Buying A Piano
When you are ready to purchase a piano you should know the pros and cons to owning a piano versus a digital piano or electric keyboard.
Pianos
As a teacher and performer I realize first hand the importance of practicing and performing on a piano. Pianos generate sound via strings, hammers, and a soundboard, not by speakers and electronics. As a performer you have more control over the key and thereby the sound produced. There is much more variety and creativity involved in producing musical sound. As I told one of my students, each brand of piano has its own character, its own individual "voice" per se. Certain frequencies of sound will appeal to the individual pianist, i.e., some like bright sounding pianos (Yamaha), some like mellow sounding pianos (Petrof).
The drawback to owning a piano is simply that it needs to be tuned and repaired from time to time. It needs regular maintenance, like a car needs an oil change. Yet quality pianos will withstand time much longer than most vehicles if they are given regular tunings and treated with more respect than most furniture. Humidity, moving, etc., all affect how much money you will need to maintain your piano. For instance, humidity affects the wood inside the piano. During humidity changes pianos will go out of tune. The more equalized a temperature you can maintain in your household, the fewer tunings your piano will need.
Cost should never be the determiner for purchasing a piano as it is easy to find decent used pianos for much less than digital pianos or sometimes even keyboards. Check Craig's list, yard sales, and the newspaper regularly and you may be surprised how much is out there that people are practically giving away! Piano stores also have annual or bi-annual sales to make room for new inventory. Purchasing a piano is also like buying a car in that you should never pay full listed price for a new piano. Piano salespeople work on commission and will drop the price, especially if you can do some price shopping and state that you've seen that particular piano for such and such a price elsewhere in town. At least make sure they give a free initial tuning and free delivery if the price is fixed.
Digital Pianos
The next best thing to a piano is a digital piano. Digital pianos are not pianos, but electronic musical instruments, often built to look like pianos, that electronically reproduce authentic sampled piano sounds. For example, Yamaha takes a sampling of its grand piano sound and uses it in its Yamaha Clavinova digital keyboard. Digitals have no strings or soundboard; instead they have electronics and speakers. Companies often advertise touch response with "graded hammer effects," which uses a weighted mechanism where keys feel gradually heavier top to bottom to provide a natural feel, similar but not identical to a piano. This touch response allows very little control over the tone produced. Even my beginning students quickly recognize the difference in sound and touch and trade their digital in for a real piano! Digital pianos also range in the number of keys included. Many will have less than 88 keys, thus preventing the student from playing certain pieces. Digital pianos are also limited by processing power; they can only produce a limited number of simultaneous notes. This is referred to as polyphony, often seen in the manual as 64-voice polyphony. One positive to owning a digital is its MIDI-interface system, thereby allowing you to insert a CD or Midi-disk, to record or play along with a background accompaniment. Another positive feature is that digitals do not have to be tuned. The final important feature is that they are portable, lighter, do not take up as much space, and can be cheaper. Again, keep in mind that upright pianos that are only a few years old are about the same price as new digitals and will provide you or your child years of musical enjoyment. The most popular brand of digital piano for students is the Yamaha Clavinova. For more information view: http://www.yamahaclavinova.com/clavinova_2003/top.htm.
Other quality brands include Roland and Technics.
Electric Keyboards
As a professional pianist I never advise students to get an electric keyboard. They have no hammer effect, and therefore no control over the type of sound produced. No matter what the performer does to the key, the same sound will be produced over and over again. Like a digital, electric keyboards have sampled sounds as well as a panel of other synthesized sounds. For example, you could push a particular button, press down the keys, and the sound produced would sound like a flute instead of a piano sound. Similar to a digital, they also do not need to be tuned. Unlike a digital they do not have weighted keys and thus are more computer-based. Yamaha, Roland, Technics, and Casio are major producers of electric keyboards.
**For more detailed information on buying and owning a new or used piano I recommend purchasing or finding at your local library: The Piano Book by Larry Fine. It is a masterful resource encompassing how the piano works, buying a new piano or used piano, piano moving and storage, and offers a beginner's guide to piano servicing.
How to Buy a Good Used Piano, written by Willard M. Leverett, is also a good text to have handy when investigating used pianos advertised in the newspaper, at someone's home, or at your local music store.