Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum using the foot pedals

I have been having lessons for four years now and up to this day I have never been shown how to use the foot pedals. I have asked my teacher to teach me and she just says we will do it soon. How soon do you have to be taught how to use the pedal? She says that in the early stage of learning, the music does not require the pedal to be used. I took Grades 1 and 2 and there was no requirement to use the pedal for the pieces for the exam. I just took Grade 3 and the same applied. Obviously, with the harder music you will have to use the pedal as it will be compulsory but for now, the kind of music I am playing does not require the use of the pedal, so my teacher has not taught me how to pedal. However, I have just taken my Grade 3 exam and while I wait for the result to come through, we are playing some fun pieces. Again, at my lesson I asked my teacher if we could now have a go at pedals. We have two more lesson and then break for Christmas and I wanted to be shown how to pedal with some easy music and then practice over Christmas for homework. My teacher said no because she would prefer to teach me in January so she can see me practice and point out if I do it wrong and if I practice over Christmas I may do it all wrong and there will be nobody there to correct me.

I am just interested to know how soon anyone else on here started to learn to pedal.

I probably learned to do it too early--hard to remember--but your teacher is absolutely right. There is nothing so awful as really muddy damper pedaling, and I speak as someone who habitually over-pedaled in ugly ways as a kid and teen. It's a really tempting 'fix it' move that doesn't really fix it and keeps you from learning some good musicality.

As a long term pianist, I look at ways to only use the pedal when it ABSOLUTELY benefits the music that I'm playing and I regret cases where I have to use the pedal to accomplish something to the detriment of some aspect of the music.

Don't get me wrong: damper pedaling is an essential skill (in certain types of music) but it's extraordinarily easy to abuse.

This is RCM right? I started using pedal on grade 2?!

It depends on the music one plays too. Most romantic music really requires the pedal to sound right, but with baroque you can get really far without needing to pedal at all.

I cannot remember really learning to pedal at all when I played for a few years as child. When I started as an adult my first pieces required the pedal so I learned the basic legato pedalling by just listening to the sounds. My teacher was ok with how I do it so we haven't really worked much on pedalling. But still after about 1,5 years I use the pedal only when necessary, I mostly prefer the sound of my piano without it. I am yet to learn to pedal in baroque pieces, where it should be really discreet.

Using the Alfred books it introduces pedal quite early on, about halfway through the first book, don't think you need it to learn your keys but is needed on various sections of music to make it sound right.
You might as well start early as your going to need it along the way anyhow.

On a related note, why do they even bother fitting a middle piano pedal?(many BMW drivers I have seen think the same way..)

my teacher started with pedal once I knew basic nnotes. then it becomes automatic. after 3 yrs just starting to use soft pedal and focus more intently on dynamics. my middle pedal is a mute so you can practice almost silently.

There are several ways to pedal, and so it is a complicated task. When I was learning piano, I was not allowed to use the damper pedal at all, and the music I was assigned could be fine without (no Romantic pieces that required it). My teacher wanted me to learn a good legato first.

The problem, of course, was that after 10 years of lessons, I had not used the pedal much at all. I think that was too long, and of course, my legato was fine. I am also one who likes to use pedal for Baroque and Classical period music, but tastefully.

I think 4 years seems an awful long time to wait. I don't make my students wait, but I may direct them to first learn a piece without pedaling, then we add it later. Students in their first year learn to use pedal to some degree.

I don't think it is wrong for you to want to use the pedal at this point in your development. Your teacher has stated she would teach it to you in January, so wait for that. If she doesn't do it, however, then perhaps it's time to move on to another teacher.

FOUR YEARS?

I was taught to use the pedal by lesson 5, the Aarron book has it at page 13 or something.

However the sustain pedal marks start vanishing about 2/3 through the book as you're supposed to figure it out yourself as to when it is appropriate or not.

But as above especially with popularisation of digital pianos, it is certainly possible to abuse it. On a DP especially you can stick a brick on it and play away!

Yes four years. The teacher must be doing something right with me because I do pass my exams so that is the main thing. She teaches me adequately so that I pass the exams and pedals are not required for the exams I do at the moment. I guess when it becomes compulsory, she will teach me. Why give me an unnecessary headache if it is not needed. There is enough to learn with scales and arpegios so if scales are not needed for the exams then why do them. Better to concentrate on thing which ARE required for the exam and do pedals later.

What is different about pedalling on a DP compared to an Acoustic piano ?

DP's tend not to sustain notes as long as acoustics and the resultant swirl of muddied sound from an acoustic isn't matched on a DP.

I play my DP at full volume on speakers and three-quarters on headphones. I find spending too long on headphones (or lower volumes) numbs me to overuse of pedal.

For me, as one who probably over pedals, that is a good thing.

I disagree completely. Cacophony is cacophony - acoustic or digital.

It would be helpful, if everybody speaking about the experience of pedalling on a digital piano would say which digital piano is referenced to.
An older 1000$ DP might react much different than the newest >3000$ DPs. I by now can´t believe that an up-to-date digital of the class of a CLP470, HP507 or CA95 wouldn´t pedal correctly.

I like my teacher and we have a good raport. I primarilly take the Grade exams so if pedalling was essential for the exam, I would have been taught by now. I was merely curious as to how long other people had waited before being taught pedalling. I took my Grade 2 exam and one of the pieces I played had pedalling. There was a footnote at the bottom of the page, stating that although the pedalling marks were in the music, pedalling wa by no means essential. Same as for my Grade 3 Bach piece... they had trills and the trills were optional. My teacher said that the examiner was not going to mark me down for not playing trills as it would be nice to play them but not essential. The piece was difficult enough for a small fingered pianist, without the added struggle of playing trills. I look forward to January and the foot pedals lol

If you learned some Debussy you could keep both pedals down all the time . In Roberts Pianos he mentions the different pedal heights off the floor.He found 8cms too high and awkward and other pianos had 5cm heights which were more comfortable . The newer upright pianos have horrid oblong pedals poking straight out. No allowance for moving the feet sideways onto the pedals .No smooth edges .Just nasty square corners . One odd example was something that looked like a drawer handle. One metal rod coming out ,across ,and back in again . Not even separated from it`s inferior neighbour .
My upright pedals have 8cms heights almost reduced by the thick 2cm Chinese carpet which is too far away to make the grade. The worst of both worlds .Heel just on the carpet but foot pointing downwards before making the ascent to base camp . "A cheap plywood ramp might be a good idea Edmund ". (Edmund Hillary).

I think it's entirely wrong not to use the pedal after 4 years. I do not doubt your teacher's ability and you passing all the grades is certainly a good testimony.

But music does not end with baroque vs romantic and Bach and Chopin (which I both adore).

Yes, many have stated that there is nothing as bad a a muddy pedal, confusing all the notes and harmony, but I think that's exactly the point.

Using the pedal gets you intimately involved in harmony. You have to use the pedal right to discern the chord changes and discern the melodic dissonances that can come up. So using the pedal is not only a device suited or non suited to a certain music style. Using the pedal is a key part of a musical education !

I started using the pedal from day 1 and I feel I have learned a lot from that about musical structure. Then once you own that you can play the subtleties of pedal say in Chopin or whatever.

My 2 c.

This was a problem in December 2012, and the last post that adultpianist wrote was in 2014. Why resurrect this thread???

Don't know, it came up as new for some reason. My bad probably. Still . . .

In the beginning focus on playing the right notes. Around level 4 got into playing with the pedal. The pieces I'm learning doesn't require much pedaling and the teacher is focused on learning the notes and counting properly.

The pedal that is used mostly is the right sustain / damper. The left you get a muted sound when playing very soft and not used very often. The piece I use to practice pedaling is Gymnopédie #1 by Erik Satie. The dynamics in the beginning is pp very soft so we can use the left pedal. And the LH is mostly big jumps that need the right pedal to connect the notes & chords.

Learning the pedal is a gradual process. You'd play your pieces without the pedal and add some pedal in certain places to get a more sustained sound.