Whats a good weighted electronic keyboard for my six year olds piano lessons?
While it might be okay for a beginner, a weighted keyboard is not a permanent replacement for a piano. You would need to find a teacher that was okay with it. My piano teacher forbade me from touching even a weighted keyboard because the feel is still different. Also, you would need to acquire pedals that have the same effects as piano pedals–I think they sell sustain pedals that simulate the damper pedal, but I’m not sure about the other ones and I do think that the feel of a soft pedal versus whatever effect the keyboard pulled off would be pretty different. If it’s cost, rather than space, it is possible from time to time to find on Craig’s list or some such thing someone who is giving away a piano to anyone who will come and pick it up. All of that said, as a transient grad student I find that my weighted Casio is a pleasant substitute to a piano for just relaxing and playing and for your daughter to learn to read music and
You may want to start with a keyboard and then, if your daughter likes lessons and looks like she will continue with them, get a piano. There is still no substitute for a real piano, but considering the expense and the hassle of moving it etc., you might as well see if it looks like she’ll stick with it before committing. I don’t know much about keyboards, but I know that the Clavinova series of digital pianos is excellent and would be more than adequate for a child starting out. You might want to try Craigslist or such for a used one, as they can be pricey. As for a teacher, it may be obvious but the first thing you should look for is someone who’s going to make things fun for your daughter. The hardest thing with kids and music, particularly at the beginning, is getting them to sit down and practice. They’re less likely to do so if their teacher has them doing boring stuff like scales and exercises. The best teacher may not necessarily be the most experienced or resumed teacher – ent
I think a decent digital piano is perfectly okay for a beginner. It’s true that even the best weighted keys still feel very obviously not-like-a-real-piano to an intermediate pianist. But they’re not so different that you can’t learn the essentials of technique on one of them, and I don’t think she’ll be picking up any atrocious bad habits because of it. A six-year-old learning the piano will be concentrating more on simply getting their fingures down in the right place and at the right time, learning to read music, and things like that, rather than nuance of touch. Once she’s a couple of years into it, revisit the idea of getting a real piano, even if it’s a relatively low-end one. At that point you are starting to discover the subtle physical parts of piano playing, and having a real action behind the keys will make a difference. And you do hear stories of kids being re-invigorated in their excitement to learn the instrument once they can get their hands on a ‘real’ piano at home. If
One can easily control loudness with an electronic instrument. Electronic instruments don’t lose tune. Weighted keyboards mentioned above are quite within the variability of decent acoustic instruments. The Kawai and other heftier electronic instruments mentioned above have much the same internal actions as regular pianos, though AFAIK without sensitivity to humidity. Issues with feel of electronic instruments may be psycho-acoustic. If you listened through headphones as you played any piano, you’d have similar issues. The Kawai, Yamaha and other instruments let you adjust “touch” and apply a “soft pedal”. This only adjusts delay and overtones, nothing mechanical, but has quite an effect on my pleasure in playing a weighted keyboard.
