[LAU] e-piano

[Daniel Jones]

> It's possible to get three pedals for the Casio and the Yamaha, for The
> Korg there's only the sustain pedal.
>
> My question is:
> When and for what will I need the other pedals?
>

I'm not sure if this is true of electric pianos, but acoustic grands usually
have the following pedals: left = sustain, middle = sustain for specific
notes (more on that below), right = una corda. The middle pedal sustains
whatever notes are depressed at the time that the pedal is depressed. So if
at a particular time you have the notes A and E pressed down, and you
depress the middle pedal, the A and E will continue to sound until you
release the pedal, while all other subsequent notes will sound normally (ie,
without sustain). This is useful if you have a long held note and other
stuff going on simultaneously, which would make physically holding the note
down difficult or impossible. Unfortunately, in practice, it's often tricky
to "catch" only the desired note(s) - I don't tend to use it much myself.

The una corda pedal works by physically shifting the keyboard and hammers
slightly to the right. If you've looked in a piano, all but the lowest bass
notes actually consist of two or three strings struck at once. The una corda
("one string") pedal moves the hammers so that they strike one fewer string
than usual. This produces a quieter and fuzzier/more diffuse tone. To
understand why it's fuzzier, realize that in normal playing position, the
felt on the hammers is compacted into grooves where the hammers strike the
strings. While using una corda, the normally unused (and hence not
compacted) part of the felt hits the strings, yielding the tone quality I
described. This pedal is useful for color changes, and when you're trying to
play very softly.

So that what the other two pedals do on a "real" piano. I don't know for
sure, but I'd guess that an electric piano would try to simulate these
functions.



> I'm just
> starting to learn piano but I plan to play a bit unusual music as well
> (Schoenberg, etc.).
> Thanks again.
> Best regards,
>        Philipp
>
>
Have fun with that! What Schoenberg are you thinking of doing?


Cheers,
   Daniel


-- 
Daniel Jones
Website: http://www.ansatz-blog.com
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