Digital Stage Piano

I like music. And I like playing music! I still remember the long afternoons at the piano and the wearing sessions on the black&white keys when I was 10 …. my teacher was Russian and she loved the popular songs of her country ….. terrible! The problem was I have always been a bad student: I've never understood why it was so important to read and execute scores for hundreads of times without understanding what I was playing …. chords, scales.

What's more my father bought a wonderful grand piano but I wasn't able to understand the value of that instrument …. foolishness of youth :) Thankfully some years ago I decided to study the “misteries” of music again and I bought a digital piano: a Casio Privia Px 110.

In this article I'm going to evaluate digital pianos (also known as “stage pianos”) that have:

• a range of price between $450 and $550

• a good portability

• not too bulky

Let's start with the Casio PX 130: the 88 keys for 7 octaves give us the chance to play on a good range of tones, together with the full hammered action. This last aspect is the most important: I'm not so interested in the synthetised sounds or pre-selected rhythms. Instead the quality of the “touch” gives the real player experience; the modern solution is the Natural Weighted Hammer Action (NH). Casio is a good manufacturer with a balanced proportion between price and performance.

Other choices are Yamaha, Korg or Roland: the Yamaha P95B Digital Piano has less “software” features than Casio Px 130 but the feeling of the touch is “warm” and “soft”, never like a real piano but the result is similar.

A very good product is Korg SP170BK 88-key Digital Slab Piano: for many the sound of piano is better reproduced than Casio PX 130 and it has a “keys system control” to choose sounds and rythms instead of multiple buttons, knobs and switches. I don't like the feeling of the touch very much (I love Yahama or Roland solutions) but Korgis a good compromise between price and technology involved.

I cannot show the Roland stage pianos because they are much more expensive (entry level products starting from $1000): if you have that budget, take a look at the wonderful Roland RD-300GX.

All the three solutions are complete: good speakers, audio and midi outputs and a mini-pedal for the sustain (maybe consider to buy a new one): ready to play!

My personal configuration is composed of

• a Privia Px 110 (the previous model of Px 130)
• a M-Audio Fast Track Pro connected by midi interface
• a PC connected to M-Audio via USB
• software of sequencing/recording (ProTools)
• a motif rack ES connected to M-Audio via spdif
• a roland A-33 midi keyboard
• a korg k-station analogic synthesizer
• a M-Audio 4-octaves midi keyboard (Radium)

In this way I'm able to play every sort of sound thanks to the connection between my Privia and the M-Audio external sound card, both by the PC and the only motif rack sound generator. If you want more informations about my music configurations, I'll be ready to answer!

For instance …. take your piano and make music!