starting 7 year old on piano lessons but digital or acoustic

davgtrek

hi all
our 7 year old is going to start piano lessons. Knowing kids drop stuff like hot potatoes & budget wise I think we should buy her a digital piano and then in a few years if she likes it maybe think about a real one.
I understand how limited keyboards are re weighted keys and pedals but the digital ones seem a great idea.
thomonn.de will be the port of call for buying it....

has anyone any advice ?? the music teacher is a very good one but when talking to my wife ruled out teaching our daughter if she only had a keyboard. My wife didn't mention a digital piano.

In this day and age dropping 3k on a piano that will take up half the sitting room and potentially gather dust seems crazy. or am i too skeptical ??

Doshea3

Buy a cheap second hand piano. Get it checked out by a piano teacher or piano technician beforehand to see if it's worth acquiring. This will be much better for your daughter to learn on than a digital piano in my humble opinion. Even the best digital pianos don't give you a real sense of the touch of an actual piano, and also can lead to bad habits as the touch and tone are uniform (which means no matter what you do it will always sound good—NOT a good thing for a piano student!).

So check out Buy and Sell, Dublin Waste, etc. People often sell pianos worth over a thousand euro for a few hundred (or sometimes for nothing) because they either can't find a buyer or don't know how much it's worth. (A friend of mine—also a piano teacher—bought an antique full-size Bluthner grand in 1980 for £700 and immediately had it valued at in excess of £38,000 for example, and the school where I teach last year paid €400 for an upright later valued at about €2000.)

If you were considering spending a bit more money then I would certainly recommend buying a reconditioned old English upright from Thorntons on Berkeley Road. These sort of pianos are excellent to learn on and are reasonably priced—and will last far longer than the sort of factory-made crap you'll pay three or four thousand for in somewhere like Waltons.

Good luck with your daughter's new pursuit.

davgtrek

Thanks for that. Though I see the advantages of the digital they are simply outweighted by the practical nature of the REAL piano. We are prob going to look for piano in jeffers in cork. A budget of somewhere maxed out at 2k.

I like the idea though of picking up a gem on buy and sell and it being worth multiples of what i paid but knowing my luck it would be a dog.

I am finding it very hard to get my head around dropping that cash on an instrument that may be left gathering dust. As I have yet to find a piano in somebody's house that is actually used.

i know nothing about pianos but are there 2-3 brands of upright that would usually be fairly good. The japanese car reliable and good value v mercedes of pianos !!! if you get my drift.

I will look up the old english styles you suggested.

thanks

Doshea3

Cheap Yamahas and Kawais are decent if you're going down the new piano route, though reconditioned English ones like I suggested are probably cheaper and better value in the long term. Also look into seeing if you can do a hire-purchase type deal so if the lessons don't go well you can always return the piano without making too much financial loss.

thomasmi

purchase a real thing for the grandchildren they recieved information from another grand aunt this was`nt fem or pop so it`s a dust mite.

Aard

I started on a digital Yamaha when I was eight, and after a year or two my parents bought me a Petrof upright. While the digital is nothing like a real piano, I would recommend getting it just to see if your child has a flair for it. Like you said, she mightn't even end up continuing lessons. So if they do end up using the digital and you buy a real piano, you've only wasted a couple of hundred euro; whereas if you buy a real one and they don't end up using it, you've wasted 2K.


In regard to getting bad habits from a digital - I was on a digital for quite a while, but I ended up being a very good pianist. If the piano is for your daughter, imo it won't matter that she spent the first while without a real piano.

davgtrek

the instructor has said that we have to get a real piano. she is familiar with digital ones and uses one herself but wont teach my daughter unless its a real piano.

thsi was a conversation with the missus.

now i reckon thats a bit purist and inflexible by the instructor. its a disappointing reaction especially in the current economic climate.

CivilServant

I recommend the Roland FP4, it has a very natural feel and based on reviews on the net from piano teachers and students, it was a good decision. Main thing about real piano's is that they do need tuning. So if your kid doesn't like piano, you still have to keep it in tune just to sell the thing. Plus most digital pianos you can hook up to macs or pcs and use the midi to create some funky sounds/songs. Digital pianos are well up there nowadays. Most piano teachers probably haven't touched digital in a while so their opinions are quite old on the matter. At least get a real opinion form someone who's recently used both. I recommend to try both types out at some place like Waltons.