Acoustic Piano or Digital Piano - Does it Sing?
I deliberated somewhat about writing this piece knowing as I do what a contentious topic this can be. I’ve seen the social media threads going back and forth about the value or not of digital pianos. Should our students have digital pianos? Should we turn students away if they don’t have access to an acoustic piano? Are we elitists on one side or poorly educated on the other?
Yes - I’ve read the threads, they can spiral into darkness…
However, emotions aside, does it really matter what type of piano our students have?
There’s a funny quote in the piano edition of the Yehundi Menuhin Music Guides (1976), “It makes no difference if a piano key is hit by a finger, fist or an umbrella.” After stating this quote Louise Kentner argues that it is possible to achieve a sort-of singing tone on a piano although he claims that it is somewhat of an illusion created with clever use of the pedal and a relaxed hand. I felt my sniffy temper rise a bit when I read that. Although there might be an element of smoke and mirrors in every pianists technical repertoire, many pianists, teachers and piano makers would take issue with the idea that the piano cannot sing.
C. Bechstein confidently boasts of the singing tone of their pianos (Bechstein n.d.), and the pianist Andras Schiff, also a great admirer of Bechstein, praises its ability to sound like “little birds” (C. Bechstein, p.35). However, It isn’t just a good quality piano, such as a Bechstein, that can be made to have beautiful tone. Singing tone seems to come from somewhere outside of the piano, it appears to arise from within the pianist themselves. The pianist Miriam Batsashvili tells a story of how her teacher Natalia Natsvlishvili took her to places around her home country of Georgia to play on pianos of varying quality, challenging her to create a beautiful, even-tone on all of them. Natsvlishvili would say to her “It’s not a bad piano, it’s you” (Nichols 2019).
The question “does singing tone exist on the piano” is not the correct question. Instead, the question is, does singing tone exist in the player?
If a player cannot hear or imagine wide variations of tone quality they will not be able to create such sounds on the piano. In truth, digital pianos cannot provide this richness of tone. It’s not possible. Digital pianos are not real pianos, they simply somewhat look like a piano.
The digital piano is made by obtaining a sample recording of one tone on an acoustic piano and then digitally recreating it across the keyboard. Any physical manipulation of timbre, decay or dynamics is an electronic variation of the original sound sample (Good 2001). In contrast, the acoustic piano is a complex instrument that allows for subtle variations of sound, colour and shading depending on how and by whom it is played. With its hammer and string mechanism, the acoustic piano is technically a “Chordophone”. The Greek word chorde means string, and phone means sound or voice (Good). It traces its history to the hammered dulcimer. which engaged the vibrations of string by striking or plucking them (Good).
The relationship between the player and a vibrating string is the piano’s key characteristic. When a string is made to vibrate dozens of partial tones are engaged. These partials (or overtones) sound within the fundamental tone. Partials are responsible for the richness and complexity of each tone. (Butler 1992). Furthermore, quality of a tone is based on many factors beyond the overtone series itself. Some overtones are only engaged at the beginning of the tone (Butler) and all sound from the piano is affected by the resonance of the instrument as a whole. The vibrations of neighbouring sympathetic strings, the size of the soundboard and the quality of material all contribute to the tone of a piano (Good 2001). “Singing-tone” is a term for the skilled manipulation of each these nuances; the richness and quality of overtones, as well as the resonance and dynamic range of a piano.
None of this is possible on a digital instrument.
So what do we do? Do we turn students away at the door if they don’t own an acoustic piano? In 2020 alone, digital pianos outsold acoustic pianos in the USA by nearly nine times (Statista 2021). If we refuse to accept students who don’t have acoustic pianos there will be a lot of musical children left without good quality teaching.
Here we are in a sad conundrum.
I don’t turn away students for this reason. I take students regardless of the instrument they have at home. I try to encourage them to eventually upgrade to a real piano but I don’t stop teaching them. However, more than ever I find it’s important to enrich children’s musical education with as much musical variety as possible. Children must make as much music as possible They need to collaborate with people who are more musically fluent. They need to move and experiment with sound.
My lessons are so much more varied than they used to be for this reason. The difference I see in children’s progress boggles my mind sometimes. Usually, the student themselves begins to yearn for the tone of an acoustic piano. When this happens I know that we are headed in the right direction.
So, acoustic piano or digital?
Never mind - children need to sing.
I composed this piece “Daylight” to help my intermediate students develop a singing tone on the piano.
References:
Bechstein (n.d.). A Closer Look At Some of the Production Steps. Bechstein Website. https://www.bechstein-digital.com/a-legend
C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik Aktiengesellschaft (Ed.),(n.d.), Kupper, B. (Ed.). The World of Pianos, Fascination with and Instrument. Nicolai
Butler, D. (1992). The Musician’s Guide to Perception and Cognition. New York, NY: Schirmer Books.
Good, E. (2001). Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos, A Technological History from Cristofori to the Modern Concert Grand. Stanford, California. Stanford University Press.
Kentner, L. (1976). Yehundi Menuhin Music Guides Piano. Aylesbury, Bucks: Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd.
Nichols, J. (2019, Aug). A Higher Power. International Piano, 58, 16-17.
Statista. (12 May 2021). Number of Pianos Sold in the United States from 2005 to 2020. Statista Website. https://www.statista.com/statistics/452777/number-of-digital-pianos-sold-in-the-us/