Roland F701

I took piano lessons from when I was 9 years old until I was 17. My husband was the same, so we’ve been thinking about getting our family a piano for a while.

We asked a piano teacher what is the deal with digital pianos. Were they as good as acoustic? Or do they have quality issues? She said they are basically indistinguishable from acoustic pianos in terms of sound and feel, and had some extra benefits (like being able to plug in headphones).

With that advice, we decided to purchase the Roland F701 digital piano. I was drawn to it mostly because it was the most compact piano I could find and the “Light Oak” finish matched with the vibe of our house.

We’ve had it for a few weeks now, and it is fantastic. It feels just like playing on a “real” piano and sounds great. I remember my mum having to fork out around $3000(AUD) 90s money for a second hand acoustic, and this brand new digital piano only cost us $1850. How good!

There are lots of apps that claim to teach you how to play the piano. I evaluated the trials for 3 different ones:

• Yousician
• Skoove
• Simply Piano

In terms of user experience, they were all pretty much the same. We ended up paying the subscription for Simply Piano because that was the only one that offered easily-switchable, multiple accounts.

As for playing with Simply Piano… the dopamine is real!!! I feel like I would have done a lot more practice as a child if I had an app awarding stars, playing sounds and animating sparkles every time I played the notes right. With that being said, it has been great for me getting back in to playing, but I don’t think I’d recommend it for teaching anyone piano from scratch. It can’t show you how to hold your hand in the right relaxed posture or how to sit like a piano teacher can, and it is super lean on teaching any musicality beyond how to play the right notes at the right time.

I’m having a lot of fun playing again. We’ll see if I keep practicing after the novelty wears off.