Purchasing a keyboard

I’m often asked for advice in pur­chas­ing key­boards for stu­dent use.  There are bazil­lions of options out there, but in gen­er­al I rec­om­mend even the youngest begin­ners start with a key­board that includes the fol­low­ing fea­tures:

  • 88 keys, the same num­ber of keys as a reg­u­lar acoustic piano
  • real­is­tic piano action (this may be described as “weight­ed keys,” “ham­mer action,” or any num­ber of oth­er phrases—see this arti­cle for a dizzy­ing array of options; for the first sev­er­al years of piano study, any of these options will be fine)
  • “on-board” speak­ers, so the key­board can make its own sound with­out being con­nect­ed to exter­nal speak­ers, and a head­phone jack for prac­tic­ing with pri­va­cy.  Note that if some­thing is sold as a “MIDI con­troller,” it prob­a­bly does not have on-board speak­ers.
  • MIDI con­nec­tiv­i­ty (either via USB or via ded­i­cat­ed MIDI in/out ports—more on those options here) can be very use­ful for stu­dents who want to take advan­tage of com­put­er soft­ware that assists with learn­ing, cre­at­ing, and col­lab­o­rat­ing on music.  In gen­er­al I find more stu­dents wish they had MIDI capa­bil­i­ty than regret spend­ing the extra mon­ey on a key­board that sup­ports it.

Then you’ll also need the fol­low­ing accessories—if they’re not already includ­ed with your key­board you’ll want to pur­chase them sep­a­rate­ly:

  • sus­tain ped­al (Note that the lit­tle square ped­als some key­boards ship with can creep away under­foot and be dif­fi­cult to work with.  If that’s what your key­board includes, you may find it eas­i­er to work with some­thing like a Yama­ha FC3A—though for some rea­son ped­als are ridicu­lous­ly brand-sen­si­tive, so talk to your sales­per­son to be sure you buy a ped­al that will actu­al­ly work with your key­board!)
  • music rack or sep­a­rate music stand (the Man­has­set Sym­pho­ny Stand is the indus­try stan­dard)
  • key­board stand (my favorite all-pur­pose trav­el­ing stand is the On-Stage Double‑X)
  • bench (there are lots of options, but the On-Stage KB8904B is a nice all-pur­pose bench)
  • head­phones for prac­tic­ing with more pri­va­cy (Sony MDR-7502‘s are one nice option)

Some key­boards will include all of those items in the same pack­age, but gen­er­al­ly you’ll need to check prod­uct list­ings care­ful­ly to be sure you’re not miss­ing any­thing.  My best advice is to take the list above to a rep­utable ven­dor (Sweet­wa­ter is my pre­ferred online source) and ask a sales­per­son about new releas­es and spe­cials they may have avail­able to you.  (As I’m writ­ing this, Sweet­wa­ter has a great price on a Yama­ha P‑225, for instance, and if you give Stu­art Niv­en a call at 800–222-4700 ext. 1337 and tell him I sent you, he’ll put togeth­er a nice bun­dle that includes every­thing you need!)