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Reason #152 to Get an Acoustic Piano

Sometimes I hate having a digital piano. I miss the simplicity of an acoustic: if something sounds bad, it’s either because the piano is out of tune or I am. With a digital piano, there’s a whole host of settings that could be causing the problem.

Balance Weirdness in "You Are My Sunshine"

I made my "You Are My Sunshine" run-through video earlier this week. In my head, the balance of bass and treble sounded fine. At the piano, it felt fine. But in the video, the bass sounded booming and muddy, while the melody got lost in the reverberation. Despite my efforts to bring out the right hand and keep the stride bass light, the low notes seemed to swallow everything.

I was so frustrated. And then Rebecca and others commented on the same problem when I shared the video on the Piano With Rebecca B platform. So I knew it wasn’t just me.

Discovering the Problem

Yesterday morning I started digging into the sound more seriously. And suddenly I remembered something I had completely forgotten. When I first bought Tall Nick (my Roland LX-6), I boosted the bass and lowered the treble because of my hearing aids. At the time it helped the piano sound more balanced to me.

Then I saved the settings…

…and apparently erased the entire episode from my memory. 🤦‍♀️

So for months I have been carefully trying to play a light stride bass while the piano itself was happily boosting the bass behind the scenes. I felt like such an idiot.

Comparing the Changes

While I was fixing those settings yesterday, I also experimented with a couple of other things. I changed the piano model from Concert → Upright and the ambience from Concert Hall → Studio. Both of those tightened the sound quite a bit.

To see what difference it made, I recorded three quick clips of the opening:

  • the original recording
  • the new settings with the phone on the left
  • the new settings with the phone on the right

Same playing. Same volume. Just different piano settings and phone placement.

The change was immediately obvious. The melody comes through much more clearly, and the bass no longer feels like it’s trying to dominate the entire performance.

Digital < Acoustic

It was also a good reminder that digital and acoustic pianos are not the same. The digital piano looks and feels like a real piano, but it’s really a small computer cosplaying as a piano. IAnd if you change a setting once and forget about it, that setting may still be shaping your sound months later.

In my case, my past self helpfully boosted the bass and then wandered off, leaving my present self to wonder why my staccato bass sounded so enormous and my delightful melody sounded so thin.

Technology is helpful, sure, but right now I would very much like a piano that does not have settings, menus, ambience simulations, or a memory.

I would like eighty-eight wooden keys, strings, hammers, and gravity, please.

Unfortunately, those cost money. Lots of money. And I don't trust those freebie spinets people are trying to give away on Marketplace.

So for now I will keep Tall Nick.

But I'm still going to whine about it.

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