Is it okay to use the pedal when playing Bach? This is a great question and there are many different ideas about this. Why should there even be issues with using the pedal or not when it comes to playing Bach? Bach lived from 1685 to 1750 and the very earliest pianos were invented just around 1700. While Bach got a chance to try some of these early instruments, he really never wrote for the piano. He never wrote for any specific keyboard instrument other than the organ. All his other works are written for clavier, which means simply “keyboard”. It is up to the performer to decide which keyboard. No keyboards had pedals anytime during Bach’s life (other than the organ, but that’s a completely different matter).

There are many purists who feel that you shouldn’t use the pedal simply because Bach did not have one. Other people feel that if Bach was alive today, he would love to use the pedal! There are different schools of thought. There is some music that absolutely calls for the pedal. Why? Music is written sometimes where there are notes to be held, yet you run out of fingers since you have to move your hands to another part of the keyboard. So the only way to hold those notes that are written to be held is to sustain them by using the pedal.

You can certainly play Bach without the pedal and get very good results. When I studied with Ruth Slenczynska, she insisted upon using no pedal in Bach and it works great! I am going to offer an example, of the beginning of Bach’s 5th French Suite. Why would you use pedal and how would you use pedal in Bach? You don’t use it to connect notes that you can’t hold with your fingers because there is nothing that is written that necessitates the use of the of the pedal for this purpose. Instead you use the pedal to add color. You’ll notice that even in this fast music, there are little touches of pedal to enhance the tone of key notes.

The important thing is that you must practice Bach using no pedal at all. In fact, I recommend practicing all of your music without any pedal until you can play as connected as possible finding the best fingering that accomplishes this first. Then it becomes obvious where the pedal can be utilized.

I am going to play the first section of the Bach 5th French Suite with the repeat as written. The first time I will play it with no pedal. Then upon the repeat, I will utilize the pedal to add color. If you listen to the video, you can determine which performance you prefer. I would love to hear from all of you in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube.

This is a topic that is very important to anyone wanting to develop a refined technique on the piano. It is very important to practice the piano without using the pedal – the pedal should be something that enhances your music and not simply a crutch for making mediocre playing sound better.

Pedals on the piano are actually a modern development. When the piano was fist invented it didn’t have pedals, so connecting notes had to be accomplished with the fingers. Believe it or not, Johannes Brahms didn’t even have a sustain pedal on his practice piano!

The sustain pedal does just as its name implies – it holds (sustains) all the notes. When you hold the pedal down, the dampers stay hovering over the strings, when you release the pedal the dampers fall back onto the strings and dampen the sound.

The pedal is not just a tool for connecting notes; it’s capable of adding expressive elements to your music. The real challenge of the pedal is knowing when and how to use it. The only way to accomplish this is to practice your music without the pedal.

In the video included with this article I demonstrate how depending upon the pedal to connect notes instead of using your fingers can lead to sloppy playing and bad technique. But how can you avoid this?

The secret to connecting notes without the pedal is to develop a legato technique with both hands – not just with the melody but even repeated chords in the left hand. But why is this important?

If you can learn how to connect your notes just using your hands, you will be able to use the pedal to enhance your music tonally and make your melodies sing – you will find the best fingerings for passages, and rely on the pedal not as a crutch, and most of all, you will improve as a pianist.

Three pedals on a piano is the accepted norm on most pianos. Virtually all new grand pianos sold in the United States contain three pedals. Two pedal pianos are an increasingly rare breed but they do exist and we actually have some of them here in our showroom. The real question is, do you really need three pedals?

Today we have a question from Umberto, who asks, “How do you approach pedaling in the Moonlight Sonata? Do you pedal throughout all of it?”

These are excellent questions. In fact, yes, you use pedal in some parts rather sparingly, other parts very generously, but you use it throughout the whole piece in different ways. Of course the different movements have different requirements, but we’re going to focus today on the first movement, the famous melodic first movement.

So first of all, just a little primer. Whenever you’re using the pedals on the piano you want to keep your your heels firmly on the floor. You never want to put your pedal like this because it’s noisy. So you keep the heel on the floor, and then the ball of the foot is how you control best. Always keep it in contact, because if you go from above, once again you get noise. All pedals are very different on pianos. You have to experiment to find how you could play it quietly and effectively, because they all release the dampers at different points. One of the first things you want to try out when you’re playing over a concert is how the pedal responds on the instrument.

So getting to the Moonlight Sonata. As with any music, the pedal changes wherever the harmonies change. So if you were to play this piece in chords, each time the chord changes . . . and notice the pedal always comes up exactly on the beat but goes down right after the beat. So that’s the secret of pedaling. The pedal always comes up exactly on the change of harmony and goes right back down again. So if I play it now not in chords, but as it’s written, and with the soft pedal, the una corda pedal, depressed the entire time, you get this.

The reason for changing the pedal, coming up on the pedal exactly on the beat, is otherwise harmonies blur. If you were to play the pedal and put it down on the beat instead of up on the beat, you’d end up with this.

I can’t even do it. It’s so hard. I’m so trained. I’m gonna try it again. I’m gonna try to play the pedal wrong for you.

Yeah, that’s also not connected. I haven’t experimented with playing pedal wrong. It’s a hard thing to do. Any of you who are a pianist accustomed to using the pedal, try it how hard it is to play it wrong. So get in the habit of always coming up at the change of harmonies and right back down again so you get that smooth transition, and if you’re not sure where the harmonies change, break the music down to chords and it becomes very obvious for you.

You probably know that pianos generally have 3 pedals. You may have seen pianos with only 2 pedals (mostly older European and Asian pianos). But have you seen any pianos with 4 pedals? Believe it or not, there are pianos with 4 pedals and it’s very interesting how this works.

One example is the piano company Stuart & Sons from Australia which builds pianos with 4 pedals. Before we get into what the fourth pedal does, let’s do a quick review of the functions of the standard 3 pedals.

The right pedal (the sustain or damper pedal) enables all the notes to carry their sound even after you lift your hands off the keys. Virtually all modern pianos (even digital pianos) have this pedal and your piano almost certainly has one.

The left pedal (the soft pedal or una corda pedal) shifts the action to the side slightly – which you can actually see on grand pianos when you depress the pedal. The hammers strike only two of the three strings directly producing a more mellow tone.

The middle pedal is a selective hold (sostenuto) pedal in that it only holds the dampers up for the keys you press and hold down just before pressing down the middle pedal. Yet, any additional notes you play after, will not sustain without holding the keys down. If this sounds confusing you can watch my video on What Does the Middle Pedal on a Piano Do?

The above descriptions of all these pedals pertain to the actions on grand pianos. Upright pianos have pedals that typically don’t have the same functions as pedals on grand pianos with the exception of the damper or sustain pedal on the right.

On upright pianos, the right (damper) pedal still functions the same as they do on grand pianos in that it holds up the dampers on all notes allowing all notes to sustain without holding down the keys. The middle pedal on a upright pianos is typically a practice pedal which places felt over the strings for quiet playing. Some middle pedals on upright pianos sustain only low notes which mimics the use of sostenuto pedals (middle pedals) on grand pianos. The left pedal though is where things get really interesting.

The left pedal on upright pianos sets the hammers closer to the strings instead of shifting the action to only strike two of the three strings as in grand pianos. This doesn’t change tone, but it does change the touch of the piano making it harder to play loud because it lessens the momentum of the strike of the hammers. This is what the fourth pedal does on Stuart & Sons pianos.

This may be useful because you still have the availability of the una corda pedal for tonal change, but you also can change the response of the action making it easier to play softly with the fourth pedal. While not a requirement for your music, but it’s a nice option to have.