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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is about whether you should you follow pedal markings in your scores. All too often, you don’t even have pedal markings! So where should you pedal? In a nutshell, it’s where harmonies change. You don’t want to blur harmonies from one chord to another because you get a mess of dissonance. So whenever harmonies change, that’s the appropriate place to change the pedal. But what about when you do have pedal indications in the score? Well, this comes down to two factors. Are they the composer’s markings or the editor’s markings?

Very few composers wrote pedal markings in their scores.

Most of the pedal markings you’re going to find are editors’ markings. You can try them, but I would, for the most part, ignore them unless you find them helpful. Now, what about when composers write pedal markings? There are some places where Beethoven wrote pedal markings, for example. Even then, with Beethoven as a good example, the piano was a very different instrument during Beethoven’s lifetime. As a matter of fact, the piano was a very different instrument early in Beethoven’s life compared to later in his life! The piano was evolving. The pedaling that worked for Beethoven’s piano doesn’t necessarily work well for the modern piano. Well, what about later composers? If you have composers from the late 19th or 20th century who wrote pedal markings, should you follow them? You may want to in some instances.

Sometimes you’ll have markings for the una corda pedal, the soft pedal. Should you follow them?

In regards to the una corda pedal, on some pianos, the soft pedal does almost nothing. On a new piano, for example, where the hammers aren’t grooved, the change in position of the hammers makes very little difference. On other pianos, it can make a dramatic difference in tone. If the hammers are very heavily grooved, the una corda pedal will make a significant tonal change. You’ve probably noticed how, on a grand piano, the action and the hammers move when you depress the una corda pedal. That puts the soft felt striking the strings. So did the composer make these una corda pedal markings for a piano with a dramatic change or a subtle change? You have to weigh that in deciding whether you follow the markings. Ultimately, your ears are your guide.

What about sustain pedal markings?

In regards to the sustain pedal, different pianos have different levels of sustain. Different rooms have different qualities of reverberation. Also, the composer may or may not have been a great interpreter of their own music! So I would say pedal markings are suggestions. Try them, by all means, when the composer wrote them, certainly, and even if editors wrote them. But if they don’t work for you, don’t feel compelled to follow pedal markings in your scores. They may or may not work on your piano, in your room, or in the style you’re trying to achieve in your playing. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Should You Follow Pedal Markings in Your Scores?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is about whether you should you follow pedal markings in your scores. All too often, you don’t even have pedal markings! So where should you pedal? In a nutshell, it’

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is pedal necessary in playing Bach? That’s a question I received from a viewer. Most of you probably know that the piano wasn’t invented during Bach’s lifetime. However, Bach did try the very earliest incarnation of what was ostensibly a piano. But he never wrote any music specifically for the piano.

Bach’s favorite keyboard instrument was the clavichord, because of how expressively it could play.

Because there wasn’t an escapement on the clavichord, you could actually impart vibrato on notes after you played them! Of course, the piano has escapement. That means the hammers escape the strings after striking them. This allows for a wide range of dynamics. But the sustain pedal didn’t exist during Bach’s lifetime.

What I’m going to do today is a really interesting experiment!

I’m counting on you to help me with this! I’m going to play the first section of the Bach French Suite No. 5. The first movement has a repeat. The first time I’m going to play it with no pedal at all. Then I’m going to play it with lots of pedal. But I’m going to be using little tiny bursts of pedal, just to enhance the tone. The questions are, can you hear the difference? And do you have a preference? Watch the video, then let me know your impression in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube.

Watch the video to take part in the experiment!

So I’ve shown you two examples of the same exact section. You probably wonder what I was doing with my foot there, fluttering up and down so quickly. Well, in this piece, as in so much Bach, there’s so much counterpoint going on that it’s difficult to really use much pedal. If you’re playing Chopin, for example, there is obviously so much you can do with pedaling. In fact, you need to use the pedal! If I were to play, for example, the Chopin G minor Ballade without the pedal, it would sound pretty thin. In music like that, the sustain pedal is absolutely essential to hold out notes for harmonies to blend together. But the music of Bach wasn’t written with the sustain or damper pedal in mind. So it works just fine without the pedal.

Why would you want to use pedal in Bach?

In Bach, you use short bursts of pedal to enhance longer notes to make them sustain longer. Because, as you know, when you play a note on the piano, it’s always dying away. As pianists, we’re always fighting that. We are trying to create a singing sustained line for the illusion of continuity, like in the human voice or the bow of a violin. The pedal helps to enrich the sound of key notes so that you get a sense of the line. Why just little flutters of pedal? Because to do any kind of substantial pedaling where the pedal stays down for any length of time, would blur the counterpoint together. And that’s not what you want. I’m really interested in reading your comments on this! Which way do you like better? Could you hear a difference at all? Let me know! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Should You Use Pedal in Bach?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is pedal necessary in playing Bach? That’s a question I received from a viewer. Most of you probably know that the piano wasn’t invented during Bach’s lifetime. However, Bach did

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about advanced pedal techniques. It’s absolutely not what you would expect at all. I guarantee it! I could talk about half pedaling, which sometimes you do to get a certain sonority. I could talk about combining the una corda pedal, the soft pedal, with the sustain pedal. I could talk about engaging the sostenuto pedal, the middle pedal, to hold some notes when maybe you don’t want to blur everything together. Then you can combine that with the sustain pedal. I could talk about using little dashes of pedal to bring out certain notes. There’s a wealth of pedal techniques that you couldn’t possibly even write in, and even if you could, it wouldn’t be that helpful. Because the piano you’re playing on, the acoustics of the room, not to mention the music you’re playing, all enter into these advanced pedal techniques.

What I’m talking about today are next level pedal techniques.

I will use the slow movement from the Mozart K 545 C Major Sonata as an example. I’m talking about the second movement. I know many of you purists out there might say, “Why use pedal in Mozart at all? Mozart’s piano didn’t have a pedal.” This is true. However, there are two reasons why you might consider using at least some pedal in Mozart. Number one, although Mozart’s piano did not have a sustain pedal, it did have a lever operated with your knee that did exactly the same thing as a sustain pedal. So there was a certain amount of sustain that could be achieved, much like with the pedal. Secondly, when you’re playing on a modern piano, it’s so drastically different from a Mozart era piano that it essentially becomes a transcription for modern piano. The sound, the sustain, and the whole quality of the instrument is so different from what Mozart heard out of his piano. Arguably, you’re playing on a whole different instrument! You might as well take advantage of what the modern piano offers you.

What kind of techniques am I talking about?

I’m not talking about any of the pedal techniques I brought up before. So what am I talking about? In pedaling this, you might be tempted to pedal so that the chords in the left hand get blurred together. Why not simply change the pedal whenever the harmonies change? It’s a very simple technique. The problem with that is when you add the right hand, the right hand notes become blurry. You don’t want the right hand to be blurry. But you want the left hand to be sustained, giving that bed that the melody can float on. Well, here’s the technique. It doesn’t involve the pedal. Not at first.

Use your hands to simulate the sound of the pedal!

In the left hand, you want to hold the bass notes longer. When you do this, the left hand is sustained without having to depend upon the pedal for it. Why is this so helpful? Because then you can use little touches of the pedal to articulate certain notes in the melody, to make the melody more sustained. These touches of pedal on the melody are really subjective. They’re not going to be the same for everyone. It depends upon the room, the acoustics, and the piano. By using little dashes of pedal on the melody while playing the accompaniment with this phantom pedal technique, you can capture the long notes on the melody to make them sing longer.

Simply pedal the long notes in the melody so they sustain longer.

With your left hand, use the phantom pedal technique holding the notes that fall on the beat so that you can use the pedal to enhance the melody instead of trying to pedal the chords to make them sound more lush and sustained. This opens up dramatic possibilities for using the pedal in a more subtle fashion to enhance the melody rather than connecting the accompaniment. This isn’t just in Mozart. This goes for a vast array of musical styles. Try it in your playing. You’ll be richly rewarded with a far more musical performance! You will get a sound that’s cleaner because you’re doing more with your hands. You won’t have to depend upon the pedal to connect what you can connect with your left hand. This opens up great expressive possibilities with the pedal in your piano playing. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Advanced Pedal Techniques

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about advanced pedal techniques. It’s absolutely not what you would expect at all. I guarantee it! I could talk about half pedaling, which sometimes you do to get a

Welcome to www.Livingpianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about what Chopin sounds like without the pedal. When I talk about the pedal I’m talking about the sustain pedal. It’s the one on the right that holds all the notes when you put it down. It’s a glorious thing! It makes everything sound better, doesn’t it? And louder too! It helps you to connect what you can’t connect with your fingers.

What is the job of the pedal in music in general, and in Chopin specifically?

The pedal actually has two distinct functions. One is to connect notes you can’t connect with your hands. For example, you will see music where you have a whole note in the lower register and other things going on in the upper register. You can’t possibly hold that whole note because you’ve got other notes to play. Pedal to the rescue! There is no way to hold those notes with your hands. So sometimes music is written in such a way that you depend upon the pedal to play what’s written in the score. But there’s also the tone enhancement that the pedal affords you in your musical performance.

When you play a note with the pedal, you get a different sound than without the pedal.

If you listen to a note with no pedal compared to the same note played with the pedal down, you will hear that it gets more of a reverberant sound with the pedal down. When you depress the pedal the dampers lift off of all the strings so they are free to vibrate sympathetically, enhancing the tone. And indeed, when you depress the pedal it will have an effect upon the tone, the envelope of the sound. That is the shape of the decay. You can enhance the sustain by judiciously using the pedal just at the point at which the tone might be dying away. But that’s a subject for another day.

What does Chopin sound like without the pedal? Of course it depends upon what piece of Chopin. The famous E-flat Nocturne Opus 9 no. 2, for example, doesn’t really have notes you can’t hold in terms of what’s written in the score, but it’s implied to use the pedal.

When I play without the pedal I strive to connect as much as possible with my fingers.

I can’t connect everything I want to with just my fingers. But I try my best so that the pedal can enhance the sound and not be used as a crutch for things that I can connect with my fingers. You want to strive for your playing to be as legato as possible with your fingers before putting the pedal in. Because if you practice it with the pedal right from the get-go, you might not use the ideal fingering in order to connect as much as possible. So you want to connect with your fingers everything you can. Then it becomes obvious where to pedal. And of course, adding the pedal gives you a much more beautiful sound. Plus you can hold the bass notes to get a richer sound and a more linear quality to bass notes, and indeed the inner voices as well. With the pedal, you get the sense of the line instead of just the chords. The bassline has enough sustain from note to note, instead of just being sporadic.

With the Chopin G Minor Ballade indeed, you not only need the pedal to get the sense of the lines, but there are notes you just can’t possibly hold without it. This is the genius of Chopin! It’s amazing that he could conceive of, and write down music that would work so incredibly well with the pedal. Without the pedal it practically sounds like a whole different piece!

So that’s what the pedal adds to Chopin!

There’s a richness to the quality of the sound you get with the pedal. You get sustained harmonies and a linear aspect of all the lines, from the bass all the way to the treble. Not to mention the enhancement of the tone. Because you can use the pedal to get little gradations of tone in the melody to make one note kind of meld into the next by enriching it with sympathetic vibrations that the other strings allow for when you release the dampers with the sustain pedal.

I hope this has been interesting for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

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What Does Chopin Sound Like Without the Pedal?

 Welcome to www.Livingpianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about what Chopin sounds like without the pedal. When I talk about the pedal I’m talking about the sustain pedal. It’s the one on the right that holds all

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to use the pedal on the piano. This is such a deep subject. I have other videos on the finer points about pedaling, how it imparts changes in tone, when to use it, when not to use it, and how to use the sustain pedal in conjunction with the soft pedal. But today I will cover the fundamentals. If you’ve ever wondered how the pedal works, you’ve come to the right place!

The interesting thing about the pedal is that it does not go down rhythmically.

If you’ve just started using the pedal the hardest thing about it is that it is not used rhythmically, because you want to tap your foot on the beat. It’s the most natural thing in the world! Yet that doesn’t work on the piano. It doesn’t work because if you push the pedal down when a note plays, you will capture the harmonies of the previous notes that were down. It’s a mess. Why is that? The fact of the matter is, when you push the pedal down, whatever notes are held down are going to continue holding down. When you play a note, you’re still holding down the previous notes to some extent, particularly if something is slurred.

How do you create a slur on the piano?

A slur is a glide between notes. A singer or a French horn player does it very naturally and the notes between the slur are all there. On the piano, you can’t do that. So you tend to overlap notes, and that’s the way you create the illusion of a slur. But what happens when you pedal on the beat is the previously played notes are going to be held. If I play middle C and then a C sharp and I pedal at the same moment as I play the C sharp, you’re going to hear the C and the C sharp together. You will hear dissonance. The pedal must go down right after notes plays.

But here’s some good news for you, the pedal comes up exactly on the beat!

The pedal goes up exactly when you play a note. But the pedal goes down right after the note, arrhythmically. It’s important that you understand that, otherwise, you’re going to hear dissonance. It’s the nature of the pedal.

There’s so much more to the pedal. As a matter of fact, I will put links in the description of some other videos I have on pedaling. Decades ago, I made 50 hour-long presentations live on the internet, for a company in Irvine. My show was called Keyboard Kaleidoscope. One episode is an hour long show on the pedal that I will share with you in the notes below, in the description, and on LivingPianos.com! I hope this is helpful for you. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

HOW TO USE THE PEDAL ON THE PIANO – KEYBOARD KALEIDOSCOPE – ROBERT ESTRIN

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How to Use the Pedal on the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to use the pedal on the piano. This is such a deep subject. I have other videos on the finer points about pedaling, how it imparts changes in tone, when to use it, w

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Why Does A Soft Pedal Make No Difference on Some Pianos?” On many pianos, the soft pedal creates a nice tonal change. Other pianos, it doesn’t seem to do anything at all! Are they broken? I’m talking about the una corda pedal. On grand and baby grand pianos, the left pedal shifts the entire action. So, the hammers don’t strike the three strings directly. Una corda, as a matter of fact, means one string. A long time ago, pianos only had two strings for each note. So, shifting the action made the hammers hit only one string. Modern pianos are a little bit different. The hammer doesn’t actually strike only one less string. The entire hammer hits at a different point.

The hammers on a piano that’s been played a lot will have grooves where the strings make contact.

Therefore, the felt is compacted, which gives a more brilliant tone than the softer felt surrounding. So, when you push down the soft pedal, you’ll hear a dramatic change on pianos that are broken in. Of course a piano with brand new hammers will have a minimal difference in tone when using the soft pedal, because the hammers are barely broken in. If there is a tonal change, it is extremely subtle, which is what you would expect.

Play your piano, and the soft pedal will make a bigger difference over time.

After six months or a year of playing a piano, the hammers will get grooved and the tone will brighten up. This is normal on all pianos. However, the soft pedal will engage a part of the hammer that isn’t normally played, and you’ll hear a dramatic difference in tone when depressing it. For example, a couple of months ago I was at a good friend’s house. He has a Yamaha that he plays a good deal. The hammers were pretty hard. So, pushing down the soft pedal sounded like a completely different piano! You wouldn’t believe the difference. The compacted felt of the grooves were bypassed just a fraction of an inch, and the fresh part of the felt hit the strings. That’s why on some pianos you won’t hear much difference with the soft pedal. A certain amount can be voiced or regulated. However, time is your best cure for a soft pedal that doesn’t do much.

‘m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
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Why Does A Soft Pedal Make No Difference on Some Pianos?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Why Does A Soft Pedal Make No Difference on Some Pianos?” On many pianos, the soft pedal creates a nice tonal change. Other pianos, it doesn’t seem to