Talk:Digital piano

A legitimate instrument in its own right?

A digital piano is something that tries to "imitate" a real piano. It is not a legitimate instrument in its own right, like an "electric piano" (i.e., Fender Rhodes) is.

To say that something is or is not a "legitimate instrument" is nonsensical. Dysprosia 09:36, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I understand the first statement to mean that a digital piano (unlike an electric piano) does not have a distinctive sound of its own. I would agree with this. Due to the limitations of its design, the sound of an electronic piano is usually quite easily distinguishable from that of an acoustic or electric piano; it could also be said to have its own distinctive sound, whether this was intentional or not.

The sound of the best digital pianos is indistinguishable from that of an acoustic grand, at least to an audience or on a recording. Equally, a Fender Rhodes sound produced by a digital piano may be indistinguishable from a real one. No electronic piano so far produced can reproduce acoustic or electric piano sounds this accurately, and since this type of instrument is no longer being developed or manufactured, this will remain the case. Butterfingersbeck January 5, 2006

Do these "best digital pianos" have a reasonable simulation of resonances in undamped strings? If you keep the g' depressed while playing a few chords that have a g' somewhere in their overtones, the effect will be very clear on even the cheapest acoustic piano. Last time I checked (quite a few years ago) there weren't any digital pianos that could do that.

The manual of Roland FP-80 claims resonances are simulated when sustain pedal is pressed. Audriusa (talk) 09:32, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

The statement "indistinguishable from that of an acoustic grand" doesn't make sense to me. If you give me a recording I won't be able to tell whether it is a Steinway or a Bösendorfer even though I may be able to hear a difference if they are played side by side. I doubt that one can make two good recordings under similar conditions of the same piece, one played on a digital piano, and the other one on a grand, without sounding different when played side by side.

Han-Kwang 18:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

In any case, since the sound of a digital electronic piano necessarily emerges from amplifiers and speakers, the best (or worst, depending on your politics) one could hope for would be a digital electronic piano practically indistinguishable from a recording of a real (yes, I said real) piano, and a recording is itself a facsimile.

I agree, by the way, with the opening set of remarks in this discussion section, but I don't see what the point is in terms of the article. In fact, I don't see the point of this entire section. TheScotch 11:14, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge with Electronic piano?

Simongoldring has suggested that Electronic piano be merged with this article, Digital piano. An electronic piano and a digital piano are two totally different instruments, so I disagree that these articles should be merged. --Trweiss 17:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Could digital pianos be considered a subset of electronic pianos, perhaps? --Lph 17:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Both an electronic piano and a digital piano are electronic and they are both meant to sound like pianos... that is true. It depends on whether "electronic piano" refers to a piano which is electronic or an electronic piano, the specific instrument. If the electronic piano article was about any old piano which happened to be electronic, I'd say merge. But since the article discusses the electronic piano as a specific instrument, digital pianos would not be a subset of electronic pianos. --Trweiss 22:11, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Could "Electric Piano", "Electronic Piano" and "Digital Piano" simply become subsections of the main "Piano" article? --Butterfingersbeck 5-1-2006

Even though they are all called "piano", they are totally different instruments and all of them generate sounds in a completely different way. The only thing they really have in common is a piano keyboard.

• Piano - Mechanical; keys actuate hammers which strike strings
• Electric Piano - Electromechanical; Some are regular pianos with pickups that lack a soundboard. Others use struck metal reeds, also with pickups.
• Electronic Piano - Electronic; Essentially a type of analog synthesizer.
• Digital Piano - Electronic; A sample playback device.

Only digital pianos come close to imitating the sound of a real piano. The others have their own unique timbre. Also, the piano article is already very long. --Trweiss 02:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

In that case, I suggest that "Digital Piano" be merged with "Piano", and that "Electric Piano" and "Electronic Piano" remain separate. I further suggest that "Electric Grand Piano" be merged with the greater "Piano" article, as an EGP is essentially an amplified piano. Butterfingersbeck 12:54. 6 Jan 2006 (GMT)

I strenuously disagree. None of these things are the same instrument--each deserves their own article. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, all these instruments would have their own number. Electric grand piano ought not to be merged with piano because it is not merely, as you say, an amplified piano; it is an electrified piano, which is different. Anything can be amplified using a microphone, amplifier and loudspeakers. Amplifying a Kazoo, for example, doesn't make it an electric Kazoo. Electrifying an instrument means using a pickup (a transducer). Something containing iron (a string, for example) vibrates and disrupts a magnetic field which creates an alternating voltage in a wire coil wound around the magnet. That alternating voltage is what is amplified. This is a significantly different process than using a microphone. Most significantly, it changes the timbre. By your logic, guitar and electric guitar ought to all be merged. Also, you haven't stated any reason for merging digital piano and piano. These instruments could not be more different in how they produce sound. Though the sound generated is very close to the same thing, they definitely need their own articles to explain in detail how each works. The piano article is quite long already, and I doubt you will find a lot of support for merging on the piano talk page. But I am just one voice. If you feel strongly about merging piano and digital piano, by all means add merge tags to both pages. --Trweiss 14:28, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

It would seem that Butterfingersbeck's main basis for proposing a merge of all these instruments is simply that they contain the word 'piano' or that they contain a piano keyboard. I think Trweiss has made it quite clear that all these instruments operate completely different to each other. At the end of the piano article is a list of related instruments (related on the basis that they have a keyboard), which I think is sufficient enough. Merging any of them with others would cause confusion, and certainly making the piano article any longer than it already is would not be a good idea. Finally, each instrument has enough information about it that each is already an article by itself; therefore I cannot see any reason to merge any of these articles with any others. --Nsmith 84 05:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Not at all. For you to suggest this ("It would seem that Butterfingersbeck's main basis for proposing a merge of all these instruments is simply that they contain the word 'piano' or that they contain a piano keyboard.") is an insult both to my intelligence and to my acquired knowledge of the subject (see my website http://www.hallofelectricpianos.co.uk). I have not included organs, harmonia (harmoniums?), harpsichords, clavichords, accordions or keyboard synthesisers - only those instruments which (initially at least) were intended to take a role previously played by the true piano. The Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Hohner electric pianos were originally designed either for group piano tuition or for stage use in place of conventional pianos. Later, (by which time the aforementioned electric pianos had acquired their own musical identity and styles of playing) the electronic piano attempted (with limited success) to provide gigging musicians with a more realistic piano sound than that offered by stringless electric pianos. This aim was more successfully approached by electric grand and upright pianos, but at a considerable cost. Finally, it cannot be denied that digital pianos are designed primarily as a portable, low-cost and low-maintenance alternative to an acoustic piano, with a sound approaching that of the real instrument. --Butterfingersbeck (Simon Beck), 8 January 2006

As for the existing merge tags (suggesting a merge between electronic piano and digital piano), I don't see any opinion either here or at Talk:Electronic piano in favor of merging these two specific articles. I went so far as to leave a message for User:Simongoldring, the user who added the merge tags, inviting him to make his case for merging. (See User talk:Simongoldring.) There has been no response. Therefore, I am removing the merge tags. Of course, Butterfingersbeck is free to add new merge suggestion tags for digital piano and piano. --Trweiss 19:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: "Both an electronic piano and a digital piano are electronic and they are both meant to sound like pianos... that is true. It depends on whether "electronic piano" refers to a piano which is electronic or an electronic piano, the specific instrument.":

It seems to me that the distinction between the terms electric piano and electronic piano is not analogous to the distinction between the terms electronic piano and digital piano. It is more to the point that "digital pianos" are necessarily electronic than it is that electric pianos need to be electronically amplified if we are to hear them distinctly. After all, no one spoke of "analog synthesizers" before digital synthesizers began to be marketed, and yet now we specify. (Just so, there no one spoke of "World War I" before World War II, and yet now we append the numberal.) I don't see that there is a difference between "a piano which is electronic" and "an electronic piano, the specific instrument". TheScotch 07:30, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

"Digital Piano" picture?

I do not feel comfortable with the "Digital Piano" picture presented as of 3/27/2006 PST. That picture is of what is simply known as a "keyboard" that has only 61 plastic keys and very simple simulation of many different instruments as well as some artificial sounds, but it is not of an instruments with sophisticated features like mecanical key reaction simulation that instrument manufactures have been developing.

I'm inclined to agree with the unrepresentativeness of the image. Dysprosia 21:34, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Weasel Words

It seems to me that whomever edited this tried to make it seem like a clear superior to a regular piano, especially whn they italicesed the word "may" at the beginning of the article. Btw, I'm sorta knew to Wikipedia, so if anyone knows how to add a tag to an article I would really appriciate if you would do it for me or, better yet, explain how to do it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Supernerd 10 (talk • contribs) 18:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

I can see where you might get that impression, but I assure you that it wasn't intended as a weasel word. I did not mean that digital pianos are "clearly superior". What I meant was that a digital piano may fall short of a real piano in sound and feel. It also may not. The point was that, for many pianists, digital pianos offer enough advantages over even the best acoustic pianos so as to overcome any shortfall in sound and feel. Remember, also, that there is much more variety in the quality of real pianos than there is in the quality of digital pianos. Nobody samples a crummy old upright that's sat neglected in a church basement for 30 years. I'd take a digital piano over that any day. --Trweiss 22:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I find this whole article to be filled with subtle propaganda. The text is written carefully so as to be literally true but misleading. For example, consider the disputed sentence which says "digital pianos may fall short of the genuine article in feel and sound." This is of course literally true, if the genuine article represents a crummy old upright. However, this is at best an unnatural interpretation of the sentence. The reality is that a good real piano (as in a top quality $100000 concert grand) will always sound better than any digital, but the article subtly promulgates the opposite impression by way of omission. Another example is the sentence "professional recordings made with a digital piano are difficult or impossible to distinguish from a recording made with a real piano." Again, this is literally true, but highly misleading, because a professional recording does not compare to a live performance. In a live performance even the unwashed masses of the majority can easily tell the difference acoustically between the finest $100000 grand piano and a digital piano.

Unfortunately, the problems in this article seem to be endemic to Wikipedia as a whole. In any editorial conflict, people who are interested in pushing a POV will always have more time to spend on the article, and consequently they will win any edit war. The real experts (professional pianists, in this case) have no time to waste on edit wars, because they have careers to maintain -- after all, that's how they got to be professional pianists in the first place. Policies such as consensus don't help, because experts will always be outnumbered by non-experts. Policies such as NPOV don't help, because propagandists can play word games such as described above so as to remain overtly neutral while retaining just enough POV to comply with policy. For this reason, I will not be fixing the problems in the article. Any attempts at fixing the article would amount to treating the symptom rather than the disease.

In case you're wondering, I'm not a professional pianist, but my wife is. 67.158.79.96 10:00, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

You phrased that last bit really well. I usually just call people douches. Wikipedia has a high pocket protector/basement of the science building constituency among its admins. A lot of them are douches. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.200.32.170 (talk) 11:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Anti-digital bias? Or just unfamiliarity with the last decade of advances?

I'm very dissapointed by the decidedly anti-digital bias in this article. I love both string & hammer, and digital. Both have their place, and to deride the digital as inferior is nonsense.

I'm working on editing a few sections, I just can't seem to keep it concise, my bit keeps spiraling into a novel-like monster. As it is now, this article misleads those who aren't intimately familiar with digitals into thinking all digitals are merely pale imitations, incapable of fire and passion and subtlety. Perhaps that was true in the very early 80's, but things have changed, and changed quite a bit.

My list of grievances:

1. Article implies all pianos are sampled. Wrong. Most decent pianos are hybrid -- a sharp attack sample from the real thing, and a few milliseconds later, a synthesized waveform generated by generally in-house proprietary chips. The modern piano is not a playback device, as was once the case, long ago. These chips get their parameters from the core samples made from the real instruments. These chips, DSPs, filters, are custom-made to mimic the little details, such as key-off resonance, damper resonance, felt chuffing, etc. They accurately replicate the major defect of the real piano (of all stringed instruments, actually): inharmonicity. To do this, they have to model formants. Things have gotten to the point where DP's are tuned with stretched octaves. Just like the real thing. The modern digital also has free-string resonance, where undamped strings resonate along with struck strings. Harmonics content is rich, complex, textured. Really good DPs will not only increase in volume the harder you strike the keys, the actual tonal quality, the color of the tone, changes. These aren't just recent developments, they've been around for a while now. Every accusation made in this article has a readily-verifiable defense. Not all makers choose to implement such niceties. Some do only at the highest model ranges, others have pushed such things down to the lower middle-end.

2. Feel -- the last 10, 20 years have produced some remarkable hammered keyboards, Roland's PHA II is a work of art. Coupled with auditory cues (hammer "plink", percussive "thunks," etc, all done in software) a good keyboard will give a very convincing illusion of reality. Similarly, some DPs today have speakers located to vibrate the keybed. More, perhaps most importantly: The modern digital action has as much control as the real thing. From the barest of barely-audible whispers, to bottled thunder.

3. No history of any kind. The most I have is 10 years old, an article written by someone who had access to a Roland USA employee. While around 10 years old, the ideas, processes and apparatus discussed in the article still hold true today. I can't seem to find anything like that for Yamaha, but I"m sure someone here must have something like that. Putting it in a history of the digital piano may go a long way in dispelling the myths this article perpetuates.

4. It needs to be stressed that the modern DP will not harm nor impair technique nor hand. Too many peeps are under the impression that digitals will cause you to become an incompetent, ham-fisted cripple.

Anyone else have any nits they'd like to pick? This article really needs some new paint and a bit of carpentry.. right now, the joint feels like it was built by a traditional, mechanical piano salesman hell bent on preserving his precious trade.

Perhaps what's needed is a broad digital instrument category -- we have digital pianos, digital organs of both pipe and tonewheel types, there are digital harpsichords which accurately mimic the feel, sound and experience of the plucked keyboard, digital drums, and for the true fringe, digital brass MIDI controllers and even digital accordions. I'm sure there's more, my focus mainly lies in the keyboard instruments.

I guess the entire article needs to be scrapped and re-written. It'd be the quickest, most elegant solution.

Tigerplish (talk) 23:15, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow! I wrote the bulk of the article (and it is largely still the same) at the end of 2005. In the section above, "Weasel Words", I was accused of being a POV "douche" because of my alleged anti-acoustic/pro-digital piano bias. And now I am also accused of being a "mechanical piano salesman hell bent on preserving his precious trade." Very interesting. As for your grievances, let's address them.

1) They are not using synthesized waveforms; at least not in the traditional sense. Piano harmonics are too complex for a VCO or a DCO. I think you are talking about modeled pianos. At the end of 2005, there weren't a lot of (or any?) digital pianos that were modeled instead of sampled. Considering that Sound On Sound's May 2009 article reviewing the recently-released Roland V-Piano says, "one genre of instrument conspicuous by its rarity" (emphasis mine) is the modeled piano, I think these aren't quite as ubiquitous as you presume. We are now (mid 2009) just on the leading edge of the change you suggest, at least where "affordable" ($6000 USD street price for a Roland V-Piano) in-production models are concerned.

2) Sounds like you missed the sentence that says, "Many instruments now have a complex action incorporating actual hammers in order to better simulate the touch of a grand piano."

3 & 4) So write these sections.

Perhaps the "Sounds" section is ready for an update. And the "may" sentence seems to stir controversy (and personal attacks on me) when, instead, the two of you need to remember that "may" also implies "may not". I guess that could be reworded. In any case, it sounds like the article needs to be updated, not scrapped. The rest still looks pretty current and well organized to me. A year has gone by since you listed your grievances. Why not put yourself on the line and improve the article? --Trweiss (talk) 05:08, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Resuming the above

The "Alternatives" section in the current article starts out:

A digital piano is essentially nothing more than a keyboard controller married to a sample playback device which specializes in piano sounds. Other electronic instruments are capable of playing piano samples.

As a section lead in a Wikipedia article that really has not a lot to recommend it!

• Inaccurate
• POV
• Unsourced
• Blatant advocacy

I guess it's not a lot different to the guitar wars we have from time to time. Anyway, still needs work and obviously will remain a controversial article. Andrewa (talk) 17:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Sampled piano recordings

About the comments above:

Tigerplish (talk · contribs): "Article implies all pianos are sampled. Wrong. Most decent pianos are hybrid -- a sharp attack sample from the real thing, and a few milliseconds later, a synthesized waveform generated by generally in-house proprietary chips."

Trweiss (talk · contribs): They are not using synthesized waveforms; at least not in the traditional sense. Piano harmonics are too complex for a VCO or a DCO. I think you are talking about modeled pianos. At the end of 2005, there weren't a lot of (or any?) digital pianos that were modeled instead of sampled.

I have my doubts about Trweiss' statement. I cannot back it with actual knowledge about the implementation of digital pianos, but consider this: You'd need to record 30 to 60 seconds of stereo audio for each of the 88 keys, at different attack levels (say 5 levels). That would be about five hours of samples. Although memory is cheap these days, it was a considerable amount in and before 2005. Moreover, I would expect that even with recordings at five levels and amplitude scaling, you would notice the abrupt changes in tonal quality if, say, you you hit the same key in a sequence with increasing force. If I had to implement it, I'd record samples, and just store the amplitude, frequency, and phase of the different frequency components over time. Which is what Tigerplish seems to suggest. It's more complicated than a digitally controlled oscillator, but not particularly difficult for a digital signal processor. Han-Kwang (t) 11:45, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Missing aspect

A very interesting discussion indeed, showing various aspect of virtual piano "recreation", and definitely worth being incorporated in the article. I feel, however, insufficient indication of the following aspect: the feature of changing the timbre of the sound by the way (not just force, i.e. dynamic aspect) the keys are actuated. Isn't it called "toucher"? Many notable pianist are said to be able to clearly differentiate the timbre of the notes, parts or fragments. It's not only about the "accidentals" of piano mechanism. Remember the story of church organs, when the switch from pneumatic steering to electrical was made? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.255.32.81 (talk) 00:52, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

An apology for getting into this discussion about 10 years later, but what Trweiss said caught my attention. First of all, a VCO or DCO is often capable of creating much more complex and rich sounds than any "real" musical instrument. It happens that, one thing is to create a new sound from scratch, to recreate an existing one from scratch, which is what you could say is incapable of making at least one VCO or DCO but this does not mean that the capabilities of a VCO or DCOs are inferior or produce simpler sounds (though I know you didn't explicitly say the latter) I emphasize this by the way you say it particularly. The second is even worse, because you say that the "harmonics of a piano are too complex for a VCO or a DCO", which is strange because harmonics are nothing more than specific frequencies that together form a timbre, the only complexity there is is actually the amount of harmonics it has, anyway, in theory it shouldn't be a problem for a VCO or a DCO or sound design in general, although this is not to say that it is not complicated. It is not a lie to say that digital pianos are based on synthesis and samples... GtRyz (talk) 00:41, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Manufacturers

Why is Yamaha mentioned first? It should be alphabetical or you have to explain that. I know that Yamaha is well-known, but the section should neutral.--77.0.240.233 (talk) 21:17, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

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