7.1.3 Pedals

Pianos have pedals that alter the way sound is produced. Generally, a piano has three pedals, sustain, una corda, and sostenuto.

Piano pedal instruction can be expressed by attaching \sustainDown, \sustainUp, \unaCorda, \treCorde, \sostenutoDown and \sostenutoUp to a note or chord

     
     c'4\sustainDown c'4\sustainUp

What is printed can be modified by setting pedalXStrings, where X is one of the pedal types: Sustain, Sostenuto or UnaCorda. Refer to SustainPedal in the program reference for more information.

Pedals can also be indicated by a sequence of brackets, by setting the pedalSustainStyle property to bracket objects

     
     \set Staff.pedalSustainStyle = #'bracket
     c\sustainDown d e
     b\sustainUp\sustainDown
     b g \sustainUp a \sustainDown \bar "|."

A third style of pedal notation is a mixture of text and brackets, obtained by setting the pedalSustainStyle property to mixed

     
     \set Staff.pedalSustainStyle = #'mixed
     c\sustainDown d e
     b\sustainUp\sustainDown
     b g \sustainUp a \sustainDown \bar "|."

The default ‘*Ped.’ style for sustain and damper pedals corresponds to style #'text. The sostenuto pedal uses mixed style by default.

     
     c\sostenutoDown d e c, f g a\sostenutoUp

For fine-tuning the appearance of a pedal bracket, the properties edge-width, edge-height, and shorten-pair of PianoPedalBracket objects (see PianoPedalBracket in the Program reference) can be modified. For example, the bracket may be extended to the right edge of the note head

     
     \override Staff.PianoPedalBracket #'shorten-pair = #'(0 . -1.0)
     c\sostenutoDown d e c, f g a\sostenutoUp

See also

In this manual: Laissez vibrer ties