What are the three pedals for on a grand piano?
Posted: 16 May 2018 00:45
When we play our keyboards there are so many 'electronic' variables we can utilise it's not always easy to keep on top of everything as we play. We often think that playing a 'mechanical' instrument like a piano must be much easier as there is not much to take into consideration other than 'playing the notes'. Yes, we can play the notes softly, or loudly, but what else would we have to think about?
For starters, there is the foot pedal on the right, which I always used to call the Loud Pedal .. which apparently is the incorrect terminology as it is actually called the Damper, or Sustain Pedal. When this is depressed, it lifts the 'dampers' off the strings so they continue to sound when you take your hands off the keys. So that's one thing to think about when playing a piano. I used to use this a lot when I played the piano, as I would play an octave with the left hand, put my foot down on the pedal while my hand moved across to play a chord .. then as I hit the chord, lift my foot off the pedal so the bass sound stopped.
Now on a Grand Piano there are normally three Pedals, and I never knew what the other two were for until today. I remember a quip by Victor Borge who stated that "the pedal in the middle is to separate the other two! ".
The video below explains the function of all three pedals, and it is the one in the middle that I find most interesting. If you press the pedal in the middle just after you play a chord the dampers will 'lift' just on those notes you have played .. and any other notes played after can be played 'staccato' style. If you used the right hand pedal then all the notes would continue to sound making a real mishmash of the sound. So that would be a technical thing to consider when playing a Grand piano.
One learns something new every day!
Hugh
For starters, there is the foot pedal on the right, which I always used to call the Loud Pedal .. which apparently is the incorrect terminology as it is actually called the Damper, or Sustain Pedal. When this is depressed, it lifts the 'dampers' off the strings so they continue to sound when you take your hands off the keys. So that's one thing to think about when playing a piano. I used to use this a lot when I played the piano, as I would play an octave with the left hand, put my foot down on the pedal while my hand moved across to play a chord .. then as I hit the chord, lift my foot off the pedal so the bass sound stopped.
Now on a Grand Piano there are normally three Pedals, and I never knew what the other two were for until today. I remember a quip by Victor Borge who stated that "the pedal in the middle is to separate the other two! ".
The video below explains the function of all three pedals, and it is the one in the middle that I find most interesting. If you press the pedal in the middle just after you play a chord the dampers will 'lift' just on those notes you have played .. and any other notes played after can be played 'staccato' style. If you used the right hand pedal then all the notes would continue to sound making a real mishmash of the sound. So that would be a technical thing to consider when playing a Grand piano.
One learns something new every day!
Hugh