Hi there,

I've recently started playing piano again after quite a break and one thing that I really want to crack is using the pedals properly. I learnt piano to G3 at the age of 11 and stopped soon afterwards, having never set my foot upon a pedal. I then had lessons for 10 weeks when I was doing A level, at which point my teacher covered a little bit about pedal control but it is something that I didn't really master at the time and I moved away from house with a piano soon after.

I think I have two main problems (probably more...) - firstly there is the issue of being able to pedal at speed, ie. simply moving my foot quickly! Then there is the problem of co-ordinating it with whatever my hands are doing. I was wondering if anyone here could suggest any exercises for improving either or both of these?

Thanks!

I'm wondering why you have trouble pedalling quickly - is your heel on the floor and are you far enough away from the piano? Pedalling isn't easy if your stool is too close, but speed shouldn't be a problem otherwise.

For the coordination problem - try playing a C Major scale with one finger only, whilst pedalling to make it sound legato, but without blurring. Try this slowly, quickly and in different rhythms; your foot will soon start responding to your ear!

Legato pedalling in Romantic period playing is probably one of the main techniques to learn. It is a matter of tuning your ear to hear when there is a discordant chord (in a series of chords) and lifting the pedal immediately upon hearing this cloudiness of sound. Depress it again immediately until the next chord and so on. It's too difficult to explain on a thread. You need to be shown by a teacher in the flesh so to speak. I'm talking about the right (sustaining) pedal of course.

LR