There are different types of piano and keyboard pedals:-
The sustain pedal is the pedal on the right. (There are always two pedals on a piano, and sometimes a third, middle pedal for sostenuto or practising).
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The sustain pedal is also know as the "legato pedal", "damper pedal" and occassionally (incorrectly) as the "loud pedal". "Legato" is an Italian word and literally means "tied together", meaning that the musical passage is to be performed in a smooth manner. (Although the musical effect of the sustain pedal results in a slight increase in overall volume, the sustain pedal is not principly deployed to make the music louder).
In piano playing, the sustaining pedal adds two musical effects to the sound:- |
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1. When the pedal is down, any notes that are played continue to sound. If we play many notes one after another whilst continuing to hold the pedal down, we hear a "blurring" of the notes. This sound may also become discordant if we play notes which are adjacent to each other.
2. An effect known as "sympathetic resonance" occurs (also known as "sympathetic vibration"). If we play a note on a piano with the sustain pedal held down, other strings in the piano will also vibrate and cause a quiet "shimmering" type of sound. This effect is similar to when an opera singer might sing a specific high note that causes a wine glass to break. All objects (and strings of course) vibrate when certain frequencies are applied to them. If we play an A string on a piano (frequency of 440 Hz) with the sustain pedal held down, then the E string (at 330 Hz) will also sound, due to a shared overtone (1320 Hz).
Sustaining pedals in digital pianos and keyboards are able to reproduce the first of these effects, but not (as yet) able to reproduce sympathetic resonance.
Sustain pedals in digital pianos and keyboards
Sustain pedals plug into a keyboard round the back of the instrument via a 6.3mm jack socket. This is usually marked with the words "sustain" or "sustain pedal" or "damper". On most digital pianos (and some keyboards) there will also be ports for the soft and sostenuto pedals. Some electronic keydoards have the option of assigning pedal ports for other functions such as modulation and pitch bend. Midi pedals are either "+" or "-" in their sustain pedal polarity.
Pedal information can also be recorded via midi technology, and transmitted to other devices such as music sequencers or a computer. Here are the midi controller numbers used for this:-
64 Sustain (Damper)
66 Sostenuto
67 Soft (Una Corda)
Musical information is encoded on a range from 0 to 127. For example, if we play a note softly on the keyboard, this will be encoded as a lower number (say, 32) and transmitted to a computer to record this event at 32. When the music is replayed via the computer, this note will be reproduced at exactly the same volume (32). However, there is no gradiation of numbers with most sustain pedals. The pedal is deemed to be either on (127) or off (0). Some more recent midi sustain pedals (from about 2005 onwards) offer "half-pedalling", e.g. a sound that is something in-between detached and fully sustained notes.
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