MASTER the BASICS of PEDALING // IMPROVE YOUR SOUND with these PEDALING TECHNIQUES - Piano Tutorial

Hi, this is Danae and today's video is going to be all about pedaling. This is my first video about pedaling and this of course is a very big subject. So today I'm just going to touch on some basic points and things that I find most important when discussing pedaling. I believe that the most important thing is to realize that the pedal is a tool that can do many, many things. Some people falsely believe that it is only there to make the sound longer and make the note longer when you cannot physically hold it with your hands. But this is not true. The pedal can influence the color, the quality of sound, the dynamics, the overall atmosphere, the character. It can really influence all of those things. So it is important to really look at the pedal as an additional musical device that you have at your disposal when you play the piano. So if you're interested in what I look out for when I use the pedal and what kind of basic pedaling techniques I use, then keep on watching. So as I already mentioned, I think it is important to make a distinction between using the pedal just to make the note longer and for example, create a legato where your fingers cannot, and then using the pedal in order to influence the sound of the atmosphere. First, I want to focus on using the pedal in order to make the note longer. I think this is a very common use of pedal and as an example, I chose the beginning of Chopin's Third Piano Sonata because it has legato chords and then chords that don't have a legato. And you have different techniques for those two situations. When you have a legato and you use the pedal, you want to use the pedal opposite to how you use your fingers. And what I mean by that is when your fingers go up and you lift the key, this is when you want the pedal to be down in order to bridge that moment that you cannot physically do the legato with your fingers. Then when you press the note, the pedal goes back up and then back down when the fingers go up again. So this really is a pedal that is used in order to connect notes that you physically cannot connect, as is the case in the opening bar of Chopin's Third Piano Sonata. You can also do the opposite. You can do the direct pedaling technique, which is used when you actually don't want to achieve a legato, you just want to give those chords a little bit of extra sound. And this is the case in the bar following that beginning in Chopin's Third Piano Sonata, which is why I thought that this was a great example because it combines both techniques in a very short amount of time. And there you press the pedal together with a chord and you lift it together with a chord so that that little space between the chords stays, but you still have a different effect compared to if you would play it without the pedal altogether. So when you want to create a pedal legato, you use the pedal opposite to how you would use your fingers. Whenever the fingers go up, pedal goes down. If you want to create more of a direct pedaling, then you use it together with your fingers, but of course you won't be creating a legato. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the second way of using the pedal, which is not to make the note longer, but to really influence the sound. And there are three basic categories that I find are most common in which you can really influence the sound with the pedal. The first category is when you have a very loud and full chord that you really want to project into the hall and where you really want to focus on all the harmonics that are being created by the notes that you play, because the pedal, of course, releases a lot of harmonics when pressed and held, is that you press the pedal before you even press the chord. So if you just press a forte chord, it's never going to sound as full and never going to have the same ring to it compared to if you press the pedal first and then press the chord. There is a whole different kind of vibration because all the dampers are up, all the harmonics can expand. So for example, the beginning of Greek's piano concerto is one of those moments where you start with a big A minor chord, and I would recommend to press the pedal before that A minor chord is pressed on the piano, because it is just going to make it sound fuller, grander, and this is the sound you want to achieve at the beginning of this piano concerto. Second technique of pedaling when influencing the sound is what I like to call vibrato pedaling, and as the name already suggests, it literally is using the pedal as a kind of vibrato, so really going like this with your foot as fast as you can, like a string player would vibrate on his instrument, and the pedal is what maybe is a little bit of a magic tool for us pianists to achieve something that actually is not possible on the piano. I've talked about this in many of my previous videos. As a pianist, we know that when you press the note, there's nothing else you could do to influence the sound. However, there is the pedal, so this is actually not entirely true. The pedal can still influence the sound. If you press a note and vibrate the pedal, it's never going to be the same vibrato as on a string instrument, but you can try it at home. Press a note and then vibrate the pedal. There is something happening to the sound. So when I say vibrato pedal, I'm not talking so much about one single note and then vibrating the pedal. That's not really what I'm saying. What I'm saying is when you have a very long phrase full of little notes, quite full and filled with many different harmonies, what do you do with a pedal? You can't really press it all the way through because if it's, let's say a chromatic scale or a scale, it's going to sound too blurry and there's not a harmony. It's just going to sound ugly in the end. You also don't want to have no pedal at all because that would make it sound too dry. So what I usually opt for in those situations is vibrato pedaling, which basically gives the illusion of a little bit of a carpet, a harmonic carpet, since some notes are always vibrating, but since you're doing this, they are always exchanged and this harmonic carpet, let's say, is refreshed constantly. And as an example, I also have a passage from the Chopin Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, because there is a passage where the left hand is playing a and the right hand has a slower, also kind of chromatic melody. And I think this is a great example because I will show you now, if I have this in the pedal completely, it's going to sound extremely filled and just too much and not beautiful. But if I vibrate my pedal while playing it, I find that it is just the right amount of pedaling. And this is really applicable to many, many passages of the piano repertoire. And then the third situation, coming back to what I was saying about string players and how the piano can influence the sound after you've pressed it, is what I like to call half pedaling. And just as an example, I'm going to show you with a single octave, when you press an octave and you have the pedal in it and you just leave it, then it's just going to stay, of course, in the same dynamic until the sound goes away. However, you can create an effect when you press the octave and then do a half pedal change. Half pedal means that you don't go until all the way up and then back down, but only half, and the sound does a little bit of a dip, it's like a duh, and then it doesn't go away completely. It just drops to a lower level and continues there, and this can be extremely helpful if you have, for example, a fortepiano situation where you want to have the pedal, but then you don't want the octave to keep ringing, especially, for example, then you hold it for a couple of bars and there's a piano melody coming on top, but you want it to stay, however, at a lower dynamic, this is when you would use half pedaling. Also in chamber music, for example, if you're ending the phrase on a very loud chord and then you are holding this chord, but then the next entrance of, let's say, the string players is kind of piano, it really helps to use the fortepiano pedaling, the half pedaling, in order to give them a nice foundation that is lower in dynamics than what the piano actually produces when you play a very loud forte chord. So these are the very basic techniques of piano pedaling that I would mention. One last thing I want to say before I finish this video is that it is important to also be able to silently pedal. I hear very often in concert, how certain pianists just hit the pedal and you really hear it. I find that very disturbing and it really somehow doesn't help the atmosphere and the melody when you have this kind of hitting sound coming from the pedal. And this is why this sounds very simple, but I feel like it is important to mention it because many people don't do it. I would definitely remind you to not lift the foot all the way up so that there is actually space between your foot and the pedal, and then you hit it and create that sound. But to really make sure that your foot stays on the pedal and you press it back down from already touching it so that you really avoid this clink. Of course, sometimes it might happen and sometimes in a climax of a piece, it might even be a kind of effect, I guess, that you're going for, but generally I think it is great to be able to pedal silently. I hope that you enjoyed this video about the basic pedaling techniques at the piano. Let me know what you think. Let me know if I missed something or if there is a very basic pedaling technique that you find important that I did not mention, and I'll see you again in the next video. Bye.