Thinking of Buying a Piano as a Holiday Present?

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:14:14 +0100

If the recipient has never tried piano lessons and shown a commitment to practice, don't do it. If you want them to try their hand at it, go for a $100 keyboard instead. From my experience, 3 out of 4 kids and 4 out of 5 adults try piano for a couple of weeks and soon forget about it....Why?

Let's first look at kids. Kids get excited about piano like they do about any toy or puppy. They promise you the world ("I will practice every day!") if you get it for them. But we know that young ones easily move on to the next fun thing, especially once they realize that playing piano does not just happen, but rather they have to labor over those ivories to get any recognizable sound out of them.

Of course, sometimes you run across the occasional musical genius or just a kid that is obsessed with sitting at the piano 24-7. Parents, don't hold your breath. Most likely, if your kids take lessons, piano will be YOUR responsibility. That means, YOU will have to keep them on a regular schedule until they get so used to it that they don't complain (that much) and do it on their own. If my parents hadn't been firm every day that I whined, I would never have become a piano teacher and enjoyed music so much. HONESTLY, there is nothing to enjoy while you're LEARNING piano because it is a lot of work, just like passing school. But once you HAVE LEARNED some songs, you do have fun playing them. The problem is that by definition, practice is working on those songs you have not mastered over and over again. That's NOT fun.

So, the point of all this is to warn you not to buy an expensive piano and cross your fingers that your 7 year old will sit there on their own. If you don't have the time or energy to argue over one more thing with your child, go for an inexpensive keyboard. If your child then shows an interest over an extended period of time, you can reward them with the real thing.

Now let's talk about adults and piano lessons. This is pretty simple really....either you have the time to practice or you don't. Adults already have the self-discipline to practice because they have been responsible for reaching goals for quite a while now. However, the down-side of being an adult is the you have many more important responsibilities than learning something fun for yourself (i.e. feeding your family, working, taking kids to school, cleaning, etc.). Most adults just DON'T HAVE TIME for regular practice. And without regular practice, it's very hard to extract any enjoyment out of a piano. So if you're considering buying a piano for yourself, make sure you have 20 minutes a day at the same time to practice and try this routine on a keyboard first. If you can do 2 weeks straight of daily practice, go ahead and splurge on that beautiful Yamaha.

Now, if you are going to go ahead with buying a piano, I recommend two places. You can get a better deal on Craigslist because most people don't know the value of their piano. However, this will require research on your part and really listening to the sound of the piano and making sure everything works. You may need to get an estimate from a piano technician on whether a particular piano is worth buying or priced fairly. However, if you don't want to go through that trouble, I would recommend Keyboard Concepts on Santa Monica Blvd or on Van Nuys Blvd/Burbank Blvd. They have a great selection of pianos and the best thing is that you can trade in your piano for the same price you bought it if you want to upgrade to a better piano over time.

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Thinking of Buying a Piano as a Holiday Present?