I’m a little late to this party, but I recently discovered the brilliant idea of a “silent piano”. It solves the age-old problem of living in an apartment but still wanting the feel of a real piano (as opposed to a keyboard).
It’s a fully-functioning piano, with hammers and strings and the whole bit, but when you want to play quietly, you can plug in headphones! When you do that, it switches to a digital piano sound that sounds the same to the casual listener, just like a high-end keyboard. You can also plug it into your computer and use it with MIDI, just like with a keyboard. It’s the best of both worlds! The touch of a real piano with the option of playing late at night or in a small apartment.
I did some research and decided on this one: Yamaha U3S. There’s a video demonstration at the link. I’m in love, and I must buy it NOW.
P.S. I know this reads like a sales pitch, but honestly I’m just a) surprised I hadn’t heard of this yet, b) in awe this even exists, and c) in love.
On my upright piano, the middle pedal causes a barrier to drop down between the hammers and keys to make it silent. You can barely hear it, but no one else can.
My sister-in-law has one. On hers, when you put headphones in, it still sounds like a piano. I’m pretty sure a headphone jack is standard on digital pianos.
I’ve been seriously contemplating getting one myself. I am so out of practice, I know I would have to do lots of finger exercises and drills, but don’t want to subject the nieghbors (or my wife) to that, and this is the perfect solution.
Too bad they don’t include the price in the OP’s link…
You can also buy keyboards with weighthed keys. My girlfriend got one about 8 years ago. The keys are designed to have the touch and response of an actual piano and have pedals too. She didn’t have room for a piano, and there as no elevator in our walk-up so a piano would have been ridiculous, but she found the touch to be the same as any piano she’d ever played.
Digital pianos are quite nice. Mine has the weighted key action, 3 different piano voices which can also be combined, plus lots of other voices. Light enough to move by myself and never requires tuning. Now if it could only teach me to play…
Just get an upright with a practice pedal (I think someone above mentioned that). I have a lot of snarky old people in my apartment building, and I’ve never gotten complaints from the upright piano with the middle pedal down.
And frankly, I like that muted, muffled, warm sound it makes!
Indeed it is. But this isn’t a digital piano. It’s an honest-to-God acoustic piano with strings and hammers, but with the capability of *converting * to a digital piano when you plug in headphones.
That price elfkin477 linked to is way too much, presumably because it’s considered an import in Great Britain. Judging from the places I’ve called in New York, it ranges from about $4,000 to $6,000, which really isn’t that bad when you think about it.
The practice pedal thing is cool, but I also like the idea of being able to plug a real acoustic piano into my computer via the MIDI input, which you can also do with this piano. And I understand that digital pianos are great, but nothing–nothing–is like playing a real piano.
Ah, I see now. I did wonder why you were surprised at the existence of something quite commonplace! I agree that real pianos are much better than digital, but sadly they do take up a lot more room too. One day I will live somewhere with a real upright piano.
These are popular in prison. Prisoners are limited in their use of regular musical instruments but they’re allowed to play headphoned instruments in their living quarters.
eta: Digital pianos only. Acoustic/digital pianos are not allowed.
I’ll admit I’m a little confused about how an acoustic/digital piano would work. Wouldn’t all of the electronics needed for the digital piano ruin the sound of the acoustic part?
Nope - in fact, many high quality digital pianos use a similar lever action to create the piano feel (just without an actual hammer and strings). Display showrooms often have a partial cutaway model of the keybed to show this. The digital section uses magnetic, optical or conductive sensors (which do not interfere with the action) to measure the impact velocity of the keypress - this is then fed to the midi processor and digital sound generator.
Even practice pedals are not the same as what’s being described here: with a practice pedal the sound you hear is muted, too, while with the “silent” piano you can still hear the full piano sound in your headphones. Plus, back in the day when I had regular access to acoustic pianos I always found using the practice pedal for any significant amount of time to be distracting/annoying.
Quoted for truth. I have a Kurzweil digital piano with 88 full-size, weighted keys: when I bought it 12 years ago, I walked into the music store and said, “Get me as close to an acoustic piano as possible.” (Within reason, of course: I only spent ~$3k.) I love my keyboard and it is pretty close, but it is not the same. I really miss playing acoustic pianos, and if I ever stop renting one of the first things I’ll do is look into getting one.
I spent a few months playing different versions in stores when I lived in Paris and the technology was new to me. They seem to work as advertised, but if you can find a good digital (like a Roland FP4 or one of the new Yamaha models), it might be superior option, especially if you have already a decent acoustic upright. IIRC they had retrofit options for existing pianos as well.
Keep closely in mind that how happy you are with the tone of the midified piano or any other digital keyboard is going to way way dependent on your amplification and speaker system. I’m not happy using headphones for practicing, so I keep volume carefully tuned down and EQ’d as needed into monitors (mono or stereo) for when it’s a bit late to be jamming loud. Many digital models have problems with the interface between the fake action and the internal MIDI sounds – on an old Yamaha P-80, I could never get enough control over the dynamics and it never exactly sounded too legato when I wished, either.
