Alesis DG8 manual Pedals, Background, Sustain

Chapter 2: Playing the DG8

PEDALS

BACKGROUND

Understanding the keyboard mechanism of an acoustic piano will help in under- standing how the pedals operate on the DG8. Before a piano is played, a series of dampers – small blocks of a felt-like material – rest on each string to prevent them from vibrating. When a key is played, the damper for that note lifts up and a hammer strikes the string (and immediately falls back allowing the string to vibrate). As long as you are holding down that key, the damper stays lifted allowing the string to vibrate freely. When the key is released, the damper falls back on the string and stops it from vibrating.

The pedals of an acoustic piano are used to modify the action of the dampers. The DG8’s pedals emulate the action of an acoustic piano’s pedals electronically. The following descriptions illustrate how each pedal works on the DG8.

SUSTAIN

The DG8’s Sustain pedal provides the digital equivalent of the traditional sustain capability of an acoustic piano: all dampers are lifted allowing all played keys to sustain as long as the pedal is held down. This provides the rich sound we associate with an acoustic piano. Releasing the pedal causes all vibrating strings to mute due to the action of the dampers. If the pedal is kept down long enough, the sustained notes will fade to silence.

On the DG8, keys played while the Sustain pedal is down will sustain and fade until the pedal is released. There are, however, many variations on the way you can use the Sustain pedal. An great amount of flexibility in musical expression can be achieved in the way the Sustain pedal is used while playing. Here are a few things we built into the DG8:

a)Sustain Pedal “Catching”: If a key or keys are played quickly and the sustain pedal is pressed after the keys are released, the sustain of the notes can be “caught” before it fades out completely. The notes will then sustain and fade from the point where the Sustain Pedal is pressed.

b)Re-Entering Sustain: If the pedal is sustaining a note or notes and the pedal is released and then suddenly stepped on again, the DG8 will resume the sustained note(s) but at a lower volume. This imitates the tendency of the mechanical damping action of an acoustic piano to take some amount of time to stop played strings from vibrating. If a damper isn’t given enough time to fully stop the strings, they will continue to vibrate, although with less energy. This can be repeated several times until the sound has completely faded out.

Although these two features correctly emulate the behavior of a real piano, they can rob the DG8 of voices and/or make sequences which were recorded on a MIDI device without a sustain catching feature sound a bit muddy. Conversely, if a pre- recorded sequence sounds a bit “choppy”, try turning Sustain Catching to ON. The Sustain Pedal Catching and Re-entering Sustain features can both be defeated by setting Sustain Catching to OFF.

48 DG8 REFERENCE MANUAL