Best gifts for piano players

The best gift for most beginner piano players is a real sustain pedal, because most beginner keyboards ship with a small plastic footswitch that slides across the floor and often cannot read anything between fully up and fully down. It costs about twenty-five dollars, fits any keyboard with a quarter-inch pedal jack, and is the single cheapest thing that makes a digital instrument behave more like a piano. After that: headphones, a method book, and a music stand that actually holds a book open.

Every pick states its Starter Path band, and we have not played any of them — the method is on how we pick. Specifications come from the makers' published pages, cited at the bottom.

Why the pedal is the answer

This is the one genuinely non-obvious thing on the page, so it gets the space.

On an acoustic piano the right-hand pedal lifts the dampers off the strings, and the player controls how far. Partial pedalling — half-damper — is ordinary technique, not an advanced trick, and it is how pianists keep a line connected without it turning to mud.

Beginner keyboards generally ship with a small plastic box with a hinged top and a cable. It has two states. It also weighs almost nothing, which means that on a hard floor it migrates away from the player's foot over the course of a practice session. Players who do not know any better conclude that pedalling is awkward and stop using it.

A piano-style pedal fixes the physical problem for everybody: it is heavy, it has a rubber base, and it stays where it is put. Whether it also fixes the half-damper problem depends on the instrument — the keyboard has to support continuous pedal input, and plenty of entry models do not. Our sustain pedal roundup sorts out which pedals are switches and which are continuous, and which keyboards can tell the difference.

Either way it is a gift that improves something the player uses in every single piece they play, which very few accessories can claim.

The criteria

Does it fit any keyboard? A quarter-inch pedal jack and a three-and-a-half-millimeter headphone socket are close to universal on digital keyboards, which is why the pedal and the headphones are the top two picks. Stands and benches depend on dimensions you would have to measure.

Does it create practice time? The headphones pick exists entirely because of this. A keyboard that can only be played when the house is empty gets played far less than one that can be played silently.

Is it level-appropriate? The constraint that governs sheet music and method books. Giving a beginner intermediate repertoire is a discouraging gift even though it looks generous.

The picks

The M-Audio SP-2#ad is the default sustain pedal: piano-style housing, rubber base, quarter-inch cable, universal polarity handling so it works the right way round on different brands. Buy this if their keyboard came with a plastic footswitch, which is most keyboards under roughly seven hundred dollars. Skip it if their instrument shipped with a proper weighted pedal — the better digital pianos do.

The Audio-Technica ATH-M20x#ad is the headphone pick: closed-back, wired, and the cheapest model in a studio range rather than the top of a consumer one. Closed-back matters because an open-back design leaks sound into the room and defeats the purpose. Buy these if they share walls, a house, or a bedtime with anybody. Skip them if they already own studio headphones — one pair is enough. Our headphones for digital piano roundup covers the cable-length and impedance details.

Adult Piano Adventures All-in-One Course Book 1#ad is the book pick for a self-teaching adult, because it is one volume instead of the separate lesson, theory and repertoire books most methods split into. Buy this if they are an adult working without a teacher. Skip it if they have a teacher, who will already have chosen a method and will not want to switch.

The On-Stage SM7211B#ad is the unglamorous one. A keyboard's built-in music rest is a thin plastic lip designed for a single sheet; it will not hold a spiral-bound method book open at the page. A real folding stand will, and it folds away. Buy this if they work from printed music. Skip it if they read everything off a tablet, in which case a tablet mount is the gift and not this.

What we did not list, and why

A bench. The right bench is a genuinely good gift and the wrong height is worse than the dining chair they are currently using, because a bad seat height produces wrist and shoulder problems rather than just discomfort. Height has to be matched to the keyboard, and keyboard stand heights vary by several inches.

A keyboard stand. Same issue in a different dimension — width and weight rating. If you know the instrument, it is a strong gift; if you are guessing, it is an awkward return.

A metronome. Not a bad gift and increasingly redundant: every keyboard made in the last fifteen years has one built in, and every phone has a free one. A standalone metronome earns its place for a string or band player who has no instrument to borrow one from, which is why it appears on our stocking stuffers page and not here.

A keyboard. The big one, and the same argument as every instrument on this site: key action and key count are personal and consequential, and somebody given a 61-key unweighted board when they wanted to learn piano will hit the limit of it within a year. Our pages on 61 against 88 keys and weighted against unweighted are the two decisions that have to be theirs.

A dust cover. Cheap, sensible, and the least exciting object it is possible to unwrap.

If they do not have a keyboard yet

None of this applies, and buying accessories for an instrument that does not exist is a confusing gift. For somebody who has said they want to learn, the two things that work are a method book — cheap, and it signals you listened — and a contribution toward an instrument they choose themselves after reading our beginner digital piano roundup.

And if the recipient is a child rather than an adult, the decision is a different one again, because key count and touch sensitivity matter more than anything on this page. Keyboards for kids covers it.