Posts from — November 2009

The far left pedal on almost all uprights should never be used, shouldn’t even be there. Chop it off and throw it away (some piano manufacturers, thankfully, did that for you, and their uprights feature only 2 pedals.) You see, this pedal tries to simulate the "softening" of the notes as the far left pedal on a grand, even though we already clarified (two posts ago) that the left pedal on the grand is not a "soft pedal," it’s the una corda pedal, not to be used for playing softer. So the left pedal on the upright is trying to simulate an action that shouldn’t even exist on a grand! Huh?

Worse is how it tries to do it. You see, when you push the left pedal down on a grand, the whole keyboard shifts to the right a bit, allowing the hammers to move over and only strike 1 or 2 of the strings where they wold normally strike 2 or 3. It can do this because in a grand the keyboard floats loosely in the piano, and is not bolted down. In an upright, the keyboard is bolted down and immovable, so all the hammers will continue to strike all 2 or 3 strings they always strike. So what did these misguided makers do instead, to try to achieve a softer tone? They put in a wooden rod, worked up & down by the left pedal, that pushes all the hammers about half-way closer to the strings than their normal rest position.

Usually, when you strike an upright key, the hammer travel about 1^3/4" from rest position to the string. Pressing down the left pedal shortens this distance by about half, so the hammer need only go forward about 7/8" before making contact with the string. Less travel or "blow" equals a softer contact and sound, right? Not really. Try it. Hit any key without the left pedal and listen to the volume you get from that note. Now press down the left pedal, and hit the key again with exactly the same amount of force. Pretty much the same volume, right? I defy you to hear much difference. That alone would render it a useless pedal.

But the real problem is that, in lifting all the hammers closer to the strings, the left pedal has effectively thrown all the keys’ touch completely out of regulation, and introduced a gaping empty air-space of lost motion between your finger and making contact with the hammer. Slowly press down any key without the left pedal; feel the firm weight & contact against your finger. Now press the left pedal down, and slowly push down the same key. But wait…whoa! there’s nothing there, no weight, no contact until, ahh, there it is! Only after you’ve pushed the key about 1/4"-1/2" down, can you finally feel the weight of the hammer against your finger. Introducing this severe amount of "lost motion," or no contact between your finger and the hammer (and thus no dynamic control,) all for a pedal that barely achieves its function anyway (softening the volume) was the stupidest invention ever on any size piano. Aaarrggh!

There were a few manufacturers in the early 20th century who added an expensive extra mechanism and set of wooden flanges called a "lost-motion regulator" – A.B. Chase and Vose & Sons pianos had them – but they’re hard to find on any upright piano now, and remember, this upright soft pedal doesn’t really make the notes softer anyway, so once again, aaarrggh…why bother? Just leave one pedal off upright pianos…no big deal! People will still buy ‘em. They have to (see the reasons listed in our last post)

So stare at the 3 shiny pedals on your upright piano and enjoy their attractive three-ness, just like a grand. Then sit down and play, and know that the only one your ever gonna use is the far right damper pedal, period.

 Poor Vertical (Upright) pianos. They are considered the neglected step-sisters of the grand piano. And to some extent, this is not too harsh of a criticism, as their touch and tone is definitely a compromise, and a cut below that of their older grand sibling. No true pianist has any delusion that he or she can get the same sound and playing experience from an upright as a fine grand. This is true even for the taller and higher-quality uprights, for reasons which we made clear in our earlier Feb. ‘09 post, "Upright Pros & Cons."

Still, upright pianos are a necessity in the modern home and school room, because of their compact fit, their easier transportability, and their considerably reduced cost. The majority of home pianos are still uprights, with a 75% to 25% margin over grands. And studio uprights fill the classrooms and practice rooms of even the more prestigious musical institutions. This is a good thing, overall, because it’s forced all piano manufacturers to make the sound and touch of their uprights as "grand" as possible, and has resulted in some significant improvements on the finer uprights.

One of the early attempts to make people think they were getting the full "grand piano" experience from an upright purchase was the sales-pitchy use of a highly misleading misnomer – calling the taller verticals "Upright Grands" in the early 20th century. Upright Grand?? Now there’s an oxymoron if there ever was one, quite like "jumbo shrimp." No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, and an upright is an upright, and a grand is a grand, and never the twain shall meet. I still get calls weekly from people asking if I’ll come tune their "upright grand." I ask, "Is it a grand or an upright?" They reply, "It’s an upright grand." I patiently say, "No, that’s just a sales tactic. If it’s a vertical piano against the wall, it’s an upright…if it stands free on three legs, it’s a grand." Sometimes I can feel their spirit sinking over the phone, like, "Damn you for telling me that, it was so much cooler to call it a grand turned upward!" Sorry, it’s not a grand, even though the strings may be as long as some shorter grands. Refer to the link above for more clarity about this.

The other way makers tried to seduce you into thinking the upright was just as "complete" as the grand was to include 3 full pedals, "just like on a grand," even when only one of them performed the same function as it’s grand counterpart, and the other two either feigned similar functions or often did nothing at all! That’s right, on many upright pianos, the middle and far left pedal are just for show!

But on most uprights, all 3 are indeed functional, and here’s how they work:

The damper pedal (far right pedal) works just the same as on a grand, pulling all the dampers off the strings, so they can all sustain freely until letting up on the pedal.

The middle pedal performs a sort of faux-sostenuto function. It lifts only the bass section dampers off the bass strings, allowing the player to hit a big octave or chord in the bass, and have it keep sustaining, whilst they plink short or staccato notes in the upper sections. Not nearly as selective as the grand version, but as we said, there are very few pieces of music written for true Sostenuto pedaling, so it’s adequate.

Modern piano manufacturers, especially the Oriental  pianos, realized this next-to-never usage of the middle pedal for Sostenuto, and decided to assign it a completely different function: pulling a thin strip of felt down between the hammers and the strings (sometimes called a "mute bar") to make your playing extremely soft and muffled, so you can practice late at night, or whenever, without disturbing anyone else in the home. Thanks to the inventiveness of companies like Yamaha, this has now become the more common function of the middle pedal on all uprights.

Next, in "Why 3 Pedals Are ‘2 Much’ On An Upright – Part 2," we’ll take apart (and throw away!) the dreaded left pedal on uprights…

And Why You’ll Rarely Need More Than One

Most modern grand and upright pianos come with 3 foot pedals. Many people are confused or outright mistaken about what they are for and how to use them properly. Let’s start with the pedals on a grand piano, since they are the most "real" and set the standard for what these pedals should do:

Standing in front of a grand piano, looking at the pedals from right-to-left, the far right pedal is called the Damper Pedal. It’s sometimes mistakenly called the sustain pedal, because the end result of pushing it down is that all the notes sustain for as long as you hold down the pedal. Of course, any individual notes that you play will also keep on ringing as long as you hold down those specific keys, but pressing the Damper Pedal lets the notes keep ringing even if you come off the keys.

It does this by lifting all the dampers (hence the name) off the strings. If you remove the music desk from your grand piano and look down over the strings, a few inches back from the tuning pins, you will see a row of curve-shaped wooden blocks with squares or wedges of felt hanging from their undersides, sitting on top of the strings. Now while still staring at these, press down on the far right pedal and you will see them all lift off the strings, allowing the strings to vibrate freely. Let go of the pedal and the dampers fall back onto the strings, effectively muting out any sound.

The dampers are all connected by wires to individual wooden levers inside the piano. You cannot see these levers with the piano all closed up, but if you slide the action out of the piano and look to the back of the cavity where the action usually fits, you’ll see these levers, and a wooden tray that lifts all of them off the strings when you press down the pedal. You’ll see a wooden dowel coming up from under the piano, that attaches to this tray and pumps it up and down. That dowel is in turn connected to your foot by means of a rod and lever under the piano.

The area where the tray and damper levers are secured is referred to as the piano’s "back action," the levers under the piano are referred to as the "trapwork," and the wooden frame holding the pedals and pedal rods is called the "lyre."

Now here’s an important point: In most cases, the damper pedal is the only one you need. As we go on to describe the other pedals, you’ll understand why.

The middle pedal on a grand piano is called the Sostenuto Pedal. You can think of it as a "selective" sustain pedal. The way it works is that you press it down after you hold down certain keys, and it lifts the dampers off (or allows to sustain) just those notes, while allowing you to play the other notes as short, non-sustaining notes, even staccato. So the only time you would need the Sostenuto Pedal is in the rare instance that you want to have 2-8 notes keep ringing, in the bass section for instance, while you play short notes in the treble. There are only about 30 or so pieces in all of piano music that call for that odd pairing of sound – mostly from the more impressionistic and 20th-century composers – so a pianist could go through his whole piano-playing life without ever using this pedal. This is made all the more amazing when you realize that installing this pedal and it’s connecting mechanisms inside a grand piano adds a significant cost to building the instrument, well over a thousand dollars! All that for a pedal you may step on five time in the 50+ plus years you own the piano!

The far left pedal is probably the most misnamed and misunderstood one. It is NOT the "Soft Pedal!" It’s proper name is the Una Corda Pedal; una corda means one string. That’s because when you press it down, the whole key action shifts to the right, just enough to make the piano’s hammers line up and strike just two of the three stings for each note that has a three-string unison, and just one of the two bass strings that have two strings per note. The early 18th century pianos just had two strings per note, and this pedal made the hammers hit just one of the two, hence the the name "una corda."

Now it may be natural to think that hitting only one or two strings for each note, when the piano usually strikes two or three, would make the notes a bit softer, when struck with the same key force, and it does. A bit. A very little bit. Because that’s not the purpose of this pedal. Any good piano instructor will tell you, "If you want softer notes, play softer! Don’t use the left pedal."

No, the original purpose the inventors of the Una Corda Pedal had in mind, was an ethereal sound created by striking only two of the three strings, but having the third string vibrate sympathetically, which it will if properly tuned. This dreamlike sound was their intention, not just a softening of the volume.

Still, you’d be amazed at how many pianists, including accomplished concert artists, use the Una Corda as a "soft pedal," a volume softener, probably because it does make it easier to play at pianissimo levels than simply playing with a more delicate touch…that actually takes technique

In our next post we’ll look at why you should never, ever use the far left pedal on an upright piano, and why it’s even there in the first place!