Experience on buying piano for kids

Source: Singapore Piano Shop & Music Book Online Shop   Published: 6/14/2019 7:54:10 PM   Clicked: 1032

Most parent's confusion about buying pianos for their kids as below:

Since I have very limited knowledge about piano and I am not sure how my kids will do in the future, our piano will probably just be a piece of furniture for 3 years. Maybe occasionally my wife can play for fun. I have not decided on a budget yet. I'd like to go with acoustic preferably a high quality one. I will maintain them regularly in the future. My initial thought is probably around 4k but it can be increased/decreased depend on what product I go with. However it should probably be no more than 6k for their first piano.
My objective is to get a piano with the best value for money in term of performance and reliability(quality) . This opinion is subjective and everyone has their own opinions. Especially for piano, performance is probably sound quality, key feel, etc.

The suggestion to these parent's will be:

Yamaha U1 / U3 or KAWAI BS series are excellent pianos for music students. A very good, one of the best baby grands is the G1 / GP1 though more expensive than the other Yamaha pianos. If you can up your budget a bit perhaps a good German piano like Sauter or Schimmel would be good with great tone and action. Kawai BS series have a darker tone than the Yamaha pianos. The tone of the Yamaha G1 / GP1 is different to the U1 or U3 which are brighter. This one is also more on the mellow side. It has German piano wire and hammers that are used in one of the best Yamaha grand pianos.

If you spent $100,000+ on a Steinway grand and left it sit barely played for 3 ... or many more ... years, it would be a waste in reality. If they ended up being rising stars in 15 years, then spend up big. Mid-upper KAWAI or YAMAHA (or equivalents in other brands) are great pianos, robust, good sound.

We had a YAMAHA U1 when my children were born. I played it regularly - they saw and heard it being played. Once they were toddlers, the piano was open 24 hours a day and, because they heard the piano played every evening, and were at the piano for singing most days, they were confident to go to the piano, reach up and tinkle on the keys, which they did often. If they resorted to banging it, we'd just suggest "tinkly" and they'd go back to tinkling gently. They also had mostly classical music with a little other children's music, Church music and Jazz playing constantly to expose them to hearing music.

They knew it was a fun thing, and when they went to lessons at about 4-5yrs old, the lessons were just an extension of their previous experience. In fact, I remember one of my children, the teacher started up by demonstrating that the "high" notes are at this end, and the "low" notes are down there - she looked at me as if to say "doesn't everyone know that?".

They each now have a great ear for music, one has a B.Music, another did Conservatory studies. Between them, they learned 14 instruments (though they don't own them all now).

So - when you get your new piano, the most important thing is to expose them to music - play the piano as much as you can so they hear and are excited by it.