You will see upright acoustic pianos every where, perhaps at your favorite restaurant, or at a school hall. You used to see them at your church, but perhaps not so much these days, as the use of digital pianos becomes more prevalent.
You like the class and sound of an acoustic piano so much that you want one for yourself, and perhaps have not considered going the digital route.
Perhaps you want to give your child a musical education, and have settled on the piano as the instrument of choice, as it is by far the most popular of instruments and there are plenty of teachers around.
So once you have decided that the piano will be your instrument you will have to make a decision on what to buy.
Probably the first thing you would do is go to a piano dealer and see what is on offer. You will see lots of wonderful pianos, which are almost like furniture, and you will love them until you see the price and the amount of space it takes up.
So although you may desperately want one, an acoustic piano may not be affordable and you wouldn t have the room for it, especially if you live in an apartment.
If you are buying one for your child to learn to play, you have to remember that piano lessons are hard work, and your child may want to give up after a couple of months. I know my own children lasted for a year, but that was it.
If this is the case, and you don t play yourself, you now have an expensive piece of idle furniture taking up a vast amount of space in your living room.
A viable alternative has to be the digital piano. A lot of them these days look very much like a traditional upright acoustic piano, and the sound is very similar.
An acoustic piano is a mechanical instrument where the depression of the keys causes muffled hammers to strike against strings, which produces the familiar sounds, while digital pianos produce sound electronically.
The sounds produced come from previously recorded sounds of a real piano, and certainly with the top of the line digital pianos, like the Yamaha, the sounds are going to be of an extremely high quality, and practically indistinguishable to the untrained ear.
There is another argument against digital pianos, which is that the feel of the keys is different from that on an acoustic piano, and this used to be true. With an acoustic piano you can actually feel the hammers striking against real strings, and can adjust the weight you put on the keys according to the sound you wish to make.
The left hand keys on a keyboard are harder to play, especially for a right handed person, and the strength of the key depression is lighter on the treble keys.
However, because this was a sticking point in the arguments about the merits of digital v acoustic, piano manufacturers such as Yamaha have addressed this problem and the modern models can almost replicate the touch and feel of the traditional acoustic piano.
The keys may be described as being semi weighted, weighted, hammer, and graded hammer. The graded hammer is recognised as being the best, while the semi weighted and weighted actions are the ones normally used for the entry level models.