I've been messing about with my piano to try and produce a demonstration of the effect of using the sustaining pedal and also to tie in some of the points about harmony in my teaching. This is what I've come up with - try it if you haven't already!

Hold down middle C without making the note sound (depress the key beyond the 'bump' so that the damper is off the string and it can vibrate)

Play the lowest C on the piano quite forcefully and hold for a few seconds, then release - middle C sounds faintly. Repeat for each C on the piano. The Cs below middle C create louder and louder vibrations from middle C as you come up. Above middle C you hear the higher Cs continuing to sound as harmonics from the middle C string after you have released the notes. You can try it with other unrelated notes eg hold down an A flat, and you get silence.

Interesting effects with dominants and other harmony notes too - Play C below middle C while holding down G above middle C - it sounds.

Play the lowest C on the piano while holding the G and B immediately below middle C - both ring, but an octave higher and the B lasts longer.

Play the lowest C while holding the 3rd E from the bottom - you get a faint E and a definite B 2 octaves above the E.

Even if you can only hear these harmonics faintly, you can fell the vibrations ithrough the keys and by gently touching the strings.

OK, I should get out more, but it just about made my day!

I used to spend hours doing this kind of thing. Also holding down chords silently while playing other stuff, and even whole blocks of notes held down with the forearm while the other hand plays single notes, various chords etc.

There are plenty of places in classical music where the notes of a chord have re-inforcing harmonics so that you hearan additional "ghost" note, tht hasn't actually been struck - and without using the pedal.

Another interesting efect is to play a big chord loud, with pedal, release your fingers, then quickly let the pedal part up and down again. You end up with a much quieter sound in which the harmonics are realtively stronger. A quite eerie sound, though hard to reproduce reliably, espcially on an unfamiliar piano.

*rushes off to try more special effects*

This is great!

nope - this doesn't work on a digital

I have an second hand book with a piece called "Harmonics" in it

It's just like that - holding down chords silently then playing a tune based on that chord. It makes a really eerie sound


edit : It's from an old exam book... I guess that's one you couldn't play on the digital eh?!

i think my brother played a piece like that for the prep test a few years back.

Its called something like Chinese Crackers I think

thats the one!!

Its what first got me thinking about the whole business!

Yes it does - although the effect is obviously artificial they reproduce it pretty well.

There's a piece called "Harmonics" by Bartok in his Microkosmos. It was set for grade 5 around 2000. I found it a few months ago and tried it. Real good fun!

Yes - that's the one I have

This was the subject of endless debate between my piano playing friend and I