Starting Lessons This Term: What to Buy First

The first week of September is the busiest week of our year for one particular phone call. Lessons have started again, a teacher has said something encouraging about a child, and a parent is standing in the kitchen wondering what on earth they are supposed to buy. Here is the advice we give, in the order it usually matters.

The touch matters more than anything else

If you take one thing from this, take this. A beginner is not learning tunes so much as learning control: how hard to press, how to hold a note, how to make one finger sound different from the next. That is taught by the instrument, and only a proper weighted action can teach it. A piano with a vague or light action will hold a learner back for years without anyone quite realising why, and it is one of the most common reasons a child quietly stops practising. Our upright pianos exist for exactly this reason, and we have written up the instruments we recommend most often in Best acoustic pianos for beginners.

What a first piano actually costs

Less than most parents expect, because pianos last. A good used upright that has been checked, regulated and tuned will carry a child from first lessons to grade eight and still be worth real money at the end of it. At the time of writing we have a 1931 Challen in mahogany satin at £1,795 and a compact Kemble 106cm at £1,895, both of them considerably more piano than anything new at the same price. Most of our showroom is used pianos by design. If you want the price bands set out honestly, from starter uprights upwards, our guide on how much to spend on a piano does that.

The keyboard question

Almost every family starts here, so it is worth being clear. A 61 note keyboard with unweighted keys cannot teach touch, and it runs out of notes within the first couple of years, which usually means the money gets spent twice. A proper digital piano is a different matter entirely: 88 weighted keys, headphones for late practice, and no tuning to think about. That is a legitimate first instrument, and our digital pianos cover it. We have set out what the names actually mean in Keyboard, electric or digital piano?

If the house is small, or the practice is late

The usual worry is noise, and there is a better answer than reaching for a digital by default. A silent piano is a real acoustic instrument with a lever that stops the hammers just short of the strings, so the player keeps a genuine action and the rest of the household gets quiet. For flats, terraced houses and anyone practising after bedtime it solves the problem without the compromise. There are usually used silent pianos in stock as well, which brings the price down considerably.

Find the teacher before the piano, if you can

A teacher will often tell you what a particular child needs better than any article can, and they will know what the local exam boards and school groups expect. We keep a free UK piano teachers directory for exactly that, organised by town, and a tuners directory for once the piano is home. Neither costs anything and neither is ours to sell.

Then come and play them

Ten minutes at a keyboard tells a parent more than a week of reading. Bring the child, bring the teacher if they will come, and try a few instruments side by side with nobody hovering. Our Faringdon showroom has over a hundred pianos and we are open Tuesday to Saturday, ten until five. Directions are on visit the showroom, or get in touch and tell us what the teacher said.