Piano tuning
If you already have a piano and it hasn’t been tuned
for a year or two, it would be a good idea to get it tuned and checked over before
starting lessons. Tuning will cost around $130.
Here are
the contact details for two Nelson based tuners, who also travel to Motueka:
Neville
Claughton (Mr Music)
03-547-2550
Mike
Beever
03-548-3292
http://mebpianos.com/
03-548-3292
http://mebpianos.com/
Buying a piano
I have a strong preference for acoustic pianos over
digital ones. Two main reasons for this are expressiveness and value.
It is hard to make a digital piano as expressive and
responsive as an acoustic. The music on the Suzuki CDs is played on an acoustic
piano so in order to be able to emulate the sound and expression as closely as
possible it is best to have an acoustic piano.
Acoustic and digital pianos are often of a similar
price for a similar quality, however acoustic pianos will hold their value far
better. In ten years time a digital piano will have lost most of its value and
if it breaks it can be difficult to fix. Once broken it is essentially
worthless. An acoustic piano will be much the same in ten years time as it is
today and its value is likely to hold well.
Second hand pianos are fine. It is usually not worth
looking at anything under $500, probably you will need to pay at least $1,000
and preferably $2,000-$5,000.
The best place to buy a second hand piano is through
Mr Music (Neville Claughton whose details are listed under piano tuners above).
He has a showroom of renovated second hand pianos in Nelson.
Some new acoustic pianos are available at Music Planet
(Richmond), the Rock Shop and Beggs (both in Nelson).
Second hand pianos are also available on TradeMe and
you can usually pay a piano tuner to go and check it out for you.
Although I have a strong preference for acoustic pianos,
I will teach students who have electric pianos at home as long as the electric
piano:
o
has full size keys
o
has weighted keys (made artificially stiff)
o
is touch sensitive (goes loud and soft depending on
pressure)
o
preferably has 7 octaves (though you can get away with
5 octaves initially)
An electric piano which feels reasonably similar to an
acoustic piano will cost close to $1000.
