Learning to play the piano is a wonderful experience that brings you that much closer to playing the music you love. Playing with both hands doing two different things is difficult enough, but you also have three pedals at the bottom of the piano that allow you to change the way the instrument plays.
While you can play 88 notes on the piano, it is very difficult to sustain notes, play softly, and determine how long notes will be played. Those types of things are much easier to do on a string or wind instrument.
As you look through what these pedals do, you need to remember that they are used with varying frequency. Some pedals are more important than others, and you should not try to use them all from the beginning.
If you would like to improve your child’s playing (or start them as a beginner), please contact MEA Piano Studio for piano lessons in Alexandria, VA. You can also contact us regarding piano lessons in D.C. or online.
Right to Left
From the right to the left, the pedals are:
Right – Sustain
Middle – Sostenuto
Left – Una Corda—soft
You must sit directly in front of the piano so that you can reach all three pedals. Just because the sustain pedal gets used the most, that does not mean you sit a little to the right. It is easy to shift to another pedal, and you also need to make sure that you practice using them as you add them to your repertoire. You can see your hands, but you cannot see your feet.
Pedals Break
This is not really a fun topic, but it must be mentioned. The pedals on a piano can break without anyone noticing because you might do a lot of practice with no pedaling at all. When you are practicing on an older piano, the pedals often break because they are not maintained properly, and no one ever knows there is a problem.
If you are sitting down at a piano you do not know, you should check each pedal to ensure it works. This is a simple thing to do, and it helps you avoid frustration. If you are a parent buying or taking on a piano for the house, the pedals could be broken and you don’t know it. You might find someone on Facebook Marketplace with a free piano. That is a wonderful find, and they just tell you to go find a tuner. While they are right—you need a tuner—the piano could be damaged and they don’t even know there’s a problem.
The Sustain Pedal
The sustain pedal sustains all the notes you play after you press it down. When you press a key on the piano, the hammer hits the string and the damper lifts. The note starts with a ping, and it dissipates quickly after letting go of the key.
The moment you pick up your finger, the damper comes back down. You only get so much out of the note. That is why you have the sustain pedal.
When you press the sustain pedal, the note lasts longer, and this pedal can be used to sustain notes while you play something else. The sustain pedal works very well at the end of songs when you want the last note to go on for as long as possible. The sustain pedal also works when you are trying to hold chords in the middle of a song.
Most people start using the sustain pedal early in their practice, and it stays that way for quite some time because you need to get used to pedaling. Remember, though, it sustains EVERYTHING you play after pressing it down—which can create quite a nice cluster chord.
The Soft Pedal
Some people call this the una corda pedal because it makes all the notes soft. This is a good way to simply quiet the whole piano. It is a lovely effect, but it is not something you will use for a whole song. This means you need to learn how to transition to this pedal to use it for soft notes and get off the pedal for louder notes. If the music is very complex, you are pedaling the soft pedal with your left foot and the sustain pedal with your right foot.
This pedal is very helpful, but it only works in certain circumstances. Think of this as an effect pedal. There are times when there is no way for you to play THAT soft, and you use this pedal so that you can get through a difficult passage or just need to quiet the piano down.
You will find, however, that the older you get, the more experience you have, the less you need this pedal. As your technique improves, you can play softer and more effectively without automatically turning to the una corda pedal.
Sostenuto Pedal
When you go to the middle, you have the sostenuto pedal. The word sostenuto implores you to stretch the notes, to lengthen everything, to draw out the most of each note. When you press this pedal, you hold the notes that you already played. Every other note you play after that is not sustained.
Because this is a fairly new addition to the piano, you are likely not going to need it for any music written before someone like Debussy or Ravel (the turn of the 20th Century.) It helps if you are working on the deep, deep details of older music, but it is not required. (In some cases, the middle pedal is actually a bass sustain pedal, and sustains only the lowest notes. Other pianos actually have a “practice pedal” that is even softer than the soft pedal—think of this like a practice mute you would use on a brass instrument where you get almost no sound at all.)
Study the Piano & Learn Your Pedals Today
Studying the piano is an exercise in learning to do multiple things at the same time. Make sure you know how these pedals work and use them as presented in method books or by your teacher. You cannot really teach yourself to use pedals properly because they are a tricky part of the instrument. They also require some thought because it can be confusing knowing when to press and release. Take your time, mark your pedaling if necessary, and don’t sweat the sostenuto pedal.
