According to some so-called experts, if you are a beginner when it comes to playing the piano, you should ‘start slow’. After all, learning is a continuous process, and as most processes go, you have to start at the beginning. That includes choosing the digital piano that you should use during your learning process. But does it mean that a beginner piano should be the most basic of pianos? While it is true that you might be biting more than you can chew if you immediately pounce on a piano designed for advanced and experienced players, you might also end up shortchanging yourself in the long run if you choose a very basic piano. After all, you have to make room for future improvements, and think long-term. While a digital piano with the most basic features will be a good way to start, overall, it may not be the best digital piano for you. Here let us take a look at the top 5 digital pianos for beginners, and give tips that will help you pick out the best beginner digital piano.
Top 5 Digital Pianos for Beginners
Here are brief reviews on the top 5 digital pianos that are perfect for beginners.
An interesting full-featured digital piano packaged with a full-sized semi-weighted 88 keys keyboard that is designed with adjustable touch response to give you realistic feel of a piano. This piano features powerful 20-watt built-in speakers system to give you a sound that is powerful and clear. 128 maximum polyphony helps a beginner pianist to be creative and expressive with his pieces of practice with this instrument. 5 realistic voices are also built-in with this piano and pianist can customize his musical piece by layering two voices together. These features make your sound richer and aid you in bringing out the best of piano music. One of the best attraction with Alesis Recital for beginners are its powerful learning features. Its lesson modes enable you to split the keyboard into two halves with same voices and pitch. So a student and a teacher can play and practice together giving students a chance to watch teacher and follow him.
Not only that but this piano features battery-powered flexibility if needed in any case and USB-MIDI connectivity that lets you connect your piano to any computer system. Private play can also be enjoyed with recital’s ¼ stereo headphone output. Along with that it features ¼” sustain pedal input that enables you to connect other sound systems including amplifier, mixer etc. moreover Skoove 3 month premium subscription is included with purchase of this digital piano. All of these features widens your spectrum of learning and practicing piano. Read Our Full Reviews
This digital piano model offers great value for money and is an ideal choice for learning and practicing at home. It is packed with features that make creation and rehearsals more interesting and a fun playing experience for all. This piano includes a full sized keyboard with 88 fully weighted piano style keys that gives you feel of a real piano. The piano includes 10 different premium voices that are sampled from grand pianos by Yamaha thus making this digital piano sound great.
Apart from its features, the design is slim and stylish. Depth is only around 12 inches and the entire piece weighs only 25 pounds thus occupying only a little space in your room. For all the aspiring pianists, this digital piano can prove to be a special piece. Its dual mode gives you a chance to combine two different voices together so you can experiment varied voices for creativity. For example you can combine piano and strings sound to create something new and interesting. This piano is packaged with a sustain pedal and power adaptor. But if you need other accessories, you would need to pay for them additionally. Read Our Full Reviews
The Yamaha P45 is another good choice for beginners by Yamaha in the field of digital pianos. Offering Yamaha’s Graded Hammer Action weighted Keys, practicing over this digital piano would give you similar feel like playing a grand one. The keys are appointed with touch sensitivity with lighter over high end and as you travel low they would become heavier. This feature further improves the natural feel. Sampling of sound with this instrument is impressive with Yamaha’s Advanced Wave Memory Stereo sampling. You get even deeper and richer sound waves with this one in comparison to other models.
Beginners will be able to experience interesting piano and strings voices by combining them with its Dual Mode. Students can benefit with the USB to Host Port with the aid of which you can connect the instrument to different devices for creation of varied sounds and applications for practice and learning purpose. Moreover its easy single button operation makes it a viable choice for beginners. Just by holding the Grand Piano/Function button, they can change voices, adjust metronome, play demos and can perform various other functions with press of keyboard keys. Read Our Full Reviews
This digital piano is termed to be one of the best choices for piano students at the beginners’ level because of its low cost. Despite of its low cost, this piano offers you reasonable features that nurtures good habits and aids in the process of learning. The keys although are not fully weighted but semi-weighted keys are not really bad with the case that you are getting full 88 keys. This piano comes with 5 different sounds including piano, organ, bass, synth and electric piano. One of the important feature that this digital piano has for beginners is the split keyboard feature that enables you to divide the piano keyboard in two exactly similar sections for student and teacher to play together for practicing.
It also includes built-in speakers and metronome for practicing different variations and combinations. This piano is extremely portable with weight only 19 pounds and is battery operated so a beginner can easily carry it anywhere around. Further for sound customization, this digital piano includes reverb and chorus effects too. Although it doesn’t come with additional accessories but you can get a bench, stand, sustain pedal and AC power adaptor at an additional cost to the price of this piano.
This digital piano is excellent equipment for those who are looking for versatile features and richness of sound. Appointed with full 88 key hammer action and weighted keys keyboard, this piano offers impressive playability for everyone from a beginner to a pro pianist. Even with its full sized keyboard, this piano is really portable and can be carried for any application. It includes USB connectivity with the help of which you can connect it to any computer system or can control any external equipment too. This digital piano is voiced with 20 realistic sounds that can be individually used or layered to give uniqueness to your piano music. These sounds are exclusive from powerhouses AIR and SONiVOX.
A pianist can become more creative by practicing different rhythms, metronome and 50 accompaniment styles (duet mode) and can add a charm to their practice and performances. Moreover you can record your own set of performances and listen back. Beginners can learn and practice with 60 preset songs built-in that can played along. Playing this piano on lesson mode enables student and teacher to divide the keyboard in to two halves (similar sections) offering same voice and pitch. Additional features that makes your experience even better with this piano includes reverb effects, transpose function, headphones output and sustain pedal. Read Our Full Reviews
Tips on Choosing the Best Digital Piano for Beginners
For beginners, some important considerations should be kept in mind when you are planning to purchase a digital piano. We will be sharing here some tips that would aid you in successfully carrying out this daunting task.
Choose reliable Brand: Beginners may be thinking that they should save money by buying some cheap digital pianos. Surely you can do so but remember that a really cheap one would give you a cheaper quality. Make sure that the digital piano you plan to buy comes from a reliable and good quality brand. A popular brand gives you reliable products and you can rely on them if in case your product stops working or needs some repair. Some of the most popular brands and their top models for beginners will be discussed in later sections.
Look for good quality Keyboard: For beginners, it is best to get a digital piano with full size keyboard and weighted keys. Try to get a digital piano with 88 keys size similar to a grand one. This would enable you to grab good habits of playing piano by giving you correct fingering, scaling and body posture. Having a good quality full size keyboard would enable you to adjust to play over other digital pianos with ease in future whenever needed. You will learn right way of playing a piano.
- Keyboard with Split Feature: Many of the modern digital pianos have this feature and this proves beneficial for learners. The keyboard with split feature can break the keyboard down in two sections with exactly same sound pitches. So both student and teacher get same keyboards with 44 keys each and thus student can play along with teacher to practice more effectively.
- Touch Sensitivity: Keys with touch sensitivity would give you feel and touch like an acoustic piano and if you begin practicing on such keys, you wouldn’t find it difficult to play on more advanced keyboards. The more touch sensitivity levels the piano has, the better.
Loaded with all the Important Features for Versatility: A beginner piano may not have everything that a specialized piano player needs but it should have all the significant features that gives your piano practice and learning a complete versatility. It should have good range of voices, sounds, amplification and more so that you can grow yourself as a piano player. Just make sure that there aren’t too many features and options to make practicing confusing for beginners.
Music Library with Preset Tracks: A music library with a number of preset songs would enable beginners to practice and learn more. The more songs you have in your digital piano, more you will be able to learn with versatility by getting your hands over different range of songs. You can break down these songs and learn varied pieces.
Look into its connective feature: Connectivity has become an important feature in most musical instruments. Look for one with a MIDI IN/OUT or USB port that you can use to connect the piano to a computer and other MIDI devices. If you want to connect to a speaker system, amplifier, or any other sound system, an Aux IN/OUT or Line IN/OUT feature will come in handy.
We recommend you also look for one with a Record function, so can play back your performance and monitor your progress. Since you’re learning, a digital piano with built-in demos and songs, as well as a song book or music book as reference, will also be an advantage.
Consider measurements or dimensions: One reason why people go for digital pianos is portability. As a beginner, choosing a lightweight unit, as well as one that will not take up too much floor space, is preferable. Going for something large and imposing the first time around might prove to be overwhelming.
Check your budget: Unless you are fully committed to becoming an expert piano player, you would not want to blow all your savings on a digital piano when you are just a beginner. Fortunately, there are now a lot of digital pianos with great features perfect for beginners that are available in the market, with some models selling for as low as under $1000.
Piano Techniques for Beginners
Having a proper piano technique is most important when you are a beginner in order to learn this art well. Opting for good techniques and practices in the beginning would give you consistent performance and reduced stress even if you play/practice for a longer time period. Beginners should ensure that they are practicing in the right manner in order to prevent themselves from piano injuries and to play efficiently and effectively in future.
Learning to play piano is a skill that requires complete concentration with right practices of your body and mind co-ordination with complete control over movements of your body parts. Some techniques that a beginner must opt while learning and practicing are shared here that would prove helpful for learning at a quicker pace and with perfection.
- Pianist must never rush learning or practicing and must never work until he/she is prepared to do so.
- Your body and mind must be in complete state of comfort and ease. There should be no sign of strain or stress while lessons and practice sessions.
- You should have a comfortable body and mind co-ordination for practice sessions in order to get the desired results.
Learning Pieces for Beginners:
- Learn music well and notes of the piece that you are trying to learn.
- Once you are done with having a complete grip of notes and music in mind, work out on positions and grouping of these notes.
- Make different co-ordinations and patterns of music that you can physically and visually relate to. For beginners, you should keep it simple.
- Organize movements and practice the notes physically over keyboard.
- Practice the notes slowly and gradually increase speed.
- After working on different pieces separately, try to chain them together for a continued flow of music without any stops in between. In the beginning, you would need to take some stops but with practice your mind will be trained to give continuity.
- Practice and aim to get close to the desired results. Your practice must be directed towards continuous improvement and working towards errors.
- Practice with complete concentration and focus towards getting good results.
How to Play Chord on Piano for Beginners
In order to learn to play your favorite songs over a digital piano effectively, you should have a grip on chords. Chords form the basics of all the songs and knowing chords along with scales would enable you to play just any composition at all. For beginners it is important to develop your learning of chords that gives you understanding of music. This doesn’t only help you in reading music but it would also aid you in composing and improvising notes. It is important for learners/students to include practicing chords in their daily routine in order to get more familiar with the basic chords.
Chords are basically a group of notes played together. Any melody or track you take in to account is based on a chord it is being played on. Beginners of learning piano should make themselves familiar with the major and minor triads (12 keys) over their keyboard. Practice them well by trying to invert them, spreading them out and creating various combinations and melodies with them. You should practice different patterns using these chords. The best way to learn these chords is by grouping and relating them conferring to their placement on keys.
As you begin learning, focus on working with simple chords such as C, F and G. Once you have mastered on these, you can move to more complex ones. As you learn about chords, you will find out that most of the melodies and songs can played over piano by using basic simple set of chords only. This understanding and practicing of chords would make your piano learning easier and quicker.
FAQS for Beginner Piano Players
It is important to have a piano/keyboard at home?
How much time does it take to become a good pianist?
What is an ideal practice time?
What is an ideal age for learning to play piano?
What kind of music should I begin my piano lessons with?
Should I learn about musical theory?
Is reading music important?
Should I take private lessons or be part of a group lesson for beginning piano?
I have small hands, can I still play piano?
I am playing another instrument; can I still learn to play piano?
Conclusion
Whether you are a beginner or you’ve been playing the piano for years and are already skilled at it, you deserve to have the best digital piano. When shopping, you may have a long list of specific requirements, but as long as you know what you need, and you have a clear idea on the direction you want to go with your piano-playing, you will surely find that digital piano that is your perfect match.
I am a complete beginner, should I buy a new piano or a used one?
Well, that truly depends upon your budget and personal preference. Although it is not necessary that a new piano would only prove good but there can be many fine quality well-tuned used pianos. Many of the current manufacturers are making valuable, better quality and feature-rich pianos. But at the same time you can find used pianos that are properly refurbished and rebuilt to give you a better piano playing experience in an affordable price. So it is a matter of quality and personal preference. Just test and opt for an instrument with brighter and pleasing tone, perfect action and all the necessary features.
I am a complete beginner should i start with a classic or digital piano?
A digital piano is perfect choice for beginners. All models of digital pianos offer a wide choice of sounds that makes ways for versatility. They also give you impressive features that would enable you to experiment, practice for learning and record your compositions. A good factor is that they come with affordable price and ease of use.
Being new to pianos, how long should I take to gain understanding of piano music?
The beginning stages of learning to play piano should be dedicated to help you gain understanding of theory and language of music. First few lessons should be devoted to learning to read music properly. You get to learn basic technique of piano including notes, scales, chords and other related terms. Learning all these musical concepts, techniques and terminologies related to piano would enable you to build a solid foundation for your piano playing skill.
How long these beginner’s digital pianos last?
They can last for decades but with changing technology and added features, you may choose to upgrade your digital piano after a few years of hands over one of these. You may even think of replacing your digital piano to an acoustic or upright version. But remember that there is no difference as such in playability and response with these pianos provided you opt for good quality instruments.