> Step by step

7. Using a sustain pedal

1 Most keyboard controllers have a sustain input jack that will take a sustain pedal. As long as your pedal is switched to the correct polarity for your keyboard, once connected it should behave so that notes ring out with the pedal down, and are cut off when you release the pedal back up. Some controllers can be switched to suit.

2 The main purpose of the pedal isn’t to make your playing louder, but to prolong notes while your hands are moved away from the keyboard in readiness to play the next note. This makes for a smoother transition between notes and chords, but you need to be careful not to overdo things. Here’s a fullon, two-handed piano part with no pedal.

3 As a further illustration, the above diagram shows the same piece with the pedal down all the time this time. The status of the pedal – which is basically an on-off switch – is shown in this editor window at the bottom of our DAW’s piano roll editor. As you can hopefully hear, it all starts to get a bit much, especially in the low end.

4 The answer is to find a compromise between the two approaches. Use the pedal sparingly, but effectively enough to enable a smooth transition between chords. Usually, lifting it up in the fraction of a second before you play the next chord in a sequence is the way to go. As it’s a continuous controller message in your DAW, you can touch up any mistakes or overhangs in the MIDI editor later.

5 As well as closing up gaps between chords, sustain is also useful for things like flourishes, big finishes and swanky cocktail-bar arpeggios up and down the keyboard. Check out this example of a Rick Wakeman-esque arpeggio played with and without the sustain pedal. It works here because all the notes are versions of the same chord played in different octaves.

6 The sustain pedal isn’t just reserved for piano parts, though – it’ll have the same effect on 99% of other keyboard sounds too (Hammond organs being the exception, in which case it usually controls rotary speaker speed). Use it to create eerie, sustained plonky textures, or to smooth the transition between chords in a pad part, like in our example here.