Beginner question about pedal timing

iternabe · 2024-08-27T22:00:36+00:00

Here is how I have been taught by Let's Play Piano Methods YouTube channel about pedal timing. At the beginning of pedal mark, in most cases, play the not...

Pallas

iternabe I love all your questions, even though I can't answer them. I want to say it depends on how you want the piece to sound, versus how baroque music is usually interpreted by people more educated than I am (that doesn't take a lot) want to hear it.

I agree that there's no "always stomp that pedal immediately after the note you want to sustain," though. I think it's probably good for us beginners to have a starting-point way of using the pedal, then it gets more nuanced later, but I'm never going to be the one who says it's too soon to wonder about any of this stuff. I wonder too.

BartK

iternabe One more question, if the goal is to make the sound more majestic, would pedal down before the opening note in measure one even better?

Yes, it's quite common to have the pedal down before playing the first note. Moreso in romantic music than things like this but you can experiment.

I agree with MRC - experiment, listen very carefully, and try to figure out what sounds good. This is excellent advice in general and will have a great impact on your progress. I think listening critically is one of the most important skills you can develop.

MRC

Here's something interesting: Yeol Eum Son playing the same piece once with pedal and once without. Both beautifully done:

I love it that she pedalled with bare feet, so you can appreciate the subtleties.

Ithaca

MRC I love it that she pedalled with bare feet, so you can appreciate the subtleties.

A bit OT, but - do you all play the piano w/shoes or slippers on at home? I grew up in a bare-feet-only-inside household and I dislike pedaling with shoes. It feels like I’m wearing oven mitts on my feet.

iternabe

MRC I love it that she pedalled with bare feet, so you can appreciate the subtleties.

And she seated in the lotus position for the no-pedal take. Wow! LOL

Sophia

Ithaca do you all play the piano w/shoes or slippers on at home?

Bare feet in the summer, slippers in the winter and socks any time in between 😁

I'm currently going through my old books again. Now that it's super easy to play stuff like the Harp Song and Greensleeves, I can now give the pedal and all other subtleties my fullest concentration 👍👍 Plus it's a nice boost for whenever my moral is getting a little low!

iternabe

Ithaca do you all play the piano w/shoes or slippers on at home?

So far I have only tried socks 😉

Pallas

Ithaca do you all play the piano w/shoes or slippers on at home?

I try not to do anything routinely around the piano because I get too attached and play badly in my lesson. So it's all kind of shoes, bare feet, whatever.

iternabe

@Ithaca @BartK @MRC @Pallas Thank you all for the good suggestions and discussion.

Here is the best I could do today. No pedal cam, but you can sort of tell from my right knee.

BartK

iternabe
That was excellent! The combination of legato and staccato articulations is particularly effective in baroque music and very much in the character of this piece. Great job! 👍

Ithaca

iternabe What confuses me a bit is the opening dynamics is piano. The pedal effect there seems to me more for legato than for resonance when playing soft?

If you are thinking that “piano” is inconsistent with the majestic direction - imagine you are standing at the top of a fjord in the dead of winter as the sun comes up. Total silence, but still majestic. And even if very quiet, you can hold the notes just a smidge longer - stately, majestic, and quiet. 🙂

Ithaca

Pallas I try not to do anything routinely around the piano because I get too attached

This is probably a good idea. I can’t remember for sure, but I probably slipped off my shoes as a kid when I had to play at church. And I’m certain I took my shoes off when I was trying out pianos the past few years. (I wear socks then, so no worries about bare feet on someone else’s piano. 😁) But I suspected I’d gone a bit too far when I was unnerved watching a video of some major competition - the shoes just seemed so wrong. Maybe I watched too many Peter Bence videos right before. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Pallas

Ithaca and I'm saying this as a person who found toe marks on the pedal, so I'm playing barefoot a lot, but I try to play with shoes on too. I would never kick my shoes off in a lesson. 🤣

Pallas

Ithaca Maybe I watched too many Peter Bence videos right before.

I'll go shoeless from now on if it helps me play like Peter Bence. 😜

Ithaca

Pallas At risk of being overly risque, I'd take off a lot more than my shoes if it let me play like Peter Bence. 😉 (But in case the universe is listening: please no naked people at my piano. Some lines should not be crossed.)

WieWaldi

Ithaca In an acoustic, as soon as you lift the dampers, all the strings - even the ones you're not pressing - are free to resonate, so you'll also get what I think of an aural shimmer (or sound aura, or sound cloud, depending on my mood). And the quality of that sound depends on the piano. I don't know if your digital will do that; mine certainly didn't, but it was a very elderly Roland.

Today's Kawai digitals simulate all other strings resonating, too. It is most present, if I use the Upright Piano Sample, but also works on the Grands.

Ithaca

WieWaldi iternabe

I haven't tried any DPs recently (well, except for a couple of measures on a new expensive Yamaha that seemed worse than my 20-year-old Roland), but I have been astonished at the quality of the sampled sound engines on the newest silent acoustics. Probably my jaw dropped when I heard them a year ago - they have gotten impressively good. Are any of these the same engines as the ones on some of the mid-range DPs?

iternabe

Ithaca If you observe the mechanism in an acoustic piano, the only thing the standard sustain pedal does is lift up all the dampers. In an acoustic, as soon as you lift the dampers, all the strings - even the ones you're not pressing - are free to resonate, so you'll also get what I think of an aural shimmer (or sound aura, or sound cloud, depending on my mood). And the quality of that sound depends on the piano. I don't know if your digital will do that; mine certainly didn't, but it was a very elderly Roland. (It was the first of the really good actions, but the native sound was meh.)

Today I tested my Roland FP-30X's built-in sound engine, and I'm surprised it actually does have sympathetic resonance. If hold down C2 silently, strike C3 then release (no pedal), the C2 will ring for quite a while as it remains held down. Same if I hold down G2 then strike C3, although the resonance will be weaker. I used to think sampled digital piano sound engine cannot do sympathetic resonance, and that would be one big reason to use modeled sound engine such as Pianoteq. Well, technology has apparently advanced that even mid-entry level DP now have this feature.

WieWaldi

Ithaca for a couple of measures on a new expensive Yamaha that seemed worse than my 20-year-old Roland

Hard to believe, but I believe it. I sorted all the piano sounds on my digital from "bad" to "best", starting with the worst sound. And every time I have a major achievement, like a complicated song or finishing a complete online course, I level up and allow myself to use the next better piano sound. And despite the fact the sound should get better every time, I think by myself the last one was better.
This is due to the fact that we got used to a certain sound, and everything that is different sounds worse in the first moment. And of course - if I play the new sound for some hours, I like it more than the previous one. Sure - the new sound is better - I sorted them.

Let me rephrase my first sentence:

Ithaca for a couple of measures on a new expensive Yamaha that seemed worse than my 20-year-old Roland

Hard to believe, but I believe you believe it. Realistically, there is no way a 20 year old Roland beats a new Yamaha sound wise.

WieWaldi

Ithaca Are any of these the same engines as the ones on some of the mid-range DPs?

I would say they use the exact same engines. And I would say they use the high-end engines, not the mid-range ones. But: It could be the engines on the silent pianos are more likely a generation older because there isn't the same update cycle as on digitals. So yes - a yesterday's high-end engine is probably as good as a current mid-range.

Ithaca

WieWaldi This is due to the fact that we got used to a certain sound, and everything that is different sounds worse in the first moment.

This is a really interesting hypothesis. But how does it handle the fact that I like better some other different sounds immediately? It’s true, I have not met an upright acoustic Kawai that I liked - maybe because the sound is different from my old Roland, while not being too different in character? But I can say with confidence that my A170 delighted me much more than the Roland within the first few notes. I had a similarly fast-but-positive response to the Concert 8, and the Bluthner models 4, 2, A, and B.

So it’s clear that for me, at least, different doesn’t automatically mean that it sounds worse in the first few moments of hearing it.

« Previous Page Next Page »