A BRIEF GUIDE ABOUT PIANO PEDALS

 When you study the piano, you will soon realize how important it is to learn to independently use your hands and fingers. It is an act of imitation, and it is pretty challenging at first. Then, it would help if you also were concerned about piano pedals.

Learning to use piano pedals requires a lot of concentration and coordination, and your great music teacher will show you how to master this extra challenge by practicing the techniques carefully during your online music lessons. As you begin to use piano pedals, some valuable details are given below. 

The Piano Pedals

There are three main pedals in an acoustic piano. When we go from left to right, the three pedals are:

• Una Corda Pedal, or Soft Pedal (left side pedal) 

• Sostenuto Pedal, also called the Bass Damper, Practice Mute, or Silent Pedal (the middle pedal) 

• Sustain Pedal, or the Damper Pedal (the right side pedal) 

Let’s take a detailed look at what each pedal does and when you will use them.

Sustain Pedal

Main functions

• Mixing sounds that cannot be connected by the fingers alone.

• Add resonance and magnitude to the chord

• Combining multiple audio layers in an integrated way

The Sustain Pedal is the most widely used. A damper is a piece of felt attached to a piece of wood that sits on a string. When playing the piano note, the hammer rises strikes the strings, and the damper rises and remains raised until the note is gone or raised your finger. When your foot raises the pedal, the damper rail is lifted and returned to its original position. The Sustain Pedal is essential when playing a piece that you want to have a full sound. Knowing the Sustain Pedal involves more than just going up and down, so it’s essential to work with your piano tutor online on it.

The 'una corda' pedal

 

Main functions

• Changing the timbre or sound quality by reducing percussiveness

• For creating more muffled sound

• It will be used as a ‘practice’ pedal if one wants to play quietly.

The Una Corda Pedal is used secondly most often. This pedal helps soften the sound of the piano, but depending upon the type of piano, it works differently. The Una Corda Pedal brings hammers to each stringed unit on the Upright piano. In this way, the speed you use to play the key moves the hammer only half the distance, making the sound softer.

With a grand piano, the Una Corda Pedal moves the hammers to the right, which means they will strike only one or two or three strings of the usual strings; this also reduces volume.

Sostenuto Pedal

Main functions

• Keeping selected notes while other notes are unaffected, usually keeping bass notes while the top songs remain unmixed

Sostenuto Pedal is rarely used, and very few pieces require its use. When depressed, this pedal will catch and hold any dampers already raised entirely on the strings. It can be used interactively (or both) with other pedals.