The Damper Pedal

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and today we're going to learn how, when, and why we use those magical and mysterious
pedals down at the bottom of your piano.
Let's come to the piano--wait..
I mean let's come under the piano to get started.
So, the petal here on the left is called the soft pedal,
or if you want to sound very intelligent and
scholarly, you can call it the Una Corda pedal.
Una Corda means one chord.
It has that name because on grand pianos when you press the soft pedal,
or Una Corda pedal, the hammer mechanism shifts slightly to the side
so the hammer only strikes one string or chord, and
that makes a slightly quieter sound.
On upright acoustic pianos like this one,
it shifts the hammers closer to the strings so they don't get as much momentum when striking the strings.
That also makes the sound slightly quieter.
The middle pedal is honestly rarely used,
and it's tricky because it may do different things depending on your particular piano.
And in fact, some models of piano don't even have a middle pedal.
On some acoustic
upright pianos, pressing the middle pedal
lowers a piece of felt in between the hammers and strings, which makes a very quiet muted sound.
So here's without the felt:
normal sound. Then with the felt:
Much, much, quieter.
Those hammers are
hitting the felt and blocking the sound.
On grand pianos the middle pedal does
something totally different.
It's called the Sostenuto Pedal, and it's a little
complicated to use and honestly most pianists
barely use it at all. So let's
just move on to the pedal that you
by far are going to use the most often.
It's the hero and champion of the three pedals: The damper pedal.
When you press the damper pedal,
a magical thing happens.
When your foot
presses down, inside your piano all the dampers lift
off the strings of the piano, allowing them to vibrate freely as long as possible.
Let's listen to what that sounds like.
Here's the opening of the famous Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto Number One.
You'll notice that by holding the damper pedal down, even when I let go of that chord to move to the next one,
the sound keeps going. Now listen how
clunky that would sound without damper pedal.
I'm going to play the exact same notes, but this time I won't press down the damper pedal.
Ugh, see? There's no fun or
joy in that.
The damper pedal lets all the strings vibrate creating this rich sound.
You see as long as the damper pedal is down, the strings keep on vibrating
until it naturally dies away,
but as soon as I release the damper
pedal,
the dampers engage with the strings, and the sound stops.
Let's look inside the piano to see how that works.
I'm going to lift open my lid.
Now let's identify a few things inside here.
We've got the hammers of the piano.
See these things that are flinging forward? Whenever I press a note on the piano that sends a hammer
forward and hits the strings of the piano which vibrate.
Now, down here touching the strings you'll see these little felt pads called dampers,
and when the keys are not being played the damper
is touching the strings which basically keeps the strings from vibrating.
You'll notice when I play a particular key,
the damper for that string, or those three strings in this case
lifts up so they can vibrate, but when I
let go of the key the damper
touches the strings. It goes back in contact with the
strings to stop the sound.
When I hold down the damper pedal,
now all the strings can vibrate freely for as long as the sound continues,
and then when I let go,
why does the sound stop?
It's because the dampers go down and touch
the strings, which stops the vibrations.
As long as the dampers are up, the
strings will vibrate for quite a long time.
Especially the low strings.
But when I let go, when I release the damper pedal,
the damper is reengaged with the strings
and stops the sound.
So let's talk about the technique for playing the pedal.
You want to have your heel engaged with the floor.
So that's kind of your anchor. You don't want to play the pedal by stomping your whole foot up and down.
You want to have your heel on the floor,
and then use the ball of your foot
to press down the pedal. The ball of your foot is kind of the the beefy part near your toes
It's easier to play the pedal when you're wearing shoes, so,
even if you have a rule
to take off the shoes inside your house, maybe you pop them on
for practicing
when you know you're going to be using the pedals.
It just makes it a lot easier to push it down.
You don't want to play the pedal near the tip of your toes like
this there won't be enough ...