Roland Forums

Hi All

Bought my first Digital Piano yesterday. Got it home and noticed that i cannot keep the Sostenuto pedal depressed as it only works if i apply it after hitting a note. Is this because i have it set up wrong or is this normal for a digital piano?

Sorry if this is a stupid question!!

many thanks,

Chris

Isn't that how sostenuto is supposed to work? It sustains the notes held at the time you depress the pedal but subsequent notes are damped. It sounds like you're expecting it to work like a damper pedal that sustains all of the notes while you hold the pedal down.

Actually if you hold the pedal down on a normal piano it will let all the notes run until you take your foot off. This may not be the way to use it technically but i do expect my digital piano to reproduce any effect i can get on a normal piano. Besides, there are some tunes that you cannot play unless you can sustain a series of very quick notes.

Its a pain in the arse if this doesn't work properly!

you are still describing the damper pedal, not sostenuto.

you are still describing the damper (sustain) pedal, not sostenuto.

From Wikipedia:

On a modern grand piano with three pedals, the middle pedal is usually a sostenuto pedal. It sustains only notes which are depressed at the time the pedal is depressed.

Note that the sostenuto pedal should not be confused with the much more commonly used sustain pedal, which undamps all the strings on the piano.

Anyway, to get it to behave the way you want, plug the pedal into the "damper" plug.

My god you are a genius! Thanks so much for the tip. This is what happens when people like myself are not classically trained!! Should be a law against it!

If it's any consolation, I didn't know what a sostenuto pedal was until I started reading digital piano manuals during my recent search for one to buy (I've just ordered an FP4.) So it's not that you're not classically trained so much as you didn't read the manual .

lol - ah well that makes me feel better! hey happy playing with the FP4 - i think mine is fantastic and i've been literally tied to it every waking hour since i bought it