Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Sustain/Damper pedal usage DP vs acoustic

There are lots of factors involving the use of the pedal. Even switching from one acoustic piano to a different one (even same model and brand), the precise use of the pedal can be different. The acoustics of the hall can also be a decisive factor to have in account. As I generally agree with the things said before (decay, resonance, etc), I don't think it's that important that the pedaling sensation is different from one instrument to another. We, pianists, cannot usually carry our instrument with us (there are exceptions, is Zimerman hidden here at this forum and could tell us? ) so we must adapt to every condition, including different actions, tunings, maintenance of the piano, size, hall, etc. This includes the pedal. I don't pedal the same with an U1 upright than with a fabulous Steinway D nor it's the same with my HP-305. And now there exists the HP-505 with have Progressive Damper Pedal (or whatever it's called). The ideal situation, IMHO, is owning an acoustic grand. If you pedal correctly in a grand, you will adapt to every other condition. If not, you can adapt and try to obtain the maximum benefit from your playing on whatever instrument you are using. What I do not recommend is working only with an entry level DP as the lack of decay, resonance, nuances and so on will payoff some day.

Talking about decay and resonance, while still far from the real thing, I think Roland did a nice work with their Supernatural technology.

Have you already asked your neighbours or do you practice late in night? I'm asking since I'm also beginner, playing just for a year, and I do have one upright and one small grand (old) here in apartment and my neighbours let me know straight on the first occasion that I should not play after 18:00 hour. Honestly speaking when I get home later than this and the day was w/o piano playing I'm getting a little bit desperate and go to the digital piano forum to find yet another candidate for purchase, but then well, two pianos already in home so I'm still without DP here... :-)

BTW: back to the topic, both my AP behaves differently on dumper pedal. The small grand is more picky about the pedalling as it gets sooner blurry, but well, you cannot probably compare small upright with small (160cm long) grand, but even this small upright will teach you well what to do with pedal IMHO...

I had a chance to try very nice Yamaha grand(not the biggest one), which is used for concerts at school. I was surprised that damper/string resonance was lower than I experience with my teacher's grand piano, which is about the same size.
PHI technology in my CL-36 has damper pedal resonance and even if it's still lower than proper acoustic grand, I like it just the way it is.
I kind of realized, that too much resonance is actually a defect and I wanted my CL-36 to behave wrong. It would be nice to hear opinion from acoustic piano engineers.

So I ended my race to achieve blurry sound and I am very happy since then. I enjoy my DP actually more than my teacher's grand and almost as much as (30 000€) Yamaha grand. And I mean both touch and sound (using headphones of course).

Beware if you want to play on acoustic grands regularly as well as your DP: you can't pedal on the real thing the way you can on your DP, and you can easily get into the habit of not changing the pedal despite frequent harmonic changes, because of the poor sustain and lack of resonances on your DP.

Of course, if your DP is what you want to master (rather than piano playing per se), that's not a problem.

Quite true, and if you go down the road of mostly playing a digital piano, you will never master the use of pedal on a real piano - it will always be messy. Piano resonance can be controlled, but you have to practise on one to know where the threshold is for too much or too little. I tend to think that Jarosujo only prefers the digital because it's easier for him to manage. If you listen to somebody else perform on the two, the acoustic will be a much more satisfying experience - because they have the pedal skills to clean up the sound where necessary, but they have the wonderful resonance at their disposal that the digital doesn't.

I understand what you mean (bennevis & ando). I play grand acoustic for one hour once a week and naturally started to use pedal more often on my DP back at home. I learned the difference so I can predict when to press the pedal on DP (even if I don't have to) so the sound is not too messy when I play same way on acoustic. It works quite well, at least my teacher says so :-)

We should probably have a sticky on this because it comes up very frequently. Basically you use a normal computer or laptop (not a netbook, though) and install the library (Galaxy II and Ivory II are popular around here). Connect your DP to the computer, often through USB if your piano has it, and install your piano drivers if necessary. Plug speakers into your computer. You are set to go.

Thanks.

I also rec'd a more detailed reply re: various more advanced setups, but it was sent privately because it had been posted on many threads previously.

For new-ish folks like me though, we are likely to not see those previous threads, or if we search on "piano software" we get 4000+ results, or if we search on "digital piano library" we get just one result (this thread, interestingly).

So, FWIW, I think there is value in posting the same thing over and over again for the benefit of new eyes that haven't seen those old threads or are not inclined to try to slog through them to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

To a certain degree that is the bread and butter of ABF... repeating the same basic stuff over and over for an endless cavalcade of new eager learners.

That said, I don't know who decides what is worthy of a sticky or not, but I would guess this fairly narrow topic wouldn't make the grade. Possibly it would be added to the "Important Topics on the Adult Beginners Forum" post though? Along with other similar technical topics?

My $.02 worth