was: Opinions on Digital Pianos
Message-ID: <Cu4yu5.Aoq@uwindsor.ca>
Organization: University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada
References: <"5-Aug-9410:09AM".*.Cree_G_R.MARL@RX.Xerox.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Aug 1994 23:06:05 GMT
Lines: 176
A Guide to Buying Electronic Pianos
by Michael Dunn
dwills@uwindsor.ca
rev.2 94/4/14
What I will try to cover here is:
1. Some things you should check out to help you make your purchasing
decision.
2. My personal opinions and observations of a number of currently
available instruments.
For starters, you may want to check out the December 1993 issue
of Keyboard magazine. It has a fairly complete review of EPianos. I
should caution you to take such reviews with a grain of salt. They
can be good starting points and reference sources, but *never* blindly
put your trust in them. Use your own ears, fingers, and judgement! I
believe they also come out with an annual(?) EPiano Buyers Guide.
So you know where *I'm* coming from, my main interest is in
"classical" music. I mostly play the harpsichord (that'll influence
my ideas on keyboard feel!), as well as electronic keyboards and
occasionally other keyboard and non-keyboard instruments. Needless to
say, I was very surprised that the Keyboard review panel did not have
a single classical pianist on it!
Now, your interests and requirements in an instrument are going
to be different from mine, so you must decide how much weight to
assign to the various points I bring up. You may like an instrument
for the same reason I dislike it! That said, here is a checklist I
made up to help me in testing the pianos' capabilities, and to find
their strong and weak points. Of course, the most important criteria
is how it "feels" and sounds to *you*, playing your kind of music.
For some people, looks will have an important bearing on their
decision. And there is also the question of Bells & Whistles - do you
want features like instrumental sounds, built-in sequencing, or other
fancy doodads? This I leave up to you. I'm only going to cover basic
piano functionality. When shopping, try to keep away from noisy,
pushy stores/salespeople. If you can't hear the subtleties of sound
and can't relax and spend time alone with the instrument, you're not
going to be able to make good judgements. Anyway, here goes:
1. Listen to the basic sound of the instrument, both in single notes
throughout the range and in chords. Is it realistic or otherwise
acceptable? If there is a tone control, set it to your liking.
2. Play several notes over the keyboard from ppp to fff. Does the
timbre change in a realistic manner?
3. Play very evenly, mf, from the bottom to the top of the keyboard.
Are there any sudden changes of timbre or loudness between adjacent
notes? (bad!)
4. Listen to the decay of several different notes, struck both softly
and loudly, all the way to the end. Do volume and timbre change
realistically during the decay?
5. Does the timbre change when the una corda is depressed? It should
of course be quieter, but ideally, the sound should also become a bit
"softer", "rounder", veiled, and more singing. This is a matter of
taste.
6. Is the top 1.5 octaves undamped like a real piano?
7. Do the bass notes have a richness and aural animation similar to
that of a real piano's? (caused partly by inharmonicity of the
partials).
8. Are various tuning temperaments available? Do you care? Are
stretch tunings available?
9. Are the damper and/or una corda pedals just on/off switches, or can
you achieve half-pedalling and/or una/due/tre corde effects? (sp?)
10. Is harp resonance simulated when the sustain pedal is down?
Strike and hold a note, first with the pedal up, then down. Is there
a change of timbre? Do you hear the sonic fog associated with an
undamped harp? Is the level of this adjustable?
11. Restrike a note several times, going from ppp to fff and back to
ppp, while holding down the sustain pedal. Is the effect realistic?
Try this with the sostenuto too if there is one.
12. *Is* there a sostenuto? Do you care? Does it work properly?
13. Play a sharp staccato note. As the sound is quickly being damped
out, raise the dampers. Can you "catch" the note, and is its sound
realistic?
14. If there is a built-in reverb, can you live with the sound
quality? Is it adjustable?
15. Are the amps and speakers sufficient to handle the maximum volume
you'll want to play at? With big chords? With the pipe organ stop?
Is there a headphone jack? You may want to verify the sound quality
>from it too.
16. Turn the volume to maximum. Is there any noise or hum? Turn it
back down. Is there any mechanical (transformer) hum from the piano
chassis?
17. Is the instrument sturdily built? Can you play a bunch of hard
chords without the keyboard starting to bounce like a car with bad
shocks?
18. Are there transpose controls? By semitone? Continuous +/-0.5
semitones?
19. How is the keyboard feel? This is of course where things get very
personal. Can you trill rapidly and evenly? Can you repeat a note
without fully releasing a key (e.g., to get legato without pedal;
related to trillability)? Can you play evenly on both the naturals
and sharps? Is the action too heavy or sluggish? Too light or fast?
Can you play an even pianissimo? And do you feel in control of note
timing when doing this? Is the pivot-point back far enough? Does the
velocity response seem okay? Can you select different responses?
20. Does a note fail to sound at very low velocities, like a real
piano? Would you prefer otherwise? Is it selectable or adjustable?
21. Is there enough polyphony? (simultaneous notes) Play a loud low
note with the pedal down, then a very light gliss or arm cluster in
the treble. Does the low note get cut off? If it does, try again,
but hold the low note. Very bad if it still gets cut off! Play arm
clusters. Does the piano handle this gracefully, or does the sound
get ugly?
Well, if you've gotten this far, you must be serious :-) Now,
I'm going to get all subjective on you and tell you what I like and
don't like that's currently on the market. Note that I'm only
covering all-in-one, home type instruments. That's because they can
do things, like position sensing of the pedals, that more generic MIDI
instruments can't. Also, I've never seen MIDI boxes or piano patches
that implement, say, harp resonance, although *this would* be
feasible.
For me, the most important thing about this kind of instrument
(hell, any kind of instrument), is that it have an "organic" feel.
And until Roland came out with things like resonance simulation and
"analog" pedals (since copied by others), I was not satisfied with