Simpedia

Leon M., California

In response to a question regarding the purpose of the pedals on a piano.

The pedals serve these functions:

• Right pedal is of course the sustain pedal.

• On a baby grand, the left pedal (or the ‘soft’ pedal) actually shifts the entire ‘action’ mechanism (the moving parts that rest on the back end of the keys), slightly to one side causing the hammers to only strike two of the three strings which makes the sound softer.

On an upright piano, the left pedal moves the action closer to the strings. Because the hammers can’t travel as far, they don’t hit the strings as hard, again making the sound softer.

• The middle pedal on many uprights and on some baby grands, can be used as a bass sustain pedal. Meaning it only sustains notes in the bass register. On some older uprights, it operated a ‘rinky tink’ or ‘honky tonk’ bar that lowered felt strips with little metal pieces on the ends of them so that they came between the hammers and the strings. This gave the piano a very metallic, slightly out-of-tune sound.

Sometimes the center pedal is a ‘practice’ pedal that lowers a long felt strip between the hammers and strings, muffling the sound so that it doesn’t disturb others when the pianist is practicing. The are even some (cheap) upright pianos where the center pedal was actually attached to the left pedal.

On most better baby grand pianos, the center pedal is a ‘sostenuto’ pedal. A sostenuto pedal only sustains the bass note(s) played immediately before pressing the pedal. This would in effect work like a ‘third’ hand by keeping only the chosen notes sustained while playing other notes.

Hope this could be of some help!