When people want to use their Disklavier for background music they are often asking the virtual pianist to play much, much quieter than a pianist would normally play. In the case of difficult music, this sometimes means asking the virtual pianist to play softer than most humans can play. This makes it challenging to reduce the volume of the piano to very low levels in the way that we are accustomed to doing with a stereo system.
The simple things are:
(1) Use the volume control on the piano to reduce the volume.
(2) Keep the lid closed.
(3) Put the piano on a thick carpet.
(4) If the piano is an upright and is positioned against a wall, keep in mind that the piano's vertical sound board is going to be throwing its sound directly at the wall, which is a hard reflective surface. Putting a baffle between the piano and the wall can reduce quite a bit of the sound.
(5) There are kits that can be installed in both upright and grand pianos that substantially reduce the volume of sound. I would consider such a kit as the last measure to undertake but would not hesitate to do so if the sound is still too loud.
I can still remember my experience practicing on my Yamaha P2F upright when I was a graduate student in music. I needed to practice long hours and lived in an apartment building. My piano had a muffle feature that dropped a felt between the hammers and the strings. That helped a lot, but I practiced so much that I actually wore holes in the felt. I also put a thick wool blanket between the piano and the wall behind it. That was very effective.
Regards,
PianoBench
On Jan 29, 2014, at 11:38 AM, James Fry <groups@jamesfry.com> wrote:
I'm pretty sure there are posts in the archives about this (though it might have been the dug mailing list). A piano is a loud percussion instrument, and is much louder than most people realise. I struggle to play my U1 upright at a low enough volume for background music where people can converse over it in my ~15x15 ft living room, and have similar issues with playback. That said, there are sound dampening kits for most pianos (uprights and grands) but they quite substantially change the tone of the instrument for the worse.I normally use the digital piano sound if I want the piano on in the background - it convinces most people.What piano do you have?CheersJamesOn 29 January 2014 16:22, <arthurbergman75@...> ;wrote:I have heard that completely closing the lid and placing a towel on the music board reduces the sound level. Has anyone tried this? Did it significantly reduce the volume level? I cannot test this on my piano as it is currently being fixed by Yamaha.