What are the three pedals on a piano used for?
Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player’s knee instead of pedals.) The three pedals that have become more or less standard on the modern piano are the following. The DAMPER pedal is often simply called “the pedal,” since it is the most important. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. Every note on the piano except for (approximately ) the top two octaves is equipped with a damper, which is a padded device that prevents the strings from vibrating. The damper is raised off the strings of its note whenever the key for that note is pressed. When the damper pedal is pressed, all the dampers on the piano are lifted at once, so that every string can vibrate. This serves two purposes. First, it permits notes to be connected (i.e., played legato) when there is no fingering that would make this possible. More important, raising the damper pedal causes all the strings to vibra
