What's the difference between learning on an acoustic piano or on keyboard?

Get a discounted piano course now!!

A: This is a pretty interesting question.

The action of actually learning piano doesn't differ much between different platforms. After all, C is always the white key left to the group of two black ones, and C Major is always the combination of notes C, E and G. Had that been learnt on a church organ, on a Yamaha, a Casio or an app like PerfectPiano, it can be applied in any other keyboard without chances of failure.

However, despite most learners can easily perform on other kinds of pianos, there is a little difference that can be relevant in some particular songs: the weight of the keys.

Do you see that pp letters over there? They mean pianissimo, which would translate from Italian as "extremely soft". If you have ever listened to the most famous classical pieces, like Für Elise of Bach's Fuges, you may have realised sometimes the pianist softly presses the keys in order to make a gentle and relaxing sound, while afterwards hitting them strongly producing an exciting and violent tune.

This can be done as acoustic pianos work with hammers which may hit string more or less violently in order to produce different sounds. Some electric keyboards mimic this feature, but in most of them, the player would just ignore the pianissimo and continue playing. This happens because most keyboards work with buttons that activate the reproduction of the sound, but don't actually care about whether the pianist is hitting them softly or hardly.

Does this have any impact on one's learning? Not really. Someone used to playing in electric keyboards may find acoustic pianos' keyboards hard and uncomfortable, but they can easily get used to them. The only thing actually changed by this feature is the quality of the output, and the emotions it make provoke (or not) in the public.

Get a discounted piano course now!!