Whether you are discovering music for yourself or looking for an affordable and inspiring keyboard for a student, there’s a beginner-friendly digital piano that you will want to consider: the Donner DEP-20. With its 88 full-size weighted keys with adjustable velocity curves and onboard stereo speakers, the Donner DEP-20 Digital Piano delivers classic keyboard voices you would expect, along with over 200 other popular sounds, including percussion, bass, brass, and strings–and that’s just a few of its inspiring features that make for a great playing experience.
To better understand what the Donner DEP-20 Digital Piano offers, let’s dig into some this keyboard’s most important features:
For students and accomplished players alike, the most important feature past how easy it is to use will most likely be the DEP-20’s fully weighted 88-key keyboard. The full-sized, hammer action keys make this portable keyboard feel and play like a real acoustic piano, but unlike a traditional acoustic piano, this keyboard allows players to electronically adjust the touch response using light, standard, or heavy velocity curves. In this way, players can easily pick a touch that best fits their own playing and practice style. Plus, to provide a real acoustic piano experience, the action of the DEP-20’s keyboard is ‘graded’, meaning that keys in the lower registers feel heavier and that upper, higher registers feel lighter–emulating the action of a real acoustic piano.
Past the feel of the keyboard action, the most popular complaint about electronic keyboards is that the electronic sustain pedal–usually just a light electronic switch located on the floor–doesn’t feel like the sustain pedal on a real piano. To address the issue, Donner smartly delivers a long, zinc-alloy (metal) sustain pedal that depresses and operates sustain much like its acoustic piano counterpart. This is something that many piano students pay extra to have, but it’s included with the DEP-20.
For realistic piano sounds with a sustain pedal and creating rich arrangements with the DEP-20’s onboard sounds, another important feature is the instrument’s 128-note polyphony. Lesser keyboards will allow for fewer notes to be played at the same time and, with less polyphony, eventually notes ‘drop off’ and don’t sound. With 128-note polyphony, you can use the sustain pedal to let your music ring out, as well as create freely using the DEP-20’s collection of 238 tones, like string instruments, drum, bass, etc. With 128-note polyphony, you can create lush arrangements and practically never run out of parts.
To make it easy to enjoy all the wonderful sounds on the DEP-20, Donner has built in stereo amplification employing two full-range 25-watt amplifiers. The robust stereo sound not only makes pianos sound more real, but the realistic sound makes practising more enjoyable and inspiring. You can take further advantage of the speakers using the USB port on the back panel to play MP3 selections through the keyboard and play along. Or, use the recording mode with the keyboard’s audio inputs and outputs to make your own musical arrangements. For more advanced players, a second USB port allows the DEP-20 to act as a keyboard controller, making it ideal for use with computers, tablets, and smart phones with DAW (digital audio workstation) software, like Apple’s powerful GarageBand app.
The DEP-20 is great for beginning players, but it also has features that teachers will particularly appreciate. Most important for teachers is the keyboard’s split mode that allows both student and teacher to play at the same time–no more taking turns at the piano bench! With a push of a button, the keyboard divides in half to allow teacher and student to sit side-by-side for more effective teaching or playing duets. Also, a simple feature everyone can appreciate is the location of two headphone jacks on the front of the keyboard. Great for practising in an apartment or late at night, plugging a headphone in automatically disconnects the speakers for silent practice sessions. Teachers and students can even work in a crowded classroom with headphones.
Okay, along with all the serious features of the DEP-20, the most fun feature is the built-in rhythm and accompaniment section. These include 200 exciting rhythms that you can practise or simply play along with. Pick one you like and adjust it with tempos from 20 to 280 beats per minute. This feature alone can provide hours of fun for players of all ages, playing along with rhythms while their musical abilities improve.
The DEP-20 offers a long list of features, many of which are found only on professional keyboards. There are some fun, creative features, too, that make this keyboard stand out from the crowd. But, let’s not overlook what is perhaps the most remarkable feature of this keyboard: its value. Priced well below its closest competitors, it would be very hard to find a better instrument for the money, especially for beginners. With its thoughtful combination of practical and creative features, Donner’s DEP-20 Digital Piano lowers the barriers to making music and promises to have students practising longer and advanced players creating more music of their own.
To learn more about Donner’s DEP-20 head over to Amazon.
