mspmusic.com - using the pedal

using the pedal

The foot bone's connected to the... hand bone?

Here's an experiment to try: sit at the piano, feet on the floor (not the pedals) and play a fast scale with your right hand. Then, consciously clench your toes on your right foot and play the same scale, same speed. It's harder, right? Our muscles are all interconnected, so that when you have tension in one area, it "resonates" to another area. How much it resonates varies with different sides of the body, different parts, etcetera, but the right foot definitely resonates strongly with the right hand.

For that reason, it is important what you do with your feet when you play the piano. When pushing the pedal down, it's best to use the ball of the foot, if possible, instead of the toes. When the pedal is being pushed by the toes, the toes have to have strength to not bend at the joint where they meet the foot, so they clench. This will affect your playing.

Another important consideration is to have your heel on the floor. When you have your heel on the floor, you're pivoting from the ankle to get the pedal up and down. This mostly involves muscles in your foot and your calf. When your heel is not on the floor, you're directly involving major muscles up to your hip and into your back. This will affect your playing, and it can also give you back problems.

The pedal is actually quite difficult to coordinate correctly with the hands, so when students are first beginning to use it, the mental effort makes them push the pedal into the floor -- put the pedal to the metal, so to speak. This is unnecessary and harmful, as many students will not give up this habit even when pedal coordination becomes easier for them. It's important to teach students from the beginning that getting the pedal down to where it lifts the dampers requires much less effort than what they're putting into it.

What you do with footwear depends on the range of motion in your ankle. I know some people that need to wear heels (not stilettos) when playing, and they practice at home with a book or board under their heels. I cannot wear heels when I'm playing, or the angle of my ankle makes my leg shake violently -- not conducive to performance, I can tell you.

It doesn't help that each pedal on each piano is at a slightly different height, and some will go down if you rest your foot slightly on them, and some require major strength to get down. Adjusting to each just requires time spent with each unique pedal.

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