Alesis DG8 manual Sostenuto, Soft Pedal, Pedal Connections

Chapter 2: Playing the DG8

SOSTENUTO

This pedal on an acoustic grand piano* causes only the dampers on played keys to lift until the pedal is released. In other words, if you play a chord, step on the Sostenuto pedal, and then release the keys, the notes you were playing continue to ring. What makes this different from a sustain pedal is that you can play every other note on the keyboard and they won’t sustain, but if you play the notes you were holding when you stepped on the sostenuto pedal, they will still sustain. Try a glissando down the keys and you’ll hear the chord you played spelled out as you pass those notes!

On the DG8, this pedal produces the digital equivalent of “lifting dampers” only on the played keys.

*NOTE: The DG8 emulates the sostenuto pedal of a grand piano, not an upright, and we want to make that distinction clear. On upright pianos, what the “middle pedal” does varies from brand to brand.

SOFT PEDAL

This pedal on an acoustic piano is so named because it produces a quieter performance. The way acoustic pianos accomplish this varies. In some pianos, the soft pedal causes all dampers to be lifted but not as high as the sustain pedal lifts them, so that the brightness and loudness of the notes are “softened”. In others, the soft pedal accomplishes its task by shifting the position of the keybed so the hammers strike the strings in a different way.

This last option takes two different forms. For example, all acoustic pianos have many notes for which there are two or more strings per key. On a concert grand piano, the soft pedal physically moves the keybed sideways so the hammers strike fewer strings per key.

Other pianos employ a third method that lowers the entire set of keys into the keybed a little. This reduces the distance the keys are able to travel, which in turn limits the amount of kinetic energy which can be transferred from the hammers into the strings, thereby resulting in a quieter performance.

On the DG8, this pedal achieves a similar “softening” of the brightness and loudness by reducing the keyboard’s response to velocity, which therefore makes the sound somewhat lower in volume and brightness.

PEDAL CONNECTIONS

Momentary footswitches are used for the Sustain, Sostenuto and Soft Pedal features of the DG8. “Momentary” means that it is a spring-loaded switch that operates by “pressing and releasing”.

Pedals are plugged into the DG8’s rear panel jacks. Each jack is labeled so that you’ll know which pedal performs which function.

These pedals – they’re actually electrical switches, but we’ll refer to them as pedals to keep consistent with piano terms – are designed to reproduce the same response as their acoustic counterparts. But since we’re dealing with an electronic instrument, the concept here is that when a switch like this is pressed, it is in its on position; when you release it, it’s off.

DG8 REFERENCE MANUAL 49