The correct use of the pedal is the study of a lifetime! In the situation you show here, it's good to first learn the pure legato pedalling, which is well described by Sgisela. But other forms of pedalling can also be used: you just need to be very aware of the differences they make in the sound.

  • If you lift the pedal just a split second before you play the next note, there will be a very slight gap in the sound. This makes the chords sound just a bit articulated. If you compare it to a bowed string instrument such as the violin, it's like a change of bow direction.

  • If you lift the pedal just after having played the note, there will be blurring. I wouldn't consider such blurring appropriate here, but in other music it may be just what you need.

There are more subtle techniques that you'll learn later, but if you master these three, which might be called "quasi-legato", "legato" and "legatissimo", you will be off to a good start.

One really important thing: once you have lifted the pedal, you do not need to depress it again immediately. Many pianists get into the habit of making a very fast up-down movement at each harmony change. There are two drawbacks to doing this:

  • If you depress the pedal again too soon, you may not give the dampers the time to completely stop the vibrations of the strings. This muddies the sound.
  • Depressing the pedal very fast can be noisy. in the worst cases, you can hear the pianist stamp on the pedal.

In the example you give, you have lots of time to depress the pedal. Try waiting at least for the duration of an eighth note, then depress it slowly.

    MRC One really important thing: once you have lifted the pedal, you do not need to depress it again immediately. Many pianists get into the habit of making a very fast up-down movement at each harmony change. There are two drawbacks to doing this:

    If you depress the pedal again too soon, you may not give the dampers the time to completely stop the vibrations of the strings. This muddies the sound.
    Depressing the pedal very fast can be noisy. in the worst cases, you can hear the pianist stamp on the pedal.

    In the example you give, you have lots of time to depress the pedal. Try waiting at least for the duration of an eighth note, then depress it slowly.

    OMG I am guilty of exactly this! @MRC Thank you so much for pointing this out. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to catch and correct this error early 🙂

      On the other hand, if you listen really carefully, if it sounds right it is right. It shouldn't sound as if the notes are becoming too blurred, and you certainly don't want one chord or harmony bleeding over into another (unless that's the desired sound, but that would be less likely). Hopefully your piano is in good enough adjustment that you can alter not just the start/stop/restart but the degree, as in "half pedaling". I guess that involves the ability of the dampers to just lightly graze the strings, so that their undampened resonance is muted slightly.
      In any case, let your ear be your guide! 🙂

        WieWaldi Play C and pedal up simultaneously. Then pedal down again.

        This is a good guideline to start with!

        I echo those who say to listen and hear if it sounds right. Hopefully you're able to tell.

            pseudonym58 My piano is digital 😉 It does have a good pedal that can do half pedaling.

            Good point on listen carefully and to ensure it sounds right. That does imply that I know what sounds right, which I probably did not before I studied I read the detailed answers in this thread. I think I do now. The pedal marking in my example is "legato pedal", which is to make sure there is no gap between the F chord and C chord. And it's necessary because the bass C note in both chord cannot be connected without pedal. Therefore, I suppose what I should listen for is: 1) no gap between the 2 chords, and 2) as little of blurring of F chord into the C chord in the 3rd beat as possible.

              twocats Yes. You will find a ton of information about the correct pedaling. But a ton of information is too much to begin with. This is why I summarize evering with a simple sentence:

              WieWaldi IMO, the ability to "play a note and pedal up simultaneously" is the key to keep it legato and avoid unpleasant resonances.

              There is no need to explain what happens, if you release the pedal to early. Or too late. It is unnecessary to think about it. Just press the key (or the chord, to be more precise) and simultaneously release the pedal.

              Oh, and this one is also very important:

              MRC One really important thing: once you have lifted the pedal, you do not need to depress it again immediately. Many pianists get into the habit of making a very fast up-down movement at each harmony change. There are two drawbacks to doing this...

              I would call this the 2nd step. To master this, it requires the ear. And there is no fit-to-everything receipe. This is in my opinion much harder to do than the 1st step. Because the later you press the pedal, the less notes are prone to get mushy.

              I think the 1st step (lifting pedal together with key/chord -down) is a way more easy and straightforward step, that does not require decission making or involving the ear. Just training hand/leg coordination. It's plain stupid simple.

                    When I started with my teacher many moons ago, teaching proper pedal and understanding pedal was one of his priorities. That is different than just rules about what to lift or raise when. Listening and what to listen for was part of it. I'll try to give a comprehensive summary - including the obvious. 😉

                    mechanically: The piano strings vibrate when struck by the hammer, and stop vibrating when the dampers fall on them. If you pluck a guitar string and then put your palm in the string, you stop the vibration. When you press a key, the damper over the respective string is lifted, and then the hammer sails over striking the string making it ring. When you release the key, the sound stops. UNLESS something else holds the damper off the string(s) - that being the right damper pedal. Therefore your hand and your foot take turns lifting the damper off the string(s).

                    sound: For a legato sound, you want one note to almost blend into the next note so that there is no gap in the sound. Supposing you're playing a C chord, then Dm, then Em. The C chord is ringing as you move your hand over to the Dm chord because of the pedal. At the moment that you strike Dm, you don't want C to blend in with Dm, so that's the moment you "erase" the C by lifting the pedal. You immediately lower the pedal to catch your new Dm chord. Once the pedal is holding up the dampers - allowing Dm to continue ringing - you can release your hand from the cord / finger from the note.

                    Use your ears to guide you. When you can lift your hand is determined by when the new notes are "caught by the pedal" which actually means, when the pedal is holding up the dampers. Also use your ears to guide you about when to lift the pedal.

                    Experiment with joining two notes or two chords using the pedal, with trade-off of hand and foot, to discover different effects, and to start hearing how an old sound sustains or not. When I began, I was shocked by what I was not yet hearing. I'm still learning to "hear".

                    I should add that digital pianos are programmed to simulate what I described, along with mechanical sensors sending signals to the programmed electronic portions.

                    Thank you all for the really helpful advice! I do feel I need to train my listening skill. You can see the pedal action in the video below. How does it sound to you?

                      iternabe I think your pedal sounds good, nothing sounds off to me! Your left and right hands aren't always landing at the same time though. The screen is small but it's always when you get to (I think) A in the left hand and C in the right hand 🙂

                          twocats Your left and right hands aren't always landing at the same time though.

                          Sharp eye! I think maybe it happens when I try to play the left hand softer? MIDI keyboard does show it clearer. But I haven't noticed it myself, so thanks a lot for point this out.

                          I do realize I have other issues not hitting all notes of a chord at the exact same time, especially when playing soft. I have short pinkies, but I think my chord unevenness (and sometimes even ghost note) is not limited just to the little fingers. Still trying to figure out how to solve that problem.

                              iternabe I actually heard it, I didn't see it, and I think it happened in all of the variations. I was trying to figure out which notes to more easily identify it for you. Since this is happening when you have a single note in the left and right hands it doesn't seem like a hand size issue, and maybe now that you're aware of it, it'll be better 🙂

                                iternabe I listened to your video, and it sounds good. I like it.
                                And I saw your video (great recording, btw 👍️) and could make out 4 spots in total you should investigate:

                                0:14 pedal up together with keys
                                0:32 pedal up together with keys
                                0:56 pedal up together with keys
                                Those were 3x the same phrase, where the pedal had no effect. Almost no effect, because it seems the pedal up is a bit slower than the hand up. But just a little slower. I doubt there is an audible difference.
                                Does it sound bad? No.
                                Would it sound bad if you hadn't pedaled this at all? No.
                                The ear won't help you here to detect a mistake in technique. Seems like you practiced it that way. And you know:
                                Practice does't make perfect. Practice makes permanent.

                                1:09 pedal down too early. You blurred E into C-G-E'-C" chord. This does also not sound bad, as it is makes a C-E-G triad. And C-E-G is a Major triad. It is harmonic. But I am not sure if this was intended.

                                And I have seen some spots with the pedal going down together with you hands. In thoses situations this wasn't a problem at all because before that no key was pressed at all. But I think key+pedal down could become a bad habit. And it can sound mushy if the music gets more complex.

                                    WieWaldi Thank you for your very detailed observation. Based on what you mentioned and what I see rewatching, it is quite possible that what I thought I was doing and what I actually did were different. I do need to investigate those spots closely. And video is such a great tool here because I can play it in slow-mo or even advance frame by frame to pinpoint what's going on.

                                    I think I am making the beginner mistake by rushing my pedal motions, just like @MRC said. So even I intend to put the pedal down after playing the notes, or lift pedal up as I play the changed chord, my foot was too eager and moved early.

                                    There was only one place that I did not rush the pedal, which is what you noticed in the last phrase.

                                    Pedal mark begins at the E but I only pushed it down around the second beat of measure 27. Not intentional, but more likely because I was flustered by the end of measure 26 so my brain need to take a breath. But the effect turns out to be exactly as the score intended.

                                        iternabe
                                        I am currently in a similar position and try to get my own pedaling right. The sheet music below is what I got. When I do the chord change, my LH needs too much of a time to reach the new position. My hand isn't slower then the hand of the Christian (he is the YouTube teacher), but his version sounds way smoother => he uses pedal, but don't talk about it. (Nor writes it in sheet music - he must assume we beginners are pedaling experts, haha. Or he thinks it is not important at this beginner stage.)

                                        I scribbled with a pencil my own pedal markings, basically the pedal goes down with the last RH note before the chord change. So far so good, but the Eb7 chord keeps me struggling because the RH is silent until the D7 chord. And it is fast pedal action because this are quarter chords. In this bar, pedal down timings are 21/2, 31/2 and 41/2🤯. Lifting the pedal together with playing the new chord is really something, one can train, and I see(or hear) already some success by myself. 😏

                                            WieWaldi I was taught to use the shortcut "P" to indicate pedal and "X" to lift. It's a little shorter than "Ped" if that saves you some writing. I can see how the horizonal line indicating the exact duration of the pedal can be helpful for beginners though!

                                              Great thread, folks. Pedalling is one of my serious weaknesses ...

                                              Enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.

                                              Having been playing piano for over 50 years now, probably closer to 55, I find it interesting that I haven't a clue exactly "how" I use the sustain pedal though I use a lot.

                                              I do sometimes play without it for short bits, mostly when I'm going through something I want to play more precisely and don't want the sustain to muddy the sound. I have thought that if something happened that the sustain pedal quit working, there would be numbers in our repertoire that I think I could get through and have them sound decent. Hopefully, I'll never have one quit during a concert. (I usually do have an extra somewhere not that far away.)

                                              To add to the complexity, I do sometimes play piano and strings together and the sustain works the same with both sounds. It can be interesting when you'd kinda like the strings to sustain and the piano not to, or vice versa but have one keyboard and one sustain pedal to make it all happen. That can be fun. 🙂

                                              • TC3 likes this.

                                              iternabe I think @WieWaldi pointed out ones where you very clearly lifted the pedal too early. What I noticed was that you tended to do this when you were playing forte. When this same figure was repeated at softer dynamics, you played it just fine or pretty close (the one at around 5 seconds was very nice; the one around 21s was maybe a touch too early but very very close).

                                              Anyways, my sense is that you have a tendency to raise the pedal too early, and probably when you’re very focused on the pedal, you do it correctly, but when you’re focusing on some other things (like the dynamics), then you revert back to your tendencies. I think what happens is that there is a strong feeling in the body for the foot to mimic what the arm/hand are doing; parts of the body like to mirror each others’ motions. So you are lifting your foot at the same time you are lifting your fingers off the notes. I think you could try working on this much more slowly, paying very close attention to the sound and to how the arm/finger pressing DOWN triggers the foot to come UP. You will get there!

                                                @WieWaldi @Sgisela I gave it another try tonight. I was trying to consciously delay the pedal down. Still trying to time the pedal lift with chord change - maybe slightly not as rushed as before.

                                                Here is take 2: