Piano - Catch-All

Anyone play piano? I figured I'd start a thread so that I have a place to discuss my current experiences. I purchased a Kawai CE220 a year ago or so. I played classical piano up into a bit of college but then stopped for 8 years or so. It's been incredibly rewarding to get back into it the last year or so. So, the CE220 has been great because the wooden keys really give it a fairly authentic touch. At any rate, it's good enough that I can stand to play it. The sound isn't great, though. In retrospect, I probably should have just purchased the Kawai VPC1 and built a cabinet for it. I recently bought Synthogy's Ivory II American Concert D VST, so I'm now bypassing the internal sound processing.

The Ivory II American Concert D is just an amazing sample library. It's 49 GB worth of samples and it's absolutely incredible sounding. The way notes decay is just fantastic. It's very realistic. They even have pedal noise samples!

Here is a recording I made of a The Secret Life of Daydreams. Let me know what you think and any criticism is more than welcome! Listen for that pedal noise. It's there if you have good headphones and the volume is up. I tried to keep it subtle. Let me know what you think.

The only issue with Ivory II is that I'm getting some static/clipping issues for some reason. I haven't been able to isolate the cause yet. That's one reason why I recorded a very simple piece to begin with. The clipping occurs when many notes are played loudly. I have the settings tweaked so that I can get through Clair de Lune without issue, so that'll probably be what I tackle next.

Here's what my current setup looks like:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/Cc0WDEBl.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/70cmZoSl.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/QsbSGaPl.jpg)

My goal eventually is to get a Kawai K5 upright so that I can avoid this whole digital thing, but for now, I'm getting by. I'll post stuff about my current repertoire at a later date.

I played a lot of piano as a kid. Finished my Grade 8 Royal Conservatory and went on to play other instruments. We have a piano, but I never play... I really should pick it up again.

Any tips on getting back into it?

Sounds great! Nice rubato and flow, it was beautiful. I'm totally not a pianist and may be full of it, but maybe slightly more connected/longer notes in the right hand to emphasize the cantabile marking? Could be something with the virtual sounds and sustain or whatever too.

Congrats for bravely posting! I wonder how a tuba solo would be received...

El-Producto wrote:

Any tips on getting back into it?

Actually, I do!

1. Get your piano tuned.

2. You really do need to put in the time. I practice about 1 hour per day 5-6 days a week. I try and make 15 minutes out of that hour doing exercises (scales, arpeggios, Hanon). It's amazing how much finger strength you really need to retain control while playing a piece. Even just doing that for a month, I was amazed at how much progress I made.

If you don't have that much time, I would say 30 minutes per day 5 days a week with 10 minutes a day of that doing exercises would be a pretty good plan. You just really need to do those exercises rather than just playing a piece over and over.

3. Pick 1 simple piece you really like and focus on that as your goal. For example that one I just posted is pretty simple if you can do the eights vs triplets thing. Eric Satie's Gymnopedies are a good example. They're simple to learn but difficult to master.

Once you get 1 piece down that you like, it'll give you a great sense of accomplishment and open the door to all the possibilities.

How's your sheet music sight reading? I'm not sure what the best book would be to relearn that stuff.

Osiran wrote:

Sounds great! Nice rubato and flow, it was beautiful. I'm totally not a pianist and may be full of it, but maybe slightly more connected/longer notes in the right hand to emphasize the cantabile marking? Could be something with the virtual sounds and sustain or whatever too.

Congrats for bravely posting! I wonder how a tuba solo would be received... :)

It's definitely tough to get that melody in the right hand to sing! I struggle with the phrasing. I probably played the piece 20 times or so and then just picked the one I posted because it wasn't terrible.

It's actually easier to get the right hand more connected and song-like when you play it quickly. It's also more fun. It just doesn't sound very good. I found that out the first time I recorded it playing at my usual pace. Now I make a very conscious effort to keep it very slow and relaxed. Here's the actual soundtrack performance for anyone curious:

What did you think of the synthetic piano? Not bad, eh? I'm a pretty big piano snob having played on a fair amount of Steinways in my time and lots of Yamahas. I never imagined a virtual piano could sound that good.

3. Pick 1 simple piece you really like and focus on that as your goal.

So... Not this then?

Yeah the electronic/virtual piano sound is pretty good. Virtual sounds for wind/brass range from almost acceptable to downright awful!

ugh.. Chopin

If you want to try a slightly game-ified approach Songs2See (and steam link) might be of interest, particularly if someone else has already done the work of converting the songs you're interested in into playable form.

I have not used it myself but it certainly looks like a useful learning tool.

Osiran wrote:

ugh.. Chopin :(

Booooooo. I love Chopin.

I made another recording today:

I tried to get a good recording of Debussy's Clair de Lune done today, but I couldn't quite get it the way I wanted. I'm going to wait to post a recording of that until I get a nearly perfect one. In the meantime, I'm going to do recordings of easy stuff like the above.

I'm sorta looking at getting the model you have. I was in Walton's (probably best known music shop over here) one day though and the Yamaha rep was randomly visiting and charmed me into playing with higher Yamahas. I now need to go back and play the kawai's again. Oh decisions, it's a lot of money:/ no major rush, since I used the cash I was gong to spend to pay off my car loan, I'll be a while saving up again! My bro has the slightly older version of the kawai. My dad hates it, but I really like the feel of it when I'm playing.

I've never played actual piano, but I have a diploma in teaching the electronic organ from 10 years ago. Currently playing timpani in a brass band (the genesis of my lust to learn music again) for the last two years and learning the French horn since November. Horn is bloomin' hard!

Good stuff. My daughter actually taught herself how to play piano (well a keyboard anyway) and read music solely by watching youtube!

dibs wrote:

I'm sorta looking at getting the model you have. I was in Walton's (probably best known music shop over here) one day though and the Yamaha rep was randomly visiting and charmed me into playing with higher Yamahas. I now need to go back and play the kawai's again. Oh decisions, it's a lot of money:/ no major rush, since I used the cash I was gong to spend to pay off my car loan, I'll be a while saving up again! My bro has the slightly older version of the kawai. My dad hates it, but I really like the feel of it when I'm playing.

I've never played actual piano, but I have a diploma in teaching the electronic organ from 10 years ago. Currently playing timpani in a brass band (the genesis of my lust to learn music again) for the last two years and learning the French horn since November. Horn is bloomin' hard!

I highly recommend a keyboard with full length wooden keys like the CE220. As I mentioned, the sound isn't great, so doing it over again, I'd get a Kawai VPC1, build or buy a cabinet for it, and just use a laptop with Ivory II. In the end, that'll cost more than just getting the CE220, though, so it depends on your budget. I don't think Yamaha makes any wooden key electric pianos in the under $2000 range. I believe Kawai is the only one still.

karmajay wrote:

Good stuff. My daughter actually taught herself how to play piano (well a keyboard anyway) and read music solely by watching youtube!

Well, recalling how much money my parents spent on me as a kid for lessons, that sounds like a win for you and a great accomplishment for her! There's a lot of great content on YouTube for even advanced pianists. There are tons of Master Classes up there.

I haven't touched a Yamaha digital in years, but my sister had an older model of one of those Kawai's that had the same kind of weighted keys, and it was light years beyond the Yamaha's tech at the time.

You know what, I was wrong. i was full sure that was the model i was looking at. I just went back to my emails with my brother from last year and found the right number.
I'm going to try out the Kawai CA65. My bro has the older model of it. The corresponding Yamaha would be either the Clavinova 470 iirc (but as you can see a iirc from me ain't worth much).

There is only one Kawai dealer in Ireland, and it is in Dublin however, so I have to really make a full day of it to try these out close together...and then order from the internet to save a couple of hundred quid. I do like the feel of my brother's Kawai alright. I was doing a bit of reading about them a while back and people said that the choice comes down to which you like playing more. More people seemed to go for the Kawai at that point.

Edit: That is awesome karmajay. She must be really interested in playing to do that! I'm planning on learning piano for the technique (and I'm in love with classical piano music for the last two years). Playing the organ technique was definitely part of it, but the piano is a whole other ball game. I'm going to get a teacher to make sure I develop all the good habits right from the start. I'm a bit lucky in that I can skip all the theory and (albeit rusty) reading skills and jump right into playing.

That CA65 would be really nice. The grand feel is Kawai's best action and nicer than what's in mine and what's in the VPC1. I doubt the sampling is as good as Synthogy's Ivory II, but you could always mess around with that down the line just like I did. I'm sure it sounds a bit better than my CE220. I'm not familiar with electric pianos up in that price range, so I don't know how the CLP-470 compares.

The one recommendation I do have is to get some nice open headphones. The way the speakers in an electric piano produce the sound doesn't feel right compared to playing a real piano. Those expensive electric pianos might be a bit better at it. When you use headphones, you eliminate all the funky cabinet and room acoustics, so it can actually sound pretty realistic. I have AKG K702s.

The one thing that I'd like to see in electric pianos is key vibration. I don't know if they'll ever be able to fake that, but it seems like they could given how they implement force feedback in game controllers and whatnot. That was one of the first things I noticed while playing a real piano after practicing on my electric piano for a long time. You can really feel the sound through the keys.

Ultimately, I just need to get a real piano.

I'd love a real piano as well, but I'm a renter so no joy! It is the sound that my dad doesn't like on my brother's one. I don't mind it so much, and he does have very nice headphones with it. I'm half hoping to convince them to sell me theirs, since my sis in law just had a baby and they didn't play it much in the first place - they said I've played their piano on my visits more than they have. haha.

The biggest problem with piano shopping is that the place in Dublin has all their stunning grand pianos on the ground floor. By the time you get to the top floor where all the digital ones are you are a drooling mess from oogling the vintage beauties.

dibs wrote:

I'd love a real piano as well, but I'm a renter so no joy! It is the sound that my dad doesn't like on my brother's one. I don't mind it so much, and he does have very nice headphones with it. I'm half hoping to convince them to sell me theirs, since my sis in law just had a baby and they didn't play it much in the first place - they said I've played their piano on my visits more than they have. haha.

The biggest problem with piano shopping is that the place in Dublin has all their stunning grand pianos on the ground floor. By the time you get to the top floor where all the digital ones are you are a drooling mess from oogling the vintage beauties.

Ha! Yeah, that's the worst isn't it? There's nothing worse than playing an electric piano after playing a real piano (It's actually not that bad if the real piano was really out of tune). Well if you can get them to sell it to you, that sure would be a good deal. I imagine they'll be tempted to hold onto it for the kid. Just tell them that electric piano technology will have advanced by that time or something.

Images like this make me want 9' concert grand. It'll never happen, though. Time to search for some rad piano photographs.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/VhlGEDt.jpg)

Just got back from seeing Her and was pleasantly surprised with the little minimalistic piano bits. Someone transcribed it and posted some sheet music!

It's really relaxing and fun to play.

Anyone playing anything fun these days? There's a retirement home near where I live that I started playing at the other day. I just played around an hour's worth of material. Everyone seemed to appreciate it a lot, so that's good. I'll probably be able to do it every couple months.

I still practice an average of 5 hours per week. I always feel like I'm progressing, so the satisfaction I get from the hobby is great. I finally caved and bought Yann Tiersen's piano works. I just can't resist playing those songs from Amelie. They're actually really odd to play from a classical piano perspective. They definitely seem to be written by someone who didn't grow up learning classical piano.

Newest things I've been working on:

I have both of those down now to where I can play them okay, but they're not memorized.

Kawai updated they're upright piano line, and the K-5 is now the K-500. I now have a new piano to dream about obtaining one day.

Osiran wrote:

I wonder how a tuba solo would be received... :)

I got a free ticket to see a Portland Piano International performance yesterday. The performer was Igor Kamenz. The program was as follows:

Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 96 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 24 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 119 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 197 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 135 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 322 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 109 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 492 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 17 in D Major
Domenico Scarlatti -- Sonata K. 29 in D Major

Intermission

Franz Liszt -- Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata from Années de pèlerinage

Franz Schubert (Arr. Liszt) -- Das Wandern from Die schöne Müllerin
Franz Schubert (Arr. Liszt) -- Der Müller und der Bach from Die schöne Müllerin
Franz Schubert (Arr. Liszt) -- Auf dem Wasser zu singen
Franz Schubert (Arr. Liszt) -- Erkönig

While it was interesting to see a different style of playing, I actually didn't particularly like how he played. He has a very heavy style that lacks subtlety. The Steinway he played on was really bright sounding which didn't help with his style.

To give you an idea, listen to the first piece (Schumann) of his performance here:

And the following YouTube video is how I would prefer it to be played. Keep in mind that the live Kamenz recording quality of that previous performance isn't very good, and try to think past that.

I fully understand he's very good and his style is surely intentional. I'm just not a big fan. What do you all think?

Portland Piano Tickets got way expensive ($45 without extra charges for the cheapest ticket), so I can't justify go regularly or really at all to be honest. I was lucky to get a free ticket for this performance. It seems the Monday performances are having trouble selling out, so I'm going to look into getting rush tickets just before performances. Hopefully that works out, because I hate not being able to go to the performances. They definitely don't make it easy for people who aren't wealthy to attend. I'm still ticked off that I wasn't able to see Daniil Trifonov last year. The only way to go was if you bought a Season Pass to all the performances.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Igor Kamenz

Honestly, I wouldn't have minded the Schumann you linked but the octaves on that piano seemed WAY off. Unless it was some sort of "performance practices of Schumann's time dictated a slightly out-of-tune piano," it sounded to me like... he was playing on a slightly out-of-tune piano.

The second interpretation was much better, plus it had the added bonus of a properly tuned instrument.

Warlock wrote:

he was playing on a slightly out-of-tune piano.

It's just an old, bad piano, and there's only so much you can do to tune those things. Unfortunately, there aren't many good recordings of his playing on YouTube, so I couldn't find a great apples to apples comparison. That was the best I could come up with.

Arise!!!

Tuffalo, did you stick with this? Currently cooped up at home I've been debating trying piano again. I only played up through late grade school, so I'm way rustier, but I've always wanted to try an instrument again and digital pianos are quite reasonable these days.

Yeah, we got a piano for around $750 total after we had some work done on it. I'm not practicing regularly, but I play from time to time.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/8ggBPxF.jpg)

It sounds okay for a cheap piano. It IS really nice to have a real piano to play on. I posted this in a different thread awhile back:

That's just one part of that song. I learned it back in the day because they had a great version of it during the loading screens of Bioshock Infinite.

I eventually do want to get a nice piano, but I have no idea when that'll be financially possible. Many years from now maybe.

There was someone posting in the instrument thread about a course thing you can do. My partner is working through the adult Alfred book which is pretty good if you want to get started with a book.

RawkGWJ was posting in the instrument thread about using Yousician to learn piano. Might be a good option.

Oh, awesome. Thanks for the links. I’m thinking of buying this. Just something basic to play around and maybe learn.

Donner DEP-20 Beginner Digital 88 Key Full Size Weighted Keyboard, Portable Electric Piano with Sustain Pedal, Power Supply

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X9SD5JR...

Should be fine! Like with all instruments, you'll kinda get what you pay for, especially when it's a digital piano. Acoustic instruments you kinda have to be careful with what you pay for them.

I would suggest checking what Yamaha and Kawai have in that price range before buying. If they have anything that's 88 keys and weighted keys, you might consider going with that. They've been making digital pianos a long time. I haven't heard of the Donner brand.

Edit: Another reason to go with a name brand if they have one in that price range is for resale. If you decide you don't want to mess with piano, or want to upgrade, you'll be able to get more money out of a Yamaha or the like on Craig's List. That said, you're not spending a crazy amount, so it's not a huge deal.

The Baldwin we got is probably worth more like $1000 to $1500 I feel, so I'm hoping we can get some money out of it when we upgrade. It's made in the US and is a good starter piano for kids.

I finally got the sheet music to this:

It's really hard to get that eight vs. triplet thing going on perfectly! It's deceptively simple but hard. It really brings out the flaws in our piano too. I want to go play it on my parent's Yamaha.

Edit: Quote is not Edit

Timely!

My daughter (7) recently started taking lessons (since cancelled) and I thought I'd try to re-learn. I played between the ages of 6-11 or so before sports started demanding all my after-school time. My wife's uncle, who is a musician, recommended this Casio after hearing it recently and comparing it to the Yamaha that he uses as a cheap 'play around with' keyboard.

Now that I decided to re-learn, I have no idea where to start. Maybe I'll check out that Alfred book. Anyone have thoughts on the kindle version of stuff like that? I do have an iPad Pro for work that I could put the book on to be readable at the keyboard, but I worry that it's the kind of book where I'll be wanting to flip back and forth between pages a lot and I find that process to be less than ideal with digital books.