Alesis DG8 Manual Do Utilizador

This pedal on an acoustic grand piano* causes only the dampers on    

 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.

*

: 

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.

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.

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.