What the hell are those pedals for???

[Phyl]

I am a guitar player who occasionally uses a midi keyboard connected to a sound module to record piano and strings parts.

I noticed that my keyboard has a jack for a foot pedal and wondered what the pedal would control. I know most pianos have three pedals but have no idea what they are used for.

The documentation for my keyboard doesn't help much...

 

[Toad Rush]

Sustain, Volume...theres one more...

sustain makes notes longer and i'm sure you could figure out volume =)

 

[subtractor]

It really depends on what keyboard you're looking at.

Expression is the other one.

 

[mikeh]

As subtractor says, it all depends on the keyboard.

With most keyboards, if there is only one female jack - it is likely that it is for a sustain pedal (although it is fairly common for the jack to read "sustain pedal")

If there are more than one jack - in addition to a sustain pedal, there may be an expression pedal. This pedal could do everything from a pitch bend to stepping though sounds - what it does would be detemined (controlled) by program settings you should be able to change within the keyboard.

If you identify the make and model of the keyboard someone may be able to give you more specific info.

 

[dafduc]

Since you have a controlloer, it's possible these are assignable - in which case they can be used for just about anything. The sustain pedal could conceivably be assigned to any on-off switch, and the volume pedal could possibly assigned to any 0-127 controller. I say "conceivably" and "possibly" because it really depends on the model. My old (and beloved) KX-88 could be assigned to a wide range of controllers, but almost no sysex (model-specific commands for your module) except for Yamaha.

It also had two footswitch inputs and two pedal inputs. Way cool.