Grand Piano: 0:37 Upright Piano: 6:53 🛒Browse all Grand Pianos HERE ▸https://www.merriammusic.com/product-category/all-pianos/acoustic/ 💕Subscribe to Merriam Pianos HERE ▸ http://bit.ly/SubscribeMerriam 🔔Click the 🔔 bell to be notified of all videos! ▸ http://bit.ly/SubscribeMerriam #PianoPedals #WhatDoPianoPedalsDo #DigitalPiano In this video, Stu Harrison of Merriam Pianos takes us through the three pedals on both upright and grand pianos, and discusses what each one and when you might use it. Although most piano players instinctively know what the right pedal does, the middle and left are often misunderstood by a large percentage of beginner students and hobbyist players. We hope this clears up all of your pedal questions! Also, thanks for checking out the channel - if it’s the first time here and you find the video helpful, please subscribe and stay up to date on all our new video content! Upright Pianos: The Right Pedal The right pedal on an upright piano lifts all the dampers off the strings at once, and keeps them raised as long as the pedal is depressed. A damper is a piece of felt which mutes the strings, so by raising the dampers, the strings are free to ring for a long time. When all the dampers are raised, it generally means that you could press as many notes as you wanted and they would all begin ringing and continue to ring for as long as you held the pedal down. This can be used to create ‘stacks’ of notes which blend nicely together, either in chords or scales, without the restriction of only 10 fingers to playing them at one time. A common practice is to push the pedal down while within a single chord or tonality, and quickly release it and depress again when switching to a different chord. The Middle Pedal On an upright piano, in 95% of cases the middle pedal acts as a mute rail pedal. Depressing the pedal pulls down a piece of felt to rest between the hammers and the strings, preventing the hammer from ever fully striking the strings with full force and dramatically reducing the quality and quantity of tone the piano is able to produce. This is also called a practice pedal sometimes. Left Pedal The left pedal moves all the hammers a few centimeters closer to the strings before the strings are struck, essentially lowering the maximum force and velocity with which the hammers can strike the strings. This is sometimes called a quiet pedal, or incorrectly referred to as an una corda (the name on a grand)...it is incorrect to refer to it as such, because the hammer doesn’t shift left or right, therefore reducing the number of strings it strikes...the same strings are struck, but with less force. Sostenuto on an Upright Occasionally a high-end upright will be equipped with a Sostenuto pedal as the middle pedal . Sostenuto could be explained as a selective sustain pedal...when specific notes are depressed on the piano, and then the sostenuto pedal is depressed at the same time, those keys will remain sustaining, while any other note played on the piano will not. This is different than the sustain pedal, where ALL keys sustain without differentiation when the pedal is played. Grand Piano Just like on the upright piano, the right pedal is the sustain pedal or damper pedal. Both names are used, and are interchangeable. One describes the purpose, and one describes the function...it raises the dampers so that the strings sustain. The middle pedal is nearly always a sostenuto on most grand pianos, which functions the same as described above with the upright piano sostenuto. It is a selective sustain which lets the player decide which notes will sustain by pressing them down, followed by the middle pedal. The left pedal on a grand is called the una corda pedal, and actually moves the entire keyboard and hammers to the right. When it’s set up correctly, the hammers move enough to the right that the treble hammers only strike two strings instead of three, thereby reducing the total sound output and also changing the timbre slightly. Thanks for watching, we hope you’ve enjoyed the video, and please subscribe! Connect with Merriam Music: ● Website ▸ https://www.merriammusic.com/ ● Contact Us ▸ https://www.merriammusic.com/contact/ ● Instagram ▸ https://instagram.com/merriammusic/ ● Facebook ▸ https://www.facebook.com/MerriamMusic ● Twitter ▸ https://twitter.com/merriammusicinc

• published: 27 Jan 2020
• views: 28685