What do you need to consider while choosing a piano?
Did you decide to start learning piano? Congratulations! It can turn out that it was one of the most important life-changing decisions you have ever taken. Learning piano is beneficial for people of every age: It develops your brain, your ability to reach goals, it gives you pleasure on happy days, and solace on days of grief. It brings you new friends and increases your horizon. You will be more relaxed and happy than before.
But before you can start your musical journey, you have to choose the right instrument. There are so many types of piano that you can be easily overwhelmed and lose the overview. Here in this article, I would like to help you to make an informed decision. Learn, what factors are to consider while buying a piano, and specifically while buying it in Malta.
Acoustic vs. digital
The first step is to decide between a digital and an acoustic piano. Many of us grew up on the acoustic piano, so am I. It took time for me to accept the digital one. But technology develops fast, and modern digital pianos can satisfy the highest demands on sound and touch. Specifically in Malta, we have a very humid environment. Acoustic pianos can suffer under humidity and untune fast. Buying an acoustic piano, you need to be prepared to tune it regularly. This would cost time, money, and also the quality of the sound in the time before tuning. Though I am a great fan of acoustic pianos, for Malta I recommend choosing a digital one.
88 keys
Some digital pianos have smaller keyboards than an acoustic piano counting only 61 or fewer keys. If you seriously want to learn a piano, you should choose a full-sized piano – one with a standard keyboard consisting of 88 keys.
Weighted keys
On the market, you can find digital pianos with keys without added weight, with partly weighted keys, or fully weighted keys. The added weight is here to simulate the heavy wooden keys of an acoustic piano. A digital piano with fully weighted keys is the closest to an acoustic piano, and therefore the best option to choose.
Touch-sensitivity of keys
A touch-sensitive piano means that the quality of sound depends on how strong and fast you touch the key. Not less than piano mastery is about the ability to produce sound appropriate for a particular piece of music. If we say, that a musician “touches our soul with his or her music”, we mean that he or she is playing expressively with different dynamics and different colors of a sound. Through touch sensitivity, we can express feelings, and this is the whole sense of music.
Touch-sensitive digital pianos are the absolute must-have if you want to have a fulfilling and rich emotional musical journey. On the contrary, should you “save” on touch sensitivity, you probably won’t enjoy your musical activity at all and you will give it up after a while without knowing the real reason for that.
It is especially true if you buy the instrument for your young child who doesn’t have successful experience with playing piano yet. If the piano doesn’t sound right, your child will refer this to his or her ability to play: “I just cannot do it. It is too hard for me.” Children tend to blame themselves and don’t even know that they might be very successful with a proper instrument. If you buy an instrument without touch sensitivity for your child, you convict your child to fail. Don’t do this. Give your child a real chance to succeed and a proper instrument to train his or her musicality.
Price
A good piano is not necessarily expensive. If you focus on the important features listed above and ignore fancy, but unnecessary features, you will find a good piano that you can afford.
Take your time to compare offers on the market. The price range is huge. The probably most popular brands are Yamaha and Kawai, but also Japanese producers Roland, and Korg are becoming more and more popular. I have made a small selection of instruments suitable for beginners and affordable for everyone. This selection is for sure not complete, but I made it to give you an example of what I mean under a good and affordable instrument that satisfies a minimum of requirements. You can go for more, but please don’t go for less. Consider carefully consequences for your child that a bad or a good instrument might have.
Maltese shops tend to be more expensive than online shops, but they are also willing to adjust the price if you ask them for it. You are well-advised in negotiating a fair price by demonstrating that you are informed and know the price range.
The best referral you can find is the online shop Thomann. They have all you need for beginners, advanced players, and professionals.
Delivery to Malta
As I was looking for my piano, I was comparing offers in Malta and abroad. But buying abroad at that time was not easy, since you needed to take care of delivery, and the delivery was expensive. Now, Thomann offers delivery to Malta that is affordable or even free, if you buy a piano for more than €398. This is probably the best news since it makes Thomann a real competitor on the Maltese market.
Please, keep in mind the maximum weight of your piano that can be transported for free. Big and bulky packages are expensive to be transported by Thomann. If you chose this sort of piano, you should better ask any logistic company in Malta for a quotation.
I have asked Thomann’s employees to help me to figure out, what pianos for beginners can be transportet for free, and they gave me the list below. If your desired piano is not in this list, please write an email to Thomann directly regarding to costs of transport.
These pianos can be transportet to Malta for free. If you want to buy a stand and a bench, you need to order them extra.
Our piano selection for beginners
- Responsive Hammer Compact Action (RH-C) Keyboard with 88 weighted keys and Harmonic Imaging sounds
- 8 Piano sounds + 11 more sounds (strings etc.)
- Bluetooth MIDI technology
- 192-Voice polyphony
- 100 Rhythms
- Transposing
- Metronome
- Internal recorder
- Damper resonance
- Dual mode
- Split mode
- 12 Demo songs
- Learning function
- 2 Headphone jacks
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Line Out (L / Mono, R)
- MIDI In / Out
- Power supply socket
- Speaker system: 2x 7 W
- Dimensions (W x D x H): 1312 x 286 x 145 mm
- Dimensions with HML-1 (not included): 1312 (W) x 286 (D) x 820 (H) mm
- Weight: 12 kg
- Colour: Black
- Includes F-10H sustain pedal, note stand and power supply PS-129
- Responsive Hammer Compact Action (RH-C) Keyboard with 88 weighted keys and Harmonic Imaging sounds
- 8 Piano sounds + 11 more sounds (strings etc.)
- Bluetooth MIDI technology
- 192-Voice polyphony
- 100 Rhythms
- Transposing
- Metronome
- Internal recorder
- Damper resonance
- Dual mode
- Split mode
- 12 Demo songs
- Learning function
- 2 Headphone jacks
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Line Out (L / Mono, R)
- MIDI In / Out
- Power supply socket
- Speaker system: 2x 7 W
- Dimensions (W x D x H): 1312 x 286 x 145 mm
- Dimensions with HML-1 (not included): 1312 (W) x 286 (D) x 820 (H) mm
- Weight: 12 kg
- Colour: White
- Includes F-10H sustain pedal, note stand and power supply PS-129
- 88 keys PHA-4 keybed with Ivory Feel
- 12 SuperNATURAL Piano tones, 20 E-Piano tones and 24 other tones
- Max. polyphony: 256 voices
- Bluetooth Audio (V3.0) and Bluetooth MIDI (V4.0)
- Build-in speaker system (two 12cm speakers) with 11 Watts (x2)
- Transposing
- Metronome
- Recording and playback of Standard MIDI Files (SMF) and audio (wav. and MP3) on USB flash drive
- 30 internal songs
- Keyboard modes: whole, dual, split and twin piano
- Illuminated user interface
- Stereo output (6.3mm jack x2)
- Two stereo headphones outputs (3.5mm & 6.3mm jack)
- Pedal input (6.3mm jack)
- Input for optional KPD-70 tripple pedal
- Power supply input (12V DC)
- USB A port for USB flash drives
- USB B port for host computer
- Dimensions: 1300 x 284 x 151mm (WxDxH)
- Weight: 14.8kg
- Color: white
- Included: owner´s manual, external power supply (PSB-7U), music rest, DP-2 sustain pedal
Grant on the Purchase of a Musical Instrument
If you buy an instrument, the Maltese Government supports you by giving you a once-only grant on the purchase of a musical instrument. You will receive your grant after 3 days after you have applied for it.
What you’ll get
The applicant will receive 15.25% of the expense, up to a maximium of €465.
Eligibility
The applicant has to be a Maltese resident, and the form is to be submitted by not later than 3 months from the date of purchase. The original fiscal receipts/invoices and relevant documentation shall be kept by the applicant for not less than 2 years from the date of application and produced upon request to the Commissioner for Revenue for verification purposes. The grant payment will be deposited in the bank account indicated on the application form.
You will receive this grant independent of whether you have bought your instrument from a Maltese shop or abroad. Kindly note that you will be requested to provide a proof of transport and invoice when the instrument is bought from abroad.
The application is that easy and fast as promised.