Digital Pianos Vs. Keyboards – What are the Differences?

Explore how each instrument can enhance your playing experience and inspire your creativity in unique ways.

Time to read: 15 minutes

The Differences are Key

In recent years, there’s been an explosion in the number of high quality, digital instruments offering a full key bed of piano keys. Some are called digital pianos and others keyboards. This isn’t just marketing, there are indeed distinct qualities that differentiate the two. It is worth noting that these terms are not ironclad, but for the most part, there are certain things you are mainly looking for with these instruments.

So what are the main differences? The short answer is that a digital piano aims to recreate the experience of a grand piano digitally, while a keyboard‘s focus is to serve a large variety of production or live related uses. We’ll dig into this a little more below.

Listen to Podcast: Digital Pianos Vs. Keyboards – What Are The Differences?

Neil and Michael of Cosmo Music discuss what the differences are between digital pianos and keyboards, as well as what situations they apply to for different types of musicians.

👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6aMAHcGBxk

Home or Studio?

With most digital pianos, there’s an emphasis on how it fits in a home environment. Many piano players, be they students, performers, hobbyists, or recording professionals, desire to have the piano in a living room environment. This comes with its own set of needs. For example, a good built-in speaker system is a key feature, allowing a digital piano to function perfectly without needing a computer or external speakers. Additionally, the interface should be easy to navigate without the need for a computer. Digital pianos, like keyboards, are often equipped with many “under the hood” features, and a great digital piano will make these accessible without needing a “rig”.

Keyboards, on the other hand, are generally designed to fit production or live applications. The ability to seamlessly interface with a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), load in sounds, and make it easy to record are key features. Many keyboards come with drum pads, knobs, filters, and other interactive elements that make it easy to record, tweak, and mix non-piano sounds. Other keyboards will focus on the live aspect, making it easy to set up and trigger sounds on stage. Many keyboards offer smaller key beds or lighter weights with portability in mind.

Accuracy or Creativity?

The best digital pianos and keyboards offer the best of both worlds, but generally, digital pianos tend to focus on accurately emulating the experience of playing a grand or upright piano. A lot of detail is placed on the quality of the keys, which includes carefully considering weight. Many digital pianos are able to emulate the subtle tactile feel of the hammer action inside a grand piano, going so far as to trigger the “imperfect” sounds that come out of the mechanical functions of classic pianos. The technology has advanced so far that it the differences between sitting down and playing a digital piano versus a grand can almost be hard to notice. Not only do you get a similar overall experience, but you get the added benefit of saving space and money. As well, most digital pianos offer modeling of a variety of different pianos, be it grand pianos, upright, or organs.

The focus of keyboards, on the other hand, is to provide access to a wide variety of creative sounds in a production environment. Accurate piano sounds may or may not be built in, but these sounds can be triggered via software, and customized. Many keyboards will interface or come bundled with software to introduce players to a huge variety of sounds, be it acoustic or electronic. Onboard controls may make it easy to tweak certain sounds on-the-fly. In terms of the hardware, keyboards can offer both weighted and non-weighted models. Some players may want to emulate the feel of a grand piano key bed, while others want light keys for portability or easy sample triggering.

What’s Your Look?

We’ll say it – it’s not vain to care about looks when it comes to digital pianos and keyboards. For digital pianos, as mentioned, fitting in a living room or main area of a home is the focus, and that means that many of these pianos emulate the stylings of high end grand pianos. Be it gloss black, matte black, white, or natural wood treatment, digital pianos mostly aim for a handsome, clean, presentable look.

Keyboards, on the other hand, want to fit the vibe of the studio or the stage. Minimalism can be desired or a bold, stand out look. An abundance of knobs, pads, and sliders on a keyboard are not considered aesthetic aberrations, but fit the studio look while being functional. Some keyboards take unconventional or experimental design cues, as it’s all fair game in the keyboard world.

A Hybrid Approach

So far, we’ve highlighted the lines between digital pianos and keyboards, but the reality is that these are not distinct lines. In fact, many digital pianos are incredible studio workhorses and many keyboards offer the same functionalities as digital pianos. Many manufacturers are even distinctly going for a “hybrid” approach, as the lines between recording artist, hobbyist, producer, and student are blurring. After all, music is creative and in the music industry, we’re looking to break boundaries, not create them. So explore the world of digital pianos and keyboards and find out what’s best for you, despite the label.

Podcast Transcript

[Michael]: I’m Michael.

[Neil] And I’m Neil.

[Michael] And today we’re talking about the difference between digital pianos and keyboards. Okay, so for my first question for you today, Neil, is when I think about keyboards and pianos, are they not the same thing?

[Neil] Yeah, so that’s actually a very interesting question. A lot of people, when they’re in the market for a piano or keyboard terms are kinda interchangeable, but in actuality, there is kind of a solid difference between the two, and you kinda wanna know what you’re looking for, let me dive right into it. Okay, so the difference between a digital piano and a keyboard, let’s say to start off, the first one would be the home versus the studio environment, so digital pianos are… At the core, it’s meant to model a piano, so basically what this is, a digital piano is, is it’s something that’s going to emulate the feel of a piano that you might want in your home, so it’s not gonna be equipped with a ton of bells and whistles and kind of stuff, but it’s meant to look like it belongs in the living room, except it’s not… It doesn’t have the real hammers, it doesn’t have all the tactile physical components in a piano, or if you don’t know a piano is… How the key mechanism works is that you push down on a piano and a hammer strikes a string, and that’s how the piano sound is made, basically a digital piano gives you that exact same sound, but it’s doing it digitally when you have the sound replicated digital.

[Neil]: There’s two ways you could do it, you could either slim down the keyboard and turn it into something else, or you can try to emulate the exact idea of a piano, so it’s meant to fit in the home, often you’ll have people who wanna buy it and it… Often not look like… You wouldn’t even know that it’s… Especially with, if somebody wants an upright piano, you wouldn’t know that it’s a digital piano, you would almost think it’s a regular upright piano with a grand piano, it’s a little different because they don’t have a lot of digital… Grandiose, massive size of a grand piano, so I.

[Michael]: Kind imagined you would even make a digital grand piano a… I think it was just the thought of it just kind of… I don’t know a… Ain’t even conceptualize.

[Neil]: I know, it’s like you would have to basically fake the entire inside of the grand piano, put nothing in there, it’s just an empty… So no, I would say these digital pianos are mostly on to emulate upright pianos, or even… You could tell it’s a digital piano, but it’s sleek, it’s gonna look clean and the focus… And here’s the next thing, which is pretty critical for a digital piano is that the focus is on keys and playability. A digital piano, you’re gonna have… A big thing is that Hammer action, so fully weighted, some digital pianos are simulated, but a lot of them, if you wanna buy a digital piano, you want… A lot of people are looking for a fully weighted to keep on, that means you’re gonna get the feel and style of a piano. Now for the keyboard, we’re talking about home versus studio, a lot of keyboards are designed for a studio environment, so it’s kind of meant to sit on a desk, you might see in a lot of keyboards, the sleekness of style isn’t the focus. So the focus would be on the feature sets, so a lot of keyboards, they’re gonna offer you drum pads for integration with the digital audio workstation.

[Neil]: Some might have a sequence are built right into it. A lot of keyboards offer faders so that you can control the mixes within your software, you might have play record a lot of stuff really designed to interface with a computer because you’re in a studio environment, it’s sitting on the desk, and that’s sort of a key difference home versus studio. And in terms of you outlooks, you’re gonna have… A lot of keyboards can have a pretty bold kind of style, or sometimes you might not care too much about the style or there are sleek keyboards, but it’s focused on making sure that there’s features in their seamlessly integrated into the look, and the look might be more… Among the look might be more of a producer. Kind of…

[Michael]: So when it comes to digital keyboards and piano, is it really kinda like you either choose one or you get the other, is there a reasoning behind that like…

[Neil]: Oh, okay, so that’s actually a really good question. So they spend some time defining the differences, but at the end of the day, what a lot of manufacturers have been doing is having a hybrid approach, so basically you’re gonna… They’re in the market, there’s a ton of options and you could almost look at… You could almost look at exactly what you want, so let’s say you’re not a pure producer kind of person, you wanna… You want something that has the vibe of a piano, but you may want some extra, you might wanna fade or theaters, a few things to control the day, you could probably get that, and if you want, if you’re mainly a piano player, you want it in the home, you want it in the living room, and you don’t care about the robs, you don’t care about that. But maybe you want a little bit of functionality. Maybe you wanna switch to… It’s not psomeurely about having a piano sound, you want some synthesizes in their electric pen and you wanna be able to switch it, maybe have a screen so that you know what you’re switching to, there are options available in the market for that too, so it’s digital piano that’s with more of a functionality as an extra versus functionality with more of a piano focus, you can find a lot of different things.

[Michael]: If keyboards have like a little bit more of that, sometimes more bells and whistles and more options with the dials and everything that you can do with it. One, might it be a better alternative to actually have a digital piano, ’cause right now it kinda sounds like a keyboard is kind of the way to go because you have access to that extra…

[Neil]: Yeah, so that’s actually a very good question. So basically, functionality is… There’s a lot of people who… Functionality isn’t that important necessarily, if you have a digital piano that looks good in the room, a lot of people wanna just practice, a lot of people don’t actually produce or record, or a lot of people are just interested in just a solid piano sound, and here’s the thing about these digital pianos is that some of the really good ones, there are so many subtleties to the piano player that are really get into replicating the feel of a piano in a very, very authentic way. So this is not about… It’s not about, Okay, I want something digital and it’s going to get the best possible… Closest to a piano. Now, these things are basically like exactly the field style, look, everything of an actual piano, except without the physical parts, the physical internals, and so that’s really appealing to a lot of piano players, professionals, hobbyists, people who might… And even if you have a passing interest in producing, there’s the recording capability, some of these pianos to just focus on a more simplistic kind of thing or a USB connection, you can record straight into a dog and then leave the mixing to the software to the Leave it to something else outside of the digital piano but make sure you get the best possible key bed, what wood quality, build quality as possible, and I think that… That’s the difference there.

[Michael]: Okay, do you have any suggestions for each type of digital piano and keyboard?

[Neil]: Absolutely. So there’s so many out there, but I can sort of give a little bit of an overview of some of the things, so for example, you can have a digital home pianos that are in a very reasonable price point. Casio, Roland, Yamaha offer a bunch of options. We’ve got the Casio PX-870 Privia. It looks like a piano, it’s got a slim kind of thing, so it feels like the quality of an upright piano, but it’s slimmer and it’s not really a slimmer, but you’ve got that wood and it feels kind of like high-end, and it’s for a very reasonable price point. You have other pianos that are like for example, the Roland FP30X, a lot of focus on the modeling, they have this thing called Supernatural modeling, really focuses on the authenticity of the keyboard while offering some bells and whistles and a kind of a minimalist controls on the actual keyboard, you’ve got… There’s ones that are under 1000, Yamaha P-125, you get weighted action, 88 keys, and there’s drum patterns and even some EQ built into the built into the keyboard, once again, minimalist controls, but you’ve got a lot of stuff there, right there for under 1000, really high quality stuff in terms of synthesizers and keyboards, so there is a whole world out there.

[Neil]: You can either get synthesizes that focus on replicating an analog since the Behringer Deepmind 12, you have a lot of keyboards have… You have 49 key options, 61 key options, or you can go super portable, 25 key options. So for example, Arturia, it’s a really popular one, the focus on a portable portability and very, very focused on integrating with the portable options for even laptops and Casio CT-500, another portable keyboard that has a really good price point is gonna offer you a lot of sounds obviously not, this is a keyboard, so you’re not getting the weighted, all that kind of stuff, but it’s meant to be something that is very much for producing… Yeah, and some other ones, less be many, super portable, very, very affordable, under 100 that’s gonna give you… That’s gonna give you some keys that on these are meant to get your production going kind of thing, wherever you need it. Now, there are some… There are also some things called workstation keyboards, which are… This is kind of what I was talking about with the hybrid where it’s gonna give you every single thing possible. So an example, the Roland Fantom, there’s an 88 key, it’s a synthesizer, it’s got fully weighted keys, but it’s got a ton, a ton of features, drum pads, faders, EQ, gonna be able to control every single thing right from the keyboard, full production, the features are endless on this keyboard, but it’s got those fully weighted keys and it can be a digital piano as well, so those are a few…

[Neil]: These are just a few of the many, many options, and you can… Great news, your spoiler alert. You’re listening to a podcast on music or you can find them right on our site Cosmos a guns we’ve got yeah.

[Michael]: Well I think you gave us a lot to think about for both digital pianos and keyboards so if you did like this podcast please leave a comment down in the YouTube section message us on Twitter Instagram we always reply if you have any questions about digital pianos specifically and keyboards don’t hesitate to ask we will answer your questions thank you for listening.

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