Pearl River GP142 baby grand: Inherited from my father-in-law, this Chinese-made budget grand is in our living room. Key dip: Front 10mm Rear 2mm Key length: 150mm Octave: 165mmĨ. Casio Privia digital piano: belongs to AIM, used for concerts and rehearsals. Key dip: Front 10mm Rear 4mm Key length: 150mm Octave: 165mmħ. Roland RD-700 digital piano: This is my main gig keyboard. Key dip: Front 10mm Rear 3mm Key length: 140mm Octave: 160mmĦ. I used it for years on one-nighter gigs etc. Yamaha SY-99 synth: Again this one is mine. Slightly weighted plastic spring-loaded.ĥ. M-Audio Axiom 61: MIDI controllers used in AIM studios. Key dip: Front 10mm Rear 1mm Key length: 136mm Octave: 165mmĤ.
Suzuki vs baldwin digital piano portable#
M-Audio Keystudio 49i: Very small portable keyboards with piano sounds formerly used at AIM until they began to break a lot. Key dip: Front 12mm Rear 1mm Key length: 136mm Octave: 165mmģ. M-Audio Keystation 61es: This one belongs to me, used as an “extra” keyboard or portable. Key dip: Front 10mm Rear <1mm Key length: 140mm Octave: 160mmĢ. The keys light up to show you what to play (don’t get me started about this.) Spring-loaded keys, unweighted. Yamaha EZ-200 portable keyboard: A consumer-grade portable keyboard from the lab at AIM where I teach. We will explore the ballistics of these actions in another article.ġ. Combined with the fulcrum issues above, this makes the spring keyboards the least playable. Because it relies on momentum rather than spring tension, it doesn’t “push back” on your fingers harder as you press down. In general, the piano’s highly-evolved action is going to respond best, especially to velocity variation. There are three basic types of keyboards: Actual mechanical piano actions, “Weighted” hammer-action simulated piano actions, and unweighted spring-loaded keys. Years went by and for some reason Yamaha continued to make these smaller keys, and it continues to this day. Ironically, the Yamaha CP-70 Electric Grand was the other keyboard, and had the correct octave size. I first noticed this in the 80s when I got the famous DX-7 keyboard, and stacked it on other instruments I tried to line up the “C” keys at the bottom, only to find they were misaligned at the top. This particular problem seems to be primarily in Yamaha’s unweighted digital keyboards. Needless to say the athletes would not feel comfortable and would make more errors. This would be like having a gymnast practice on one set of parallel bars and then having them spaced differently during competition. It might seem crazy, but the width of an octave on the keyboards also varied.(!) This may be the most egregious design flaw, since this changes the size of all the intervals our hands are expected to find by touch. Short keys can aggravate the leverage issues above, since the back of the keys is closer. In this case, the Pearl River grand was the winner at 153mm. This makes the case for the keys being longer as an advantage, especially for those with large hands. Look at any old piano, and you will see scratches in the finish behind the keys to indicate that this has happened a lot. While a we often play at the front or middle of the keys, there are many cases where our thumb is used to play a black key in this case our fingers are now towards the back. In grand pianos, the fulcrum is farther back for the black keys, which compensates for the lack of leverage in these shorter keys this also makes an improvement. This reflects the pivot point being directly behind the keys. In the worst case, oddly enough, the Yamaha EZ-200 keyboard, the measurements were 10mm in front and >1mm at the back edge. This is because the pivot point of these keys is several inches behind the back of the keys, allowing more leverage. In the best cases, reflected by the grands, the front moved 10mm, while the back came out to nearly 5mm. The greater the difference between these, the more force it takes to press the keys farther back, and the more unpleasant the action. Keys are an example of a lever, where, like a see-saw, there is a pivot point attached to a long key, which naturally has its greatest throw at the end. The main measurement I took reflecting this was the distance the key travels in front, called key dip, compared to the travel at the back of the keys. While this is important, here we will examine some other design features that can really mess up our ability to perform: Many musicians focus on the amount of force it takes to press the keys, called touch weight. I tested a selection of keyboards available to me as a cross-section. Ever wonder why some keyboards are harder to play than others, or why your hands hurt after a gig on certain keyboards? In this article, we are going to look at certain design elements that make some keyboards hard to play.
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