Can digital piano replace acoustic piano?

Can digital piano replace acoustic piano?

Should we practice on an acoustic piano or on a digital piano? Full article

We very often are asked if we can replace our long hours of studying on an acoustic by practising on a digital piano. This question is a complex one…

There are several aspects that might influence our opinion on whether it is advisable to rehearse on a digital piano or not. One of the main points to be considered is if we are preparing a piece from the scratch or we are fine tuning our performance. In the former case, it is actually quite positive to spend some hours practising on an acoustic piano. The reason: a digital piano provides a neutral platform where we can focus on recreating the main structure of the piece in our mind. A digital piano doesn’t propose any sort of unevenness. That means we can concentrate on our real perspective of how a piece should be performed. We can exercise our imagination, we can improve our legatos by not using the pedal. We can focus on producing solid attacks instead of experimenting with the beauty of life acoustic sound.

An acoustic instrument has a soul. It is a creature that needs to be educated. I personally enjoyed a lot when I start trying the pieces on the grand piano. Mainly because I start to discover new corners that were hidden to me. The way acoustic instruments react is somehow unpredictable. But this unpredictability is magical. It is a pity though, to use a grand piano to find your first steps into a piece. Unless you are a magnificent sight-reader, The first attempts to read a piece are, generally, quite torturous. These ones are the ones I recommend to make using a digital piano.